I’d like to pretend that my nervous system hasn’t been permanently altered by men behaving badly. I  don’t know what to write about if I don’t write about the drama. I’m so used to tying up my identity in trauma.

The floodgates of memory open; a portal to the past open a little wider, a little more today than not. Trauma anniversary begets trauma anniversary. November to February: ’tis the season.

Jared says to keep writing. I hardly see the point.

I’ve been reading about memoir and I’m not so sure anymore. Why? I can’t write most of what happened verbatim for good reason, left to use creative non-fiction to paint my feelings about opportunists, psychopaths, and events decades old that really would make quite the stories if I could ever tell the actual sequence as they happened.

People would hardly believe the characters involved. Real life is stranger than fiction. I do feel a compulsion to write.

I’m afraid if I don’t tell the stories, then I’ll forget. Or somehow the events will become less meaningful, or the fact that I went through all that will be for nothing.

There: I said it.

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It has been a good day. I got my life affirmation orthopedics appointment and spent the morning in Atlanta. Jared and I have gotten out to Gallery Row tonight.

And, karma and all. There is good in the world.

“What is my body doing?” is a good question to measure my time with. Asking myself that question near constantly is reducing my online and sitting time.

And, I love my life. I think.

Jared doesn’t want me to sell my XF 16-55mm f2.8 II. He says I waffle too much to be sure. I’m increasingly sure. I want to add the money to our household budget. I feel like it’s the least I can do. I greatly prefer my 27mm 1.2 and my 50mm f1. The pair can do an awful lot and the 16-55mm is the odd-man out voice-wise.

I took every bit of physical anger and grief out on our yard this afternoon, chopping bit by bit with the loppers at the overgrowth by our back driveway. It’s almost not embarrassing, by comparison. Killing innocent overgrowth is therapeutic. We have quite the pile of brush waiting for haul off. When it’s too big for me to cut, I point and Jared gives it a go.

I gave myself 20 minutes of indulgence in Cheez-its and Costco’s Just Bare spicy chicken tenders after the yard work for supper, giving into the desire to eat my feelings within reason. I made sure I was done around 6:00 PM; I am attempting “intermittent happiness” again low-key.

Gallery Row’s predominantly early 80s playlist put me in a funk of all nights tonight, so I told Jared after sulking a while at home and he said, “1970s. Pull up Chicago. You pick.” “Which one?” I asked. “You’ll know.”

“Saturday in the Park” it was. Jared knows the 1970s is my decade; my Daddy gave me his good taste.

And Jared danced to “Saturday in the Park” in his chair, messing up the lyrics because of course he doesn’t know them verbatim like I do. Emotional co-regulation in real-time.

A little dip because of the time of night. The probably substance-induced authors’ absurdity of “Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?” reminds me that there is so much better music in this world than early 1980s angsty love songs of Generation Jones. Oliver comes out dancing to “Old Days” to put his second dinner plate away, because he requires two suppers these days. My boys have bottomless-pit stomachs.

And the night is better, and I am sleepy and tomorrow is football because of course it is still football season in mid-November. This is Carrollton, after all.