Jared says I have been less afraid of him this year; that I am making progress.
He says for years in the 2010s to the early 2020s I flinched, as in actually jumped, whenever Jared reached out to touch me.
Jared says it hurt, but he knew it was not him I was reacting to: it was ghosts of the past.
The body keeps score.
And even now, my nervous system is highly wired and worn out.
But I do love my husband, and I am learning to trust the love that he has shown me consistently for 22 years now.
Trust is hard.
Trusting men is harder.
The body keeps score and even with 22 years of careful and tender care, there are confusing outbursts occasionally. It’s hard to remember that my husband is not the enemy sometimes.
And when my nervous system feels short-circuited due to high alert, the best thing I can do is bury my head in Jared’s chest and let him tell me, without me saying a word, “You are safe.”
In fact, when I am at my most distressed, Jared takes off his shirt to hold me, telling me I need the contact of his warm skin.
Jared says, “You are safe,” at the most unexpected times.
The situation is delicate enough that Jared’s incredible employer lets me hang out with him at work whenever it’s practical.
Right now, I am drafting this post from the hallway of the press box while Jared is working with the broadcast kids for the Halloween football game tonight.
Lots of afternoons, when I have been unable to drag myself out of the bed due to despondency, Jared will say, “Come see me,” and when I manage to get cleaned up and out of the house, I just go hang out at his office.
Jared is truly my safe place.
How I got so lucky when that man with the online profile “Maxtheape” sent me a message in early July 2003, I will never know.
I remain convinced that Jared Price saved my life.
Not in the whole chronological sense….I mean, of course I am aware that in general, a year has passed in my life.
But I mean…. it’s been quite the year, in an emotional journey sense.
2025 has been hard.
This has been the year of the financial reckoning. I was burned out and floundering and not doing well mental-health-wise which led me to close down the photography business. But also: the photography business was an unsustainable financial venture, and keeping it open greatly added to our debt every month.
I’ve been through our budget time and again over the months. We’ve used YNAB for years– since 2012– and all this time, I’ve kept track of where our money goes. It’s just that most of the time, I overlooked credit card spending. I was focusing more on the emotional wants and feeling like I needed to spend both to quell the overwhelming terror and urge to figure something out professionally, but also to stuff the overwhelming sense of boredom in my life.
And all that messiness came out in gross overspending.
And so here I am, and it’s the last days of October, and it’s month five of actually attempting to be responsible.
I spent a grand total of $22.39 this month on nonessential fun stuff for myself. That’s major progress. I bought a couple of skeins of yarn and some more antique resin cameos for necklaces and rings.
It’s not enough. Not spending is not enough to clean up this mess.
At this point, if rent were not so astronomical everywhere, if we hadn’t bought our house with a 2.875% interest rate and if the real estate landscape were not pretty atrocious right now, I’d probably be trying to figure out how to get our house on the market, to pay off our debt, because that’s probably going to be the only way out.
Not an option at the moment. We couldn’t afford to live anywhere else.
We need more income. I need a job.
And I’ve sent out tons of applications. I had an interesting offer last week, but the whole operation reeked of shady, and I’ve learned that I have a pretty stellar intuition about people so I said no. It was interesting not in the “this would be a fun job” sense but in the “I’m not sure this is a legal operation” sense.
At the same time as the financial reckoning, I’ve been seriously working on my mental and emotional health.
I’ve been facing some long demons head-on.
It’s not been easy. Progress is not linear.
I went to bed afraid of someone last night and didn’t sleep well, waking up unable to go back to sleep at 3:45 AM this morning which is why I am drafting this post at 5:30 AM.
That’s just my life.
Jared and I have been talking about the what-ifs of life lately.
Like, what if I ever had to live in this house on my own, without him.
And Jared is not sure I could do it, because I am so fearful.
And he’s right– I like to think I wouldn’t have to leave the house to go live with family or someone else, but I don’t even like to turn out the lights in the house for the night by myself.
My fear is that intense, and it’s always worse at night than during the daytime.
In the daytime, it’s manageable.
But at least this morning, I can cry, which is progress.
Because there are times that I’m so emotionally numb– most of the time, actually– that the tears don’t come.
And while trying to clean up the financial front of life, I’ve also been attempting to dissect, at the most very basics of levels, the trauma bonds that have kept me in bondage for most of my adult life, since last December.
It’s been messy, and honestly it’s been a miracle at times that I haven’t landed in a psych ward. That’s all I really care to say about it.
Except and this morning, I am angry, and I feel hurt, and slightly stupid, and I want retribution that will never come.
But, I do know this: Karma is a bitch.
So, I bide my time. And heal what I can, as I can.
So I wrote a hair post the other day, and I didn’t mention that pigtails are the newest hairstyle, just because it’s finally long enough for doing that. This is probably going to be my go-to hairstyle for the Fall 2025 just because it’s been a long time since I could and it gets it off my neck and it’s comfortable when I’m driving or sitting with my head leaned back against the car headrest or the headrest of the recliner.
One thing that was not a thing the last time I had hair long enough to put up in any way, shape or form are hair coils. The Scunci ones in the link are probably going to last me a lifetime and pretty much satisfy all my hair styling up-do type things I will need to do for the foreseeable future. When I don’t put my hair up in pigtails, I’ll usually put it up in a weird little but type thing that I don’t know how to explain in writing but it’s not quite a messy bun– I don’t have enough hair for that– but I don’t worry about whether it’s nice looking or not. But it ends up being cute regardless.
That last photo I posted in the last post, from summer 2021 when I was completely bald….it has been a severe process getting to pigtail-appropriate length. I’ve been a compulsory hair trimmer at home here for years at this point. Luckily, I’ve had a “put the shears down” moment and don’t feel so much like trimming every other week anymore now that the length is more interesting.
In other self-care news, being 46 means that I have to pay attention to my neck because it is becoming wrinkly fast. I’m not doing anything drastic, but I do use Trader Joe’s jojoba oil on it, sparingly, to delay crepey skin. I use the jojoba oil after the shower in the morning and also at night before bed. I use whatever Costco cheaper face Korean liquid treatment stuff is in stock for my face, but I do like the jojoba oil for my neck.
As for the glasses….that’s a thing these days as I age too. I opted for gas permeable hard contact lenses when I got my last eye exam to err on the cheaper side for my contacts. But having used soft contacts literally my whole life to now, it’s been a not-so-smooth transition and now I can’t wait to get home from being out so I can get my contacts out of my eyes. Some days the contacts don’t go in at all.
When I had my eye exam last winter, I got Costco’s optical department to put new lenses in these Warby Parker Holcomb frames I had from years ago. It took a couple of weeks longer than ordering a normal pair, but it was totally worth it.
And also….my thyroid issues or my psych meds one make my eyes drier than they used to be. Which makes the contacts rougher for long wear, too.
Back to skin stuff though…. when I do wear makeup, I only use two things: this Bayfree Multi-Glow Balm is great both as a blush and as an eye shadow. And I keep at least three of these Neutrogena Moistureshine lip gloss tubes around the house at all times.
So anyway, yeah….this is beauty care at age 46 for me.
I’ve been working frantically on this blog’s page design for most of the past 24 hours. No particular reason, other than I felt like it.
But I finally have the design like I like it! The navigation in the header was a bear to work with, and took some hardwiring with code to get it fixed, but I got it.
And, for better or worse, I have decided to opt into monetization: at the bottom of this page you will find a “Buy me a coffee!” button, which takes to either a one-time or a subscription $5 page.
I’ve talked about it in real life a lot but I use Gemini a lot these days…..I have a Google Workspace subscription leftover from my photo days, attached to this domain name, and I consult Gemini a lot since my version doesn’t contribute to the LLM learning.
Gemini doesn’t do my writing for me. It doesn’t even usually help me come up with post ideas. I do run my posts through Gemini for impact feedback, and for help with typos. That’s it.
But…..Gemini helped me design this blog!
I had an old theme that I liked that I had paid for, but I became concerned about updates, etc. and security issues. I switched to the generic Twenty Twenty Five theme for WordPress probably back in March or April.
But….that theme used a font that I liked so much that I hunted down the font and bought it to use with that previous theme in other places that weren’t licensed by the theme. So I had the font available, and that font is what is powering my current header.
The color choice for the header though…..that’s a nod back to the blogging days of olden times. I came across a theme I liked using that color as a secondary color probably back in 2012 or 2013 or so. The really old days of blogging when I bought new themes like every other day, just because (I know, I know).
That shade of pink though, it stuck with me.
But then in March or April, when I decided to switch to Twenty Twenty Five, I knew I had to have help with the secondary colors.
So, I fed Gemini the original pink shade hex values, and Gemini is the one that came up with the hex value for the bluish sage of the navigation header and links in my design.
Gemini helped me suss out where the email subscribe button should go, which order the social media icons should be in, and where the “Buy me a coffee!” button should go.
And, I have to say, I like this design pretty much as well as any design I have ever had for a website.
Gemini even helped me tailor the language on Privacy Policy page.
When I had trouble configuring the colors in the header, Gemini helped me figure out the code I needed to add to the “Additional CSS” box.
This post is about the design of the blog, but someday I’ll write about other things Gemini helps me do– it’s a lot.
