I feel like I am just starting to get a glimpse of the my current self; the alchemical process is starting to coalesce, or maybe I'm recognizing the ingredients. I think I got very off-center for a while, and spent my energy like it was endless and then had neither the time or energy to really see myself. I don't regret it but I feel glad to be beginning this shift. Also pretty intensely scared and nervous because I don't know where my life is going. The only things I feel certain of are that I intend to continue school and I intend to continue spending time with Topaz. Things I feel uncertain of include: my polyness, my sexual identity, my level of community-building, my living situation, my cat caretaking, my Atlantianness... all things that had been stable for at least two years.

I had intended to spend the rest of my life with Kylei without any gaps, but the longer our break goes on the more I realize how lost I had become in the context of our relationship. I am not good at maintaining my center when someone else is off-balance; I compensate without even realizing what I am doing. I had lost part of my self because it didn't work with how we were living; I did this with Abby too, and before that with Arizona. I think if someone doesn't have a passion they center on, and I am passionately connected with them, we just sort of fall into orbiting each other, closer and closer until we collide and break (or until I see that coming and stop the relationship). I need to remember to be centered in myself. It feels like it's sort of naturally happening as I am with Topaz because ze has two very central very intense passions, which combine/conflict to form the path that ze sets intentions around. I feel free to center my life on my own, and I am remembering dreams which had faded to near-nothingness. This is why I have been writing more and making more long-time dreams happen and creating more. This is why I have lost the fear of losing people. Even Topaz -- I cannot imagine not wanting to spend tons of time with zir, but I can imagine myself without zir or anyone else, being okay, being alive, wandering the world and tasting it. I don't feel a horrible deathlike loneliness at the thought of losing all of my people, which was true until very recently. I think I went hungry for such a long time. I'm slowly coming back into focus in my own eyes. I missed me. I am still not back, I still do not feel passionate love for myself. I feel my healthiest state is when I can have a date with myself and feel as sexy and desirable and exciting and nourished and seen as I can when I am with someone external to my perceptions.

Relatedly, something that has only happened with Topaz is that I can feel the reality of us without documentation or external observation. I've realized that one of the ways I establish the real is through being seen, by myself in reflection or by others. I usually need some level of proof; I need photos to look at or words from others, unprompted by myself, in order to believe that I am not making it all up. My connection with Topaz feels more real than possibly anything else I've ever experienced, and I feel like a part of me that has been exhausted with constant searching for reality has come to rest. I still want to write and photograph and share, but I can believe fully without those things. And strangely at the same time dreams and illusions have become more real, and I have less trouble believing in all my own experiences, without needing someone else to say "yes that makes sense" or "yes I feel that too." I feel I am bringing my non-real and my real into a synthesis; I am closer to this than I have been since it was broken when I was a child.