Briannah

​I totally confess it's so frustrating to realize the changes in my sexuality and have gone on a massive girl pron spree trying to rekindle the feelings stronger in me so that if Nikki's needs change I can try to meet them. Then I realize no one can rewire this, and I feel stupid, and then do it again. It's dumb in my head sometimes. LOL

Me too. That was insane. And we it wasn't like there was much choice or time to shop around for a better price! "I do this operation or she dies a horrible starvation death if she doesn't burst the intestine and die from septicemia first" I remember that part, that was scary enough that it cut through the drug haze.

Thank you all for the support and kindness. I was terrified that being that open about the darker side of what is going on inside me right now would overshadow the lighter side. Both make me up. I am struggling and at the same time I am completely committed to making this work as best I can for Nikki and for myself. I have a lot of fear, and I have a lot of strength. I think in a lot of ways I have entered a completely new relationship. Nikki IS different already. There is no hiding or presentation of behaviors for my benefit, and things have changed for me significantly. But these changes have not been unwelcome either. I'm just very aware that there are places I can't follow in this, and that is terrifying to me that I might let Nikki down and break his heart as we go forward. But It might never happen either, and I'll always be able to live up to everything he wants from me like I am right now. I don't get a crystal ball here. Karen, we did not spend a lot, as Nikki talked about the weight. And I wanted to be sure that this is going to remain a permanent thing vs. the cyclical things it's been before spending big money. Just like I wait to make sure each stage of my weight loss isn't a temporary flux before I drop a couple hundred on new clothes or whatever else I need. We talked it over and once he's been through therapy and sorted out what he needs emotionally and physically, then we'll invest in more permanent things. For the love of god without the creepy plasticy edges. FOr the record, the plastic is bothering me just as much on the chicken cutlet thing he's got me wearing (and he's right, I do actually FIT into a single bra now instead of choosing which side of me fits). He might have caught me trying to steal a silicon real feel marital aid to stuff in my bra today. Thank you so much Bluemoon. I"m trying to be as open and me as I can be in written format so as to not only support him, but also because I really really like the people I have met here and want to forge real and lasting freindships. Your voices are wonderful, and I enjoy getting to experience them so much.

I sowwy. I exploded.

I have been very frank with Nikki about what i can embrace and what I can't. I think it's a crossroads of people's needs clashing. It's like no one really wants a gay or lesbian person to be forced into a hetero relationship in anyway, we accept that sexuality isn't a choice. So if we accept that our sexuality is not an easily made choice, but a complex result of our biological and life experiences for lesbian women and gay men, then we also have to accept that this is true for heterosexual me and women too, as well as the only person truly getting a choice to any degree are the inherently bisexual. SO....now you have a probably heterosexual woman in a long term relationship with their partner in your example suddenly in a lesbian relationship, there is no way it's fair to expect her to be able to rewire her sexuality, but absolutely fair to expect her to treat her partner with dignity and respect after giving her a freakout period which Nikki wisely stayed outta my way during, adn I explain why below. And this is the heart of my resistance to hrt for Nikki. Even when I was more actively bisexual in my physical responces, Nikki as a woman would not have hit the scales. I'm having to really concentrate on being sexual with him in dress. That is disorienting for me. Sexuality is the time you let go, not the time you put on a complicated mental, emotional, and physical performance. I'm working with him to teach him how to make it less disorienting for me, for example, since he gets an emotional reaction from me interacting with the breast forms I do this, but to me they are tactily weird. They don't FEEL right, from the plasticy weirdness on the outside to the way they move. So I told him he needs to not just stand there and smile vaguely at me, he needs to perform as if he was feeling it so that my psyche can react to that. Without him putting in that effort, it feels like playacting and kind of horrible. Not real. My sexuality is focused on what i can do to my partners, the physical feelings that I can bring them and their reactions to me. It always has been. I can't help that about myself more than a gay man can help responding to men that he finds attractive. So I can give him the emotional behavior he needs like this that he wasn't getting before, and he can still give me the physical connection that I"m not ashamed to admit I need also. The things come off, and the sex is fantastic. So it seems like a simple solution for us would be transition, right? Then it would be real and working? Not so much. I have had sex with women, and relationships. I almost permanently stayed in a committed three way with a married couple and had sex equally with both, thing Anita Blake with Micah and Nathaniel with one man and two women instead, and it functioned almost like that, but there wasn't enough common ground for me to really be happy even though the warm fuzzies where there. But this is where it gets really complicated. I have rather specific criteria for my ability to be intimate with other women, and Nikki as a woman hits zero of them, emotionally or physically. I can't help those criteria, they are not random whims or choices. But Nikki as a man has always pushed all my buttons in both arenas. And culturally we like to pretend sex isn't important in a marriage. The messages to wait for marriage, the implication that those who don't deserve whatever illnesses or pregnancies come to them, the downlooking at single mothers, there is a strong cultural sex bias that pretends that sexuality is not a HUGE factor in marriage. And yet sexual incompatibility is a huge factor in many divorces. And cis spouses of both genders who married someone without knowing before and were presented with a certain reality, are suddenly in a position where they have to choose between vows and their own sexual and emotional needs. No one wants to hurt their partners, and I fully believe everyone must do what they need to to be happy. However, the reality is that these partners do get hurt. I'm still working through the conflict between Nikki not allowing me to lie to him or compartmentalize me out of the emotional areas of my life, and finding out that he did that to me for 18 years. This started before we married, and he did actively lie to me. That has an effect. I chose to work through that and continue to do so, but I would be lying if I didn't freely admit this has me spiraling around in my head. I chose to do my best to work through this with him because we are good together, and I truly love him. But it was unfair for him to keep a secret this big, especially under the 'we have to be fully honest with each other to make this work' emotional umbrella he put us in. This is not blame, this is frank what is happening to Bree in this time period talk. Nikki is not always awesome, he has deep flaws like everyone else. But this is our reality, so I'm trying to navigate it. And there is no such thing as one person happy in a marriage. Transition is absolutely freedom for the person suffering gender disphoria. I understand that. However, I also understand what it means to watch the person you love suddenly admit a huge part of it was an act, cover, deception, or misery for them, however it presented. This forces us to question our sexual worth, whether we want to or not. "Why aren't I enough to make him happy? He told me for almost two decades I was!". There is a lot of pain. But just as we would never force a heterosexual woman into a relationship with a lesbian woman, we have to realize that is what transition does to many wives. Some can adapt fully. Some like me can go 2/3s of the way. Some partial like what Emma spoke of with her wife. But these are women who are having to rewrite their entire emotional and sexual scripts with this. And we are given really contradictory information. We read threads about how the tg person is the same perosn before and after, and yet behavior changes. There is a sudden euphoria that they can be themselves. So if they couldn't be themselves, and nothing will change in who they are, why is there a need to change then? (I'm not arguing that anyone should not transition, I'm explaining my confusion). But I understand that people DO need to transition, then therefore, perhaps aren't fully aware of how much changes to us. Maybe my understanding of hrt is flawed, but as I understand it there is a second puberty, with all that entails. I went through puberty, HUGE emoitional and mental changes as well as physical. Our very thinking is affected by our bodies as well as our life experiences. For the transitioning spouse, this is freedom. For the other spouse, this is your life mate turning into someone you don't know. Add your sexual orientation to that, and it can get really messy. I don't know what will happen if Nikki realizes this isn't enough to make him happy and me happy together. I can't make promises about that, it's not more fair to make me promise to stay in a marriage that is emotionally and physically totally different for his needs than it is for me to tell him he can't transition for mine. I'm doing well, I really am. I have not told a single lie about my feelings here. There is just a really painful side to all this too that I"m working through. How much change and hurt is too much for a marraige to survive? Each one has to decide seperately. But it really helps to be here because I have a real sense that you all understand the changes I'm encourntering and can guide me with the practical and physical, but you all can also understand my side of the Bree and Nikki story too. That it's like everything in life, all about trying to balance two people's needs in the emotional, mental, and phsyical. I can't even imagine how I would be feeling if I"d never even wanted to, let alone had, sex with another woman. That gives me a sort of hope that a purely strait life experience put into this wouldn't have I guess. I guess ultimately it will only change in cases where the spouse has latent or outright bisexual feelings. Imagine how trapped it feels to be in a body that doesn't match your inner truth, and then realize it feels the same for us when our life partner suddenly changes and then expects us to magically morph our sexuality to suit them. Sometimes two people can be happy together, sometimes two people can only be happy apart. It's a sad reality, but either it's true that our sexuality is hard wired and not a choice, or it's not. I'm sorry that was a disorganized novel, but I"m trying to be as open as I can to the question asked.

Today is a very laid back day. We stopped in at the doctors office to follow up on my lab work since I didn't get the call that the order was put in (The computers were dead at our doctors the day we went, my prescription made it the pharmacy but Nikki's didn't, they were struggling so hard) and no one called like they said to tell me I could go in whenever. And sure enough the order wasn't in the computer, so the receptionist left a note for our doctor to enter it. And follow up making sure Nikki's referral got through the computer craziness. Because after crash coursing on the transgender experience, I also was crash coursing on transgender issues, and it's really scary. Knowing Nikki suffers depression and has anxiety attacks, it makes me really scared with him not being in counseling to help him overcome those. He doesn't exhibit any signs that he's a danger to himself, but I have a really paranoid brain and I just get flat out scared of things sometimes. Then we had lunch, and now the best part has started. Lounging around the house lazily. Not going outside into the cold. It is so cold outside that when I left work I actually started crying, my eyes just filled up and flowed over because I was so cold. That was a WEIRD moment. I dream of palm trees and beaches in Florida, but with our current situation that's really not practical. But we dream, right? I don't even know why I love palm trees so much, they just make me happy as long as they are actual trees and not creepy neon plastic ones. This week is beginning to make me feel like I have some kind of weird feelings about plastic in general. Nikki is still in an up mood, and if it's just from the relief of not having to keep secrets from me anymore like a sort of honeymoon phase, I'll take it. Please good mood last for him as long as it takes to get into the counselor! I do like seeing Nikki happy. Tonight we plan to take the mmo raid scene in our guild by storm, we missed the last couple of weeks on the nights Nikki is working on collecting items to make a weapon because we were doing so much talking and sorting out and redefining our marriage. I'm now of the opinion that everyone should have a sit down every five to ten years and intensely talk about how the marriage is working and what they want from it. This redefining period has really helped us bridge a lot of issues for both of us and improve the overall experience of living in it for both of us. I'm so grateful that I have a really adaptive personality in general, and was able to be what Nikki needed once he'd given me the space to absorb and wrap my head around it. In our early years Nikki always needed to have every problem solved RIGHT NOW and my brain just doesn't work like that. I need time to absorb the issue, and even identify what my feelings about it ARE let along be able to articulate them and express concerns that can be 'solved'. Usually between 1 hour and three days, depending on how complicated the subject is. There are some things I can't adapt to. I have found the line between being able to adapt to a new thing and knowing I don't want to be part of a thing. I was in a relationship with a really nice man, it was a newish relationship, and he was up front with me that he was a big participant in the adult baby world and I needed to know if we were going to persue spending any more time together. He gave me resources to see and understand what it was. I took a few days and looked at all of them, and I understand it intellectually, but I couldn't participate. I had a very strong 'I did my trenches in the diaper wars years ago' emotional reaction, and wasn't sad that they were gone. I couldn't imagine my life centered around a perpetual infant-parent interaction, even though I could understand the need for nurturing that people who do participate have. So I told him honestly I couldn't participate and while I really liked him it was clear I was the wrong person for him, and we parted on good terms. That's how I know Nikki's reality is something that I"m not playing with because it's new and I"m trying to hold on to what we have at any costs. I know the difference between trying to force myself to fit and realizing a new thing is okay and I just have to work on making some adjustments. Somewhere after that marriage I let nearly kill me I learned to finally have a strong sense of self, and who I am, and what I can touch and what I can only intellectually understand. That is making this period relatively easy for me. So is the normalization that occurred from my Rocky Horror and anime convention periods of seeing men in full women's dress all over the place. Which ties into something I posted on the forums, exposure is a huge factor in acceptance, or in some cases at least respect. I respect ex boy and his choices, even if I couldn't join him, because he exposed me in a positive way that let me understand.

On the job front, I"m also in that "I hate this place and have a six to twelve month exit strategy in place. I fully understand your feelings! What i do is just remind myself when I'm there that I after i get x amount of things done I can go home and resume the things that matter to me in life, that getting through this period of being in the place I hate so strongly is setting Nikki and I up for a time when I never have to go there again. I find what helps me is keeping my mind firmly on the end prize, but your mileage may vary. Everyone's mind is different! Mentally chanting "I'm on the road outta here!" is so satisfying though!

Thank you for the guidance! That plastic outercasing really threw me, obviously I know very little about breast forms. With my family history it's probably good I learn about these things in general in addition specifically to Nikki. Who looks adorable in them, that smile. He gets away with so much on that smile. Like tickling me then doing that smile to try to get outta retaliation. That one doesn't work so much, I am vengeful with tickling. LOL

Emma, I think I'm actually weirded out worse by the evener he put on me. It feels really like I put a piece of meat in a biggie on. Our doctor was impressed at how much effort I put into reading what the counselor we picked is experienced in, but I know I'm horrifically complicated, and I needed a doctor who understood a wide variety, and Nikki is a lot like me. I actually was kept on by my therapist who usually worked with just teens into my early twenties when I moved here because she was actually helping me and didn't want to risk setting me back by switching me to a different doctor. I can't make Nikki well, but I can try to find him the tools he needs to get well himself and help him try to find that health again and support him on the bad days and the good days that will come. Just like he does for me.

So the new full prosthetic breast forms Nikki and I picked out arrived. Visually, they're perfect. But I think I just got hit in the face with expectation vs. reality. I was expecting totally different tactile feel. Think...um....silicone real feel marital aids. The plastic on the outer edges weirds me out. Both in the one he got me to wear so I actually fit properly into a bra and his. I'll adjust, but really, what is with the creepy plastic? Wouldn't people, both those who don't have their own or those who lost them, want something that feels more ... real? I'm not repulsed, I'm not having any sort of backslide or backing away. This is purely a I think everyone deserves better boobs feeling I guess. And I am worried again that the plastic outer coating will trigger the excema on mine. I think I will have to acquire a square of silk or something to wrap it in. But Nikki is wandering around the house, and I encouraged him to dress up fully and enjoy it. So I think he's at least fully happy with them, and with me, and for that internet, bring on all the plastic you want. I can face it! *whispers* But if anyone knows a place to get nice touchable ones since I know he wants me to when his weight drops more (he's been working really hard at it) do please send a link my way.

I hope you have a healthy, safe surgical experience with no complications! I"m so sorry you can't share with your family, I know what that is like and how sometimes it's really h hard not to wish you had a family that actally cared. *Hugs* I made a new family along the way, and I wish you all the joys and love a family by choice can bring to you also!

I wish you the best experiences of life and joy and kindness possible! And for the less best, remind them that freedom really means that, and we all have the freedom to be whatever makes us happy and feeling like ourselves, not just the freedom to conform to everyone else! I find that tactic works quite often.

I went to the zoo Friday with Nikki, and he literally had to cover my eyes and walk me to the baby galapaggos tortoises so I couldnt' see the python on one side or the anaconda on the other. I have no idea when our zoo got an anaconda, but there might have been a freakout. *blush* Thank goodness Nikki takes care of me. LOL

I'm glad I make your world okay the way you right mine when it's all spiraling around me and I can't handle it. And I'm glad you like the boobs. I'm a little weirded out yeah, they aren't what I was expecting, which was something more like...silicone and soft and the plastic on the outside confuses me texturally and if it's a shipping thing or an actual casing. But I'm getting used to it and willing to keep poking at it. So be my kitten on days you need to, and days you just want to, and be my dinosaur on days you need to, and days you just want to. I'm good with this. We're good together. But um....at some point I'm going to stop feeling like this thing you got me for my bra issues is going to stop feeling like a piece of meat stuffed in my bra yeah? Because that is weirding me out big time.

I'm so happy to hear that you are doing well and found a doctor that is actually helping! And by the way, you are so much braver than I am, if I get within 100 feet of a garter snake I lose my marbles. I wish you a full recovery, and that is a great pic!

Porbably not, I'm demonic when my hands are on water ballons. Something about them....

Am having a really shaky morning. It's hard when a friend has gone somewhere you can't follow. I miss him so much already. He was a beautiful person who readily opened the window for me to his part of the world and shared his culture and that soft Scottish brogue. I felt better when Nikki was home, but alone it hits harder and there are no hugs. Four more hours and I can get my hugs. This really hurts. And people saying internet friends shouldn't hurt this bad when they're gone piss me off. Friendship is friendship. It doesn't matter that we never sat in the same room, it matters that he told me Scottish tales and comforted me when I had a bad day and shared a snark with me about someone we found equally irritating and all the other little details of friendship. I had a talk today with one of our joint best friends, who shares a trauma experience with Nikki, and invited us to her home this weekend to open that box together with him (and me, I'm invited to this but said I would stay home if either or both preferred, but apparently I give good hug). He's still shy about telling people, so he asked me to talk it over with her, so I just got done telling her the story (From my chronological point of view, since I"m shaky on Nikki's timetable, but it's getting clearer as we go). One of the reasons she's such a great friend is she instantly saw both our points of view, how they dovetail and how they click, and offered me some advice on how to deal with my often unstable emotions. She was there the time someone I had let really close to me hurt me badly, and saw the emotionally spirally effect i go into that poor NIkki had to live with while I sorted it out. And he was a victim in that too, it was actually him ex-friend lashed out against without warning. Nikki wanted her to know before so that he could speak freely about how all tangled up it is, and she's wonderfully non-judgmental in all things and supportive of us both just like the wonderful people here. But it's his first face to face talk with someone other than me about this, that has to be big for him. Todays Good Mindset: I had a wonderful friend. It doesn't hurt like this if it wasn't amazing. Today's Stupid fear: That my stomach will flip out on me. It feels shaky, and I hate feeling sick, and it freaks Nikki out that I'm in immediate need of surgery again these days. But my stomach responds hard to my emotion and feels swirly. Work with me stomach! Let's not get sick at work, okay? At least til we get home? Please?

I'm sorry, I need a few days to digest. You are the one who taught me I can't keep secrets in a marriage or tell white lies to you, and that hit hard to find out you'd promised me no secrets and there was this big one, but I mostly understand now. Fear is strong. Thank you for giving me the time to sort out the anger and trust issues you hit before we really talked a lot so that I was able to talk and really hear you and not be wigged out by the issues you'd poked at. I know the first few days i was quiet and weird and in my head a lot. I needed that time to think through all that and what questions I wanted to ask. You are very kind to leave out my emotional meltdown in the middle of the closet nearly derailing everything. At least I didn't find out about his passing til after vacation where we were really working on everything between us. And as usual you were awesome at the comfort thing. I'm really really glad you liked the necklace. It sparkled at me and reminded me so strongly of the things Grandpa used to give me, that I knew you had to have one too. Those sorts of things remind me of that unconditional love and amazing grace that my grandpa had. I'm sorry works sucks. And for the record, I have a thing about water balloons. I have zero destructive feelings towards the breast forms, it's just water balloons make me craving throwing them and watching them explode. Nikki has been expecially nice to me so I'll at least let him turn on the bathroom space heater and get in the shower before I throw them at him. Honest!

Thank you so much! Nikki can be really hard to read sometimes, he's always been so shy even I Have trouble dragging the real Nikki out where I can see. I'm gonna kill someone if those breast forms don't come soon, he's so excited to have them and I want to see the smile. Squirrels scare me now. When we lived in REALLY SMALL TOWN (astonishingly small, I swear it was like five long streets by 11 parallel short streets) there was a squirrel that would attack us outside our apartment with rocks or ice balls. Then there was the one at a different apartment that would scrabble at the window trying to bite me while I was in my computer chair by the window. We have one here that chases our dog and scares her witless. Squirrels are scary! LOL I'm just as lucky to have Nikki. He was in the middle of the closet when I got a tweet that a good mmo friend of mine has passed, and I had a total breakdown and closet work had to halt and he put me back together. I knew he was sick, but it never makes it any better. My grumpy Scottish Dwarf is gone, and my heart is broken for a grieving period. Nikki is wonderful about making me feel better when I'm broken. He's also wonderful at dealing with me when my add is acting up, or the dismorphia, and he doesn't mind that I'm really messed up some days, he tells me I'm his perfect turtle anyway. And when my dad called me stupid on Facebook, he went into crazy I'm going to kill you if you talk to her like that mode. He's kind of amazing, he can hide behind me when the world is hurting him and let me defend him, and then can switch to defense mode and protect me when I'm in trouble. I think I'd be on the floor still right now if not for him.

Feel whatever you feel! This is your life, and you're right to your feelings! Saying to someone 'you're too sensitive' is really saying 'I can't be bothered atually behaving like a decent person and respecting others, or taking responsibility for my poor behavior, so I'll blame you so that i don't have to feel bad'. The only person who can determine when sensitivity is a problem is the person feeling it. Have a hug from me. EVERYONE is affected by what they wear. Males and females alike, and for everyone it's a different degree. For me it's a mild mood changer, I suspect now that for Nikki it's a much bigger thing. Neither of us is abnormal, just differently responsive. Enjoy those dresses! I'll cheer you on! I'm scared too. But that's okay. Fear is a survival instinct, but the modern world seems to forget that. It's okay to be scared, it's mental purpose is to make us be careful and aware of dangers around us. Only you can know if fear is ruling your life, or enhancing it, and only you can know when too scared isn't okay. I found for me, sharing the scared helps! If it helps you, you can always share it with me. Mods bloody well do cry. I won't pretend I don't feel a pressure to be 'professional and fair' in places I've had the pleasure/obligation to mod, but you still get to be yourself! There is no should in feelings. We feel what we feel. Then we have to decide what to do with those feelings. But there is no one in the world who can emotion on demand, even actors have to work for it. Don't ever let anyone make you feel bad for having an amazing, complicated, confusing organ we call brains. Brains are a lot of work. They do things we will never consciously understand. THey absorb everything, and react to all that information. None of us control them, they control us because they are what makes us. Walk whatever road you choose, feel however about it you choose, and I'm just happy I have this chance to know you and become friends!

EmmaSweet suggested I start a blog, and I think she has a point. And never ask people for advice if you're not willing to try it! So here I am, sorting out a lot of changes in my life. So today, it's time to tackle a joint issue we both share. Hoarding. We're not going to show up on a tv show or anything, it's not the dramatically bad. However, it runs in my family on both sides. My mother is a hoarder, and getting worse as she ages. And my father's mother was nearly tv show ready except that she managed to keep it mostly out of the living room and kitchen areas. But every other room in the house was filled with stuff. And I mean filled, there was a tiny aisle to walk through. And you literally risked your life going into the attic, those piles were not stable. So I noticed while I was going through my closet looking for things that were worth sharing (a lot of my clothes needed to be thrown out, holes/stains, but there were a lot of good pieces Nikki actually liked), my eyes fell on the shelving in the back. FIlled with boxes. That some of them I think I packed to move in with Nikki when I spent the first year in EXTREMELY TINY TOWN and we accidentally ended up living next to the KKK dudes, which was a problem since our son is biracial black/white. Yeah, that was fun. Nikki agreed to take us back to the larger town I had been living in for offspring's safety even though he was scared to leave the familiar small town he did it for us, and I think really enjoyed it. I"m sorry, I ramble a lot. The add makes my brain go from topic to topic. So I've seen that hoarding is not a sudden behavior, but a long slow buildup just like the junk. So it's time to deal with this boxes, determine if things in there that I haven't thought about wanting for fifteen or so years are really worth keeping, and if they are but not worth dispaying, then into rubbermaid totes and the basement. There is a practical side to living with Nikki's newly open reality, he literally has two wardrobes. It's a really good thing he's into sharing! I think I have half a wardrobe that currently fits/functions. But he has a LOT of clothing. Including eleventy billion tshirts from his job, they LOVE to tshirt people, it's actually kinda creepy how many tshirts come home from work with him. I threatened to make them into a flag once and hang it from the roof. So after work, we are tackling the closet. Together. So it doesn't eat anyone. Although I"ll probably be the one in the bowels of it on the basis that i"m shorter and it's a slanted closet. For once my height works in my favor! But he'll have to scrunch for heavy stuff. After getting my abdominal hernia fixed when I incarcerated it last summer (man, I scared my poor Nikki, they were talking about me dying if i didn't get that fixed right away) I either pulled it partically back open or ripped a new one just above it. It's more practical to lose weight and then get it fixed at this point, so heavy lifting is out. It's why we have a rowing machine, it's the only thing that is both strength/cardio that will help me lose weight at all, every other machine is one or the other. But most importantly, after Nikki put in a serious research binge, it's safe for me to use with my hernia issue. It won't encourage another incarceration event (where I basically caught six - eight inches of intestine, but luckily felt sick and Nikki got me help so fast I didn't actually injure my inner bits) or force it to tear open more. I feel loved, he put so much effort into finding me something that will work and is safe. I repeat that to myself as I row and fight my inherently lazy nature wondering why I'm torturing my body voluntarily. Today's Good mindset: Nikki and I can do anything working together. We're strong and we will weather whatever happens to us, internally and externally. Today's Stupid Fear: I'm intruding on Nikki's private world and don't belong, even though he says it feels supportive and connective to him that I am so involved. And the squirrel staring at me through the window wants to eat me.