release.

At the top of my awakening, a casual relationship with an acquaintance moved into a magical and mental requirement for me to continue my romantic quest. Entering my preparation space, this seemly causal relationship allowed us to reacquaint ourselves with each other through the shared joy of cooking and night owl sleep patterns into coven buddies. I value the platonic pairing with this witch throughout my awakening as their companionship offered a physical touchstone in my process which reminded me that I am not alone, my sanity is not in question, that the deities exist in a truer sense than our current religious practices acknowledge, and that it is my mindset on the physical and psychic awareness would be expanding. I value having a physical relationship partly for the timing of its development and am averse to seeing it reach a coerced conclusion.

As I embrace my god-touched destiny, mentally preparing myself for the loss of friends that touch my life is going to become commonplace practice.

I am openly okay with losing co-workers. I enter workplaces knowing that friendships acquired in this realm are tied to the terms of our employment. I do not seek employment hoping to acquire friendships as I see the terms of engagement skirt too close to willingly entering a Greek-letter organization in some aspect. I have witnessed members of those social groups deteriorate shortly after graduation despite the promise of support in work outside the college grounds and the ‘questionable’ initiation process to acquire entry into them. One can equate the relationships established within the workplace to summer camp- over once the fall leaves begin to change the color of the trees.

Someone made the keen observation that the majority of my relationships are established or attached to fixed spaces that would benefit from a non-fraternization policy: school, or work- either paid or volunteer. Most of my adult life has hinged on these lifeline spaces for overlapping sources- a pay check and social interactions. As a result, I have not dedicated any time to establish relationships outside these spaces. When given the time to pursue relationships, romantic or platonic, I have been nudged into the organizing role thus negating my enjoyment of the social gatherings in a social capacity. My source to platonic friendships have originated within the volunteer or activist community space over the past decade. Tsunami is openly thankful that COVID19 has accelerated the severing of these relationships with the closure or elimination of the communal spaces that permitted these interactions to exist in the first place.

But now, I have to let go of toxic personal relationships with both long-term friends and family members. Many of my family have distanced themselves from me as a prelude to my acquision of a higher education, traveling to other continents or not watching TV. Individuals in these mindsets interact with me from the mental space that I looked into opportunities to obtain these experiences as a way to distinguish myself from my family. My choice to achieve these personal accolades already place me in a category of my own; yet, my personal preference when seeking out these opportunities was to openly encourage my circles to embark on the journey with me. I openly discussed my efforts in the hope one would find the process engaging enough to just try with me.

I took active effort to pursue supportive assistance for my mother in the post-traumatic recovery of her own assencions. It took me some time to find out such avenues existed but I did not hoard the knowledge once I stumbled across it. I spent years in my early twenties looking for groups that would allow her to tease out her concerns and in time, invite the family into her healing process so our collective damage can be acknowledged and begin a slow draining of the toxic anxiety that has crusted over the experiences within the process. It has been an open struggle that the family opted to ‘dump’ on my head since my efforts were parroted by my mother without doing anything with the knowledge. In my own awakening, my family was not a part of my recovery process. Yes, they allowed me a place to stay but in my mental state, there was nothing offered but blank stares or what are my next steps like when I chose to study abroad for a semester.

Is my lack of friendships that last beyond my terms of employment conflated with my family’s repeated choice to respond to my social/economic advances or is it a conditioned response that comes from my upbringing? I look at my family and their methods of introducing new people to their circles, the people they maintain as personal legacy and the fond recollections of these relationships’ origin stories. My ability to make friends outside of pre-set spaces is not ingrained but the onward struggle based on my need for an income and outlets that advance my professional development in some aspect. If I chose to be a figurative ‘slave’ to the paper as my family has chosen to become with factory positions, my weekends would be filled with the emotional exhaustion of long hours just to stay in place.

So as I moved to the West Coast and COVID forces people to actively seek out individuals in their cell phones or emails, I have observed the erradication of several people along with my personal relationship with social media platforms. I entered 2019 with a goal to make a major change that required me to lose my neighbors, my home and its creature comforts, another collection of jobs and in time, my first love. It is not like losing a love has not occurred before but this one, I am not allowed to let go of. Learning about it helped me let go of my former love with my pencil in. I reached closure in that relationship in 2017 so its severing has been swift. The stains of it have been worn out in a sense and while we exchange pleasantries on occasion, we are not committing to maintaining a friendship.

With tsunami, I have to think about the race of my friends. Being in his city, I notice a significant shift in cultural relations throughout my everyday that are restricted to certain communities in my state. As a result, my friendliness with the racial majority is looked at askance- am i looking to emulate them through assimilation or am I looking to obtain their token approval? It is not something I had to consider being openly casted out of my own racial community for wanting to be educated. That is something I hope to rebuild- my relationship with education within my own community. The open distain of my acquiring an education marking me as a villain to my community is a nuisance to me that has been a brusque barrier between me and others that view education acquision as a part of assimilation leading leading into possible genterfication practices or compliance.

I have never looked at the races of my friends as an element to consider. I have been fortunate to not have these people willing to developed long lasting relationship. I look at my first foray into biracial encounters and know to hesitate in enjoying the racial majority in that space. It does not stop me from allowing them to earn the title of friend so much as loosely pin it to them until they earn it in a sense. But when it comes to people that have earned my admiration in the role model space, releasing that blind admiration is akin to losing a fandom.

I have openly admired several women whose personal achievements make me strive to be a better me. One of these relationships quickly entered the realm of fandom for me and while I enjoy the open objectification fangirling puts on this person, their lack of celebrity irriates tsunami. I have not discussed his distaste of my fandom needs in this capacity yet considering things for tsunami is something that vacilates from bothersome, eye-opening to establishing a level of compliance. Not sure if tsunami’s comfort is worth courting in this space or if we need to review our personal relationships with fandom before moving forward in this observation. But acknowledging that my space in this role model’s mind is a fangirl that does not look to leave that space may come to a point I merely can not support the effort fangirling entails as I move into a new relationship.

The deities have all but ensured tsunami and I start a healthy relationship this year in some capacity. As a result, our personal relationships with singleness will be a release project. I have more of a problem with leaving this space since my single routines have been establish more than my relationship practices. It is something I have opened poured over in these essays- my ideals in what makes a relationship worth being in and the time commitments to make romantic endeavors worthy of the space they take up in one’s mental space. I do not mind leaving singlehood behind but not knowing how to be in a life long relationship will be a learning process for all parties involved. Being with tsunami means being married, having a child and developing a ongoing practice of encountering family members beyond the major holidays.

My relationship with my writing has been recently rediscovered and while I am reluctant to see it slow, my journaling is something I do not wish to lose anymore. In order to get through my assension, I needed to part ways with a lot of relationships, a myriad of material possesions and my personal trajectory of dying at my desk in a four year college refusing to retire from my tenured position. In some ways, my passionate goals to die fabulous but alone have been tossed on the rubbish heap ready for the compost bin. Hopefully someone else will wash them off and enjoy them. I am just waiting to start on the new batch of long term plans that include a romantic relationship.