Lots of resistance

I'm going to see a friend tonight. It's both business and pleasure. She is dear to me, and I'm really looking forward to several hours of chatting and exploring and just enjoying each other's other's company. She lives in Philadelphia, so we don't see each other often. Once, she lived close and was part of the late stages of Braided Stream. We even worked in the same office for a couple of years---that was so much fun!

She's also going to help me step out of a role that I've held for about two years now. For at least the last year, it's been a poor fit for me. I've tried to get out of it multiple times with little success. Thankfully, my friend is going to step in and take my place while I build/imagine/create a new role that's a much better expression of who I actually am. But I've built up so much agida around this whole deal that I am really going to need her to sit beside me while we walk through all the paperwork together and plan the transfer.

Mechanically, it's probably not going to be that difficult. Emotionally, it will doubtless be a challenge. Having a friend sit with me while I go face-to-face with tasks I really don't want to deal with is an old strategy that I still make use of when I find myself regressing into deep-set patterns of resistance.

It doesn't matter how old I get. My patterns lessen---or maybe my tools get better---but they don't go away.
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So tonight, my friend is gonna sit next to me while we look through all the things I really don't want to look through and plan all the actions I really don't want to take.

It helps, somewhat, that all of this effort will get me out of a role that doesn't fit and closer to a role that does. It helps a little. But mostly, I really, really don't want to do this.

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So, tonight I have really raised the bar for awkward screw ups. Sitting with Jennifer and going through all out paperwork, we discovered a couple of really embarrassing glitches. Just sort of, "Wow, you really did that?" moments. But Jennifer is my friend, and she knows me, and she knows that I have this awkward component to my personality, and she loves me anyway.

So then I get on the phone with a new friend, and everything is great, and then, of course...I thoughtlessly stumble into something awkward. Right at the end, too, just to make it worse. Of course, I apologize. But so what?

So then I get off the phone, sadly sit around with Jennifer, get a rub, take a deep breath, and get over it. Then Jennifer says, "OK, so there's one more thing you did that we really have to deal with tonight. This may be a little emotionally difficult."

You know this is going to be bad.

And she shows me a way in which my inattention to something important really fucked something up for someone who was trying to help me. The two of us just sit there, quietly, while I say to myself, "Is this really possible? Did I actually DO THIS?"

And the answer is yes, I actually did this, and now I have to write a letter of apology for an act of thoughtlessness that occurred IN JUNE, and I didn't even notice it until now, although it probably really fucked up someone's week.

If I could drug myself to sleep and wipe my memory of this evening at this moment, I would totally do it.