Last night, I threw my untied knot into a bonfire.

It followed a rectangle of denim with the words “Te Amo” sewed into it.

One of my circles of friends… some of my chosen family… cheered me on.

Today, my parents were coming through town while I was just waking up. I turned down lunch, as I thought Nikki would be making me breakfast. Nope, I had promised her Fleetwood’s famous hippie hash. While getting our food, I ran into my father-in-law, and then (separately, but at the same restaurant) Jody, my mother-in-law. Also, her best friend, who was last in the country to commemorate my grandmother-in-law’s death. I chatted for a bit, and then zipped out of there, as my food and I had already taken quite some time to be united.

Both interactions shocked me, for some reason. Both unsettled me, and triggered my flight instinct. I wanted to run and hide, though I did stay and chat with the in-laws. Something about all of this made me want to hide my face, or feel ashamed, even though I’ve done nothing wrong. How do I relate to Bill now? How do I relate to Jody? To Brandy? To John? To my own parents? To my brother?

How do I look them in the eye when they’re up here for my brithday? How do I feel, and express that I’m feeling, that I haven’t failed? Which, of course, I haven’t.

Of course, writing projects are flourishing, deadlines are being assigned (who thought I’d cheer for deadlines?), and I love my day job. I am in my apartment, I’m not second-guessing whether or not I’ll be there for the semi-long-term, and I dig the place. I’m even mulling over painting. Which, knowing me, will happen three weeks before I move out.

It’s been days since I’ve had the copy of the marriage license. I haven’t filled out the test run of the paperwork yet. Granted, it’s small-scale avoidance, but it’s still there. So, right now, I’m going to go and do that. And I have Nikki backing me up, which makes it somehow… less daunting.

Still scary as hell.

George tells me that I will feel free once those papers are signed. He says that I will feel like a mountain has been lifted off my shoulders.

My mood lows, my emotional troughs, are more frequent than they used to be. It’s hard to admit this, for a plethora of reasons. Escape works, for a short time. Netflix has been a wonderful provider of fictional worlds to escape into. Heroes, Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica, movies… I can go home and not think for two hours. Better yet, I wake up with vague impressions about dreaming about what I watched.

The alternative is waking up dreaming about family, dreaming about her – always with the theme of betrayal – and I, or dreaming about panic.

I haven’t yet dreamed about the new job. I take that as a sign that for once, my job is not a high contributor to the stress in my life.

The companionship and welcome and, most importantly, love, that I’ve found in Nikki helps more than the escape does. It elevates the baseline, so to speak. I can never hit those really low lows. I can still have a trough, and I still think about the stuff that stresses me, but when I start to nosedive, I hit a net instead of the craggy bottom. I can shake myself loose of whatever’s pulling me down, and start the climb up again.

I’m not going to conventions, because of debt. More accurately, I’ve made the choice to pay back debt, even the stuff that springs up and catches me unawares, before I can allow myself my mini-vacations. The point of going to them isn’t to sell books -at- the con. It’s to get your name out there, get a few people to buy them, or get interested in them, and make sure you’re known in the community. If someone recognizes your name, they are much more likely to buy your book.

That said, I’m missing my favorite convention this year, and it’s adding to the low. Add to that the undeniable pattern of me avoiding writing. Yes, I admit it. I am avoiding writing, and I’ve been doing it for a while. I know why, too.

She used to call my novel prophetic. It was a running gag that was sort of a half-joke. Spiritual apocalypses are always attractive to those of us in seeming “counter-cultures,” and so it stuck. It ended up being true, though to say how or why would ruin the ending for those that haven’t read it. Prophecy seems to fulfill itself in the most strange an unexpected ways, eh? Maybe it was self-fulfilling prophecy, in that she read it, and followed it in that way. Who knows?

Much like fear almost drove me away from Nikki, fear is driving me away from writing. It’s making the purple felt notebook (a gift, but a shiny one) into an obelisk that I’m afraid to go up and touch. I’m fairly certain that the notebook may also have the dimensions consisting of a ratio of prime numbers, but my ruler is at home.

Writing is my vent. It’s the release valve for when the steam pressure rises to critical levels. I can release my darker side into the Steven comic (no, Herod is not my dark side). I’m hoping to release my ideas for new beginnings into the upcoming webcomic project. Also, it has robots. That have been asleep for an undetermined amount of time. I haven’t bothered to find out if this is related to my affinity for old computer tech. Adam…. Adam is run by fear. It’s his bread and butter, his english muffin, if you will. So, Adam is where I put my fear. I’m no longer sure what I’m putting into the sequel of my novel, because… well, because of the ending of the first one.

I need to stop being afraid of my writing. I stopped being afraid of being with Nikki by breaking up with her, realizing what I’d done, and being thankful that she took me back. I don’t want to break up with my writing. I’ve taken a long enough break. I need a new tactic.