NitN 31 - Two of Cups (Jonathon English Does the Great Work in Relationship)

Jonathon English is fearlessly authentic, dazzlingly intelligent, downright inspiring, and—good for both you and me—incredibly generous with his time and attention. What a validating, engaging and joyous conversation! Enjoy.

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Intro!

You know that feeling when a bathtub is draining and your body is slowly subject to more and more gravity? That feeling of getting heavier? For the last hour it’s been what I’m feeling constantly.

Are you familiar? There’s a sort of dermal physical sensation that goes along with drooping more and more every moment as your buoyancy recedes. It’s an oozing.

23 I think part of it might be a recent run of literal weight gain. I’m the heaviest I’ve been since I put on and then lost the pandemic 40. Just as beery as the freshman 15, but heavier. Fueled by confrontation with your own mortality and with the fragility of society instead of by liberation from your parents’ well-intentioned micromanagement.

21 Just realized the Yerba Mate I rely on has the sugar content of about two cadbury eggs a can. Of course the reason I’m hooked is the caffeine content of about three cups of coffee.

This has got to stop.

Blood sugar spikes mess with cognition, themselves. But sugar is also supposed to cause inflammation, which may exacerbate bipolar mood swings and anxiety, which, along with the equivalent of a gallon of coffee a day, leads me to use more anti-anxiety medication.

The primary effect of the substance, the side effect, and the side effect’s cure are all working together to create this condition of brain fog.

38It occurs to me, as I sit here paralyzed with depression and continually oozing, that my brain fitness has been flagging pretty severely since 2020. More and more often, I can’t find the word I’m looking for. I have increasing difficulty focusing. I can’t do mental math. I have so few memories of the before-times.

I want to blame sugar, but it could also be the gravity of grief that I’m using these stimulants to lift out of.

Which is why, for weeks, I’ve been cultivating gentleness toward myself about the Yerba Mates.

35We lost a pregnancy.
This late, late episode was meant to be my announcement to the Creekmasons that IVF had worked. Four years and more needles than I could count had worked.

Now. It’s not that I expect things to be normal.

I haven’t gotten that cliched moment when I wake up where it briefly didn’t happen.

I’m very aware. All the time. But you might say the other reality—the multiverse dimension where we’re still pregnant—is always just out of reach.

Like having a word on the tip of your tongue that you just can’t bring to mind.

37 And with that veil over me, there’s a quality to my present reality of dull derealization.

I hurt. I am numb. I have energy. I hurt again.

Barrages: these waves of weight.