what i hate is

when something feels broken (a relationship, generally speaking, meaning, a conflict has happened) and there seems to be no immediate way to fix it, repair it, make it better.

So I'm stuck there with this broken thing that I need, but I can't fix it without the other person's cooperation.

And given that I'm only just learning how to use my anger properly, I fuck it up all the time, and am constantly having to mend bridges. There's that bridge-mending thing again...

Ok, so this time I think I do have to be the one to suck it up. And you know what helped me get there? Because my far-away friend called and helped me through it! I left a string of brief messages earlier, trying to get unstuck, trying to get enough of the angst out to be able to move on even though my brother's mad at me and won't talk to me (I used another phone that I never use, and when he picked up, I realized he'd been avoiding me. Which gave me the answer to at least one question. The other fear I just blurted out, knowing I might get cut off at any moment: Am I out of the family, then? And he sounded surprised, in spite of his anger, Of course not.)

Anyway. So, between far-away friend and this brief snippet with br'er, I'm able to piece together enough sanity and sense of a future that I can relax a little.

See, this is what most people (who are conflict-avoidant like my family) don't seem to realize: Conflicts are what allow people to work things out. In my view, people who never have conflicts don't have much of a relationship, either.

Which is not to say it should be all fighting all the time, like the stereotype of Italian families - that would be exhausting. But somewhere in the middle, where people aren't afraid to express what they feel, and yet where it's calm at least some of the time, would be nice. But not that forced calm, the false calm like the tension of the water at the top of a sinkhole (another name for a whirpool):

After that aside, the imporant part about conflicts is their resolution. Once again, that ol' mending of bridges.

What I need to seek out is people who take equal responsibility for mending bridges in their relationships with me, so that I can get out of the one-way street feeling of my family:

So what I need to remember is: When I get caught in one of these fugue states, the immobilized, frozen, paralyzed spot where I literally can't move, what I have to do is notice which relationship feels broken, and discover if there's anything I can do about it.

One difficulty I've been encountering is that often this 'freeze' syndrome seems to be pretty indiscriminate, meaning that I can free