It's been a while since I last made one of these journals, but I think now is the perfect time to do so. I'd like to start by saying that since my introduction to Telegram in January, I was able to take the complex thoughts and life developments to specific people and get personal feedback or just support. So the need to write to you all was reduced, but I want to return to this format, at least somewhat, because it allowed me to talk about a lot of what was on my mind without involved parties having the inside scoop; i.e., it's less complicated.

So where do I begin? Let's start with Furvana, my first furry convention!

The week leading up to Furvana, I was a little worried, there were some things up in the air that I didn't have answers to, that being financial aid and if I could get the Friday off for the con. But Wednesday came and financial was kind enough to put my tuition payment on hold until the grants came through! That made my day even better. The next day, I sat down with my instructor to speak with her about my program outcomes and whatnot. It was a nice meeting! After I told her that I was at page 97 of our textbook, she was impressed and said that I could totally take Friday off. Another relief!
For the those first two days of my program, things felt really good. I liked my classmates, my instructors, and the faculty in general. They are all really cool people. I even sat down and chatted with the dean! Things were going to be a-okay.

I'll spare you the play-by-play of the con, but things did not go as planned. I wound up volunteering for 13 hours on Friday after seeing that registration was an hour late to open up. I wasn't able to spend as much time with the friends I wanted to meetup with there, mostly just flagging them down when I saw them and chatting. I saw some people there who had caused me a lot of pain this year and it was hard to see them smile at me as though nothing happened. My nights were emotional, to say the least.
But I met someone at Furvana who is very special to me, and I fell in love. And despite everything that happened, at the con and this entire year, I don't regret a thing; because it brought me there, at that moment, with him. I felt overjoyed, though anxious. But I can say for certain that I went home that weekend feeling great.

Unfortunately, because of the complications with my planning, a couple of my close friends felt left out or jealous, and so I lost them as the work week picked up. It didn't hurt me the way I thought it should, but maybe I just learned to move on from these things over the year. Maybe it was all the things going right in my life at the time that allowed me to not place so much focus on it. I'm sorry to see them go, but it was their decision, you know?

I made plans with this special friend for this weekend and then something jarring came to my attention: One of my friends fell in love with him, too. Or at least, that's how it sounded. We talked Monday night and came to an agreement. But the anxiety started to rear it's ugly head because this special friend hadn't been on telegram for a bit. But once he did, we were able to talk and everything was working wonderfully. My friend's needs were that he wanted 1-on-1 time with our special friend, so we had to come up with a weekend schedule, what days and when one of us would head off so that the other could have their time when there was a crossover. It was taxing for me. But I want this special friend in my life, and if this is how it has to work, then I'll do so.

For Monday and Tuesday, the anxiety was heavy as time ticked by and we hadn't heard from him, but Wednesday and Thursday I was riding on this level plain of satisfaction that I've never been on my entire life. Things were going great for me, it seemed. Friday came, my classwork was finished, and all I had to do was wait until I departed for this special friend's home.
I enjoyed every minute I had with him and saying goodbye Saturday afternoon was very hard. It felt like none of us wanted me to leave, I could see it in all of our expressions. But I stuck to the plan instead of discussing it because I didn't want to make things tense.

When I got home later that afternoon, my world became very lonely and quiet, and the anxiety that was eating me up that week returned. Why was I still feeling this way? Isn't everything okay? As day turned to night, I spoke to my friends fro Central Washington on Discord and talked it out and it calmed my nerves for the time being. But I couldn't stop thinking about him and what I may be missing out on. I reached a point where I knew that this wasn't a passing moment in my life, that this wasn't a fling. and Though I said "i love you" to him that weekend, I never told him how I felt. I was nervous about writing that text because, in my past three relationships where I felt love for my partner, when I opened up like that, they usually went away.

But I wrote it from my heart and out it went. And to my pleasant surprise, the feeling was returned! He wrote a message back in length, and it made me feel so whole and then some. But, despite this reassurance, I still felt the anxiety and I couldn't put my finger on an answer that I was okay with. I watched the new season of peaky blinders and called it a night. When I woke up, I felt it again. I texted him a 'good morning' and asked what was for breakfast, since i had made us breakfast on Saturday. But I didn't hear anything back for a while. Aaaaand then the anxiety came back in force. So I talked with my CW friend again just after I got a message for my now-metamore saying that he was sore, then proceeding to tell me the details of their first night together. And I did not want to hear that. I'm not jealous about it, I had my own fair share, it was just knowing that info and playing it back in my mind that threw me out of whack. But after talking with my friend, I came back. Just in time to head to my meetup in Tacoma.

The meetup went well, but I still hadn't heard from him, and there was this worry in my mind the entire time. None of the strategies i learned for handling depression crossed over into feeling anxiety (that is, feeling too much). Nothing i had read about managing my feelings in polyamory or anxiety in general were helping me ease this strain. I figured out that I was feeling anxious because he and I were unable to talk frequently enough digitally or otherwise, but that it may just be a matter of not being able to talk to others in general. So this meetup was a good way to test that. It kinda worked. It removed half of the worry, that being of loneliness, but I still wanted to hear his voice and so it persisted. I ended up spending the rest of today with a couple of my good friends, but hanging out at their place. And when we were all tired and ready to sleep, we were finally able to talk about it and it helped. Now, I'm not anxious. I know that things are okay.

Being able to identify my anxieties has helped me figure out how to manage them, and better yet, how to communicate them to my partners when the time comes. It's ironic, communicating anxiety about not being able to communicate (as often as it'd be appreciated). So, perhaps half of the struggle is learning how to be on that level plain on my own, because he and my other friends aren't always going to be there. And I won't always have classes or things to do that occupy my mind in a healthy way. My classes, for example.

Last week was amazing! We were mostly doing engineering notation and metric prefixes, and during that time I drew some stuff out on the whiteboards to help my classmates understand DC circuits and how to test them, and it felt good! The last two days were more technical, we finally got into electronic components, starting with resistors. It was refreshing, since before that, we were going over the same electrical principles that I've heard over the last four years. It wasn't hard to understand and it was so interesting for me! I love being at my campus and in my class.

But I still have to go home eventually. And then I'm right back here in my basement quarters, alone, until the day cycle starts again. So my passion/purpose/hobby/career isn't enough to sustain me on it's own, unless I am able to do some hands-on stuff outside of class hours.
Thursday evening, I went to another drawing night and Coonkun and I worked on developing my new fursona, which was amazing! I'm so grateful for his help. And I can't wait to show Kayji to you all when he's done!

So, what have we established? I fell in love, my classes are fulfilling and interesting, I must learn to cope with being away from the ones I love, and talking it out with people helps bring me back down to Earth. It sounds like I have things figured out. . . until the next time I get anxious.
I have no rational reason to feel this way, but I can't control my amygdala. No matter how many times I remind myself that I'm in a great place in my life, I feel like I could lose it all. My program, my connections, and the man I love. And that, my watchers, is the core of my worry. Feeling like I have so much good in my life for once and feeling that it could all crumble if I do something wrong. There's obviously more to this picture than I can condense into a journal, but I feel like this lays it all out pretty well without getting into personal-specifics.