Last night was pretty heavy. "Anxiety attack" might be a fair summary of what happened. Low-intensity dread. Some vitamin D, some 5htp, and two hours of sleep later, I'm awake in bed, recording a dream log, and feeling calmer and much better. If this keeps happening, I may well have a chance to experimentally isolate what actually brings me out of it.

I think one thing I'm taking out of the love I got Sunday was proof positive that, yes, I've definitely still got plenty of buttons to push to bring me out of this self and solitude jag I'm on in my life. I've known that, whenever a new mate comes along, it would feel so good that I know I'd want it when it did, even though I've been forming my life around being single. It's like fatherhood; like a murder pill - the stimulus triggers a change in your motivations without asking you if you want to adopt them. They're latent instincts, buried just under the psyche, kings of olde, invisible until called to arms in their kingdoms' hour of need. I now know how right I was; how prudent it is to leave myself an out when that love calls. This contact wasn't the complete fall into the sea, but it was enough to make me remember. It was a worthy drill.

Another, newer, thing, is that I am indeed less attached to solitude than I was. I got to live a little on the other side of the blossoming of new motivations, to cherish and appreciate how they can sweep me along, and maybe, just maybe, to relinquish some of the bitterness that has secretly characterized some of my journey in recent years. The discerning human conscience knows how to tell the difference between being valued by a facade of constructed persona, an other simulation, and a truly external sovereign. Few things redeem like a gift of touch.