I had a moment yesterday. Feelings of loneliness and despair began to well up seemingly out of “nowhere”. It wasn’t “nowhere”, of course, these are troubling, baffling times for ethical compassionate people who want (and work) to see good in the world. I took a moment to shed some private tears and regain my balance, to self-soothe, and step back from thoughts of things I can’t influence directly or change in any practical immediate way.
“Breathe, exhale, relax.” I reminded myself. It helped and the evening moved on.
There’s still blue sky overhead.
If you’re hurting and struggling with the strange terrible times we’re in, you’re not alone, I promise you. Be kind. Be considerate. Be your best self in spite of seeming to be surrounded by a world of monsters. Look with scorn on terrible people, but don’t let them transform you. Don’t become the thing you find detestable. Don’t let the bad acts and cruelty of the world make you cruel, yourself. Resist the poor choices your own anger and fear nudge you towards and stand firm on your resolve and your convictions. Be the person you most want to be, not whatever facsimile of humanity it may seem that you are expected or encouraged to become by circumstances, systems, or corrupt individuals. Be honest. Be real. Speak truth to power. Make the wisest choices you can for the greatest good within your family, tribe, and community. Be the change you wish to see in the world. It’s not a platitude if you make it real in your own experience.
Remember that the goblin king has no power over you. He is a farce. He is a fiction. Make your own choices. Use your own words. Be the main character in your story, instead of an NPC in the game of life.
It’s a new day. A new beginning.
This morning I watch the sunrise. I listen to birds singing cheerily along the trail. No tears. I am okay right now. Sometimes shit gets hard because I actually do care, and all by itself that can be a hell of a burden to bear. It’s an interesting path I’ve chosen in life, and it isn’t paved, and I don’t have a map. Sometimes the going is easy, sometimes it is difficult. Regardless, it is a worthy journey of being and becoming, and I walk on.
I sigh quietly as I walk. Trolls and monsters and lines on maps – it’s a strange and sometimes scary world, but the journey is the destination and it isn’t really “about” any of that. Those are worldly distractions. I remind myself to be present, here, now. To be kind. To be the woman I most want to be. To make wise choices. To listen well and deeply, and to love with my whole heart.
I listen to my footsteps on the trail. The clock is ticking. It’s time to begin again.
Cold morning. I woke a little early to quiet darkness, happy to maybe catch a glimpse of the full moon, but thinking mostly about primroses. I dress and head to the trailhead.
A first glimpse of the full moon – first one of the Spring.
Yesterday I planted strawberries in the flower beds, thinking they’d make a good ground cover. My Traveling Partner surprised me by having a decidedly strong negative opinion on that idea. He’d put a lot of work into the lawn, and he was worried about the strawberries spreading into the lawn and taking over. (Seems less than likely to me… but my partner knows plants.) Although I’m willing to watch for that and take preventative measures, the truth is, I’m also somewhat lazy, and prone to letting shit fall behind if I lack sufficient energy for the task. I see how under such circumstances, strawberries could become…weeds.
Rather than cause my beloved lasting stress, I propose replanting those strawberries in their own raised bed on the west side of the house, instead. He likes that idea much more. I’ll do that later today. The Anxious Adventurer helps out by assembling an inexpensive raised bed for that purpose from a kit I purchased at the garden store. (I could have done that, true enough, but I’m notorious for doing a pretty half-assed “good enough” job on such things, and both my Traveling Partner and his son like to see things built well.) I’m grateful for the help.
Those bare expanses of border around and between the blueberries? I decide I’ll fill those in with primroses, which are doing very well at the other end of the bed and needing to be divided as it is. Primroses, though? Primroses?
Pink primroses thriving in my garden.
The primroses are a story of their own, I suppose. I never had “a thing” for them before I moved into this house. They’ve grown on me as they grow in my garden. They were just a couple of garden store primroses added to the front flower bed by the previous owner for last minute “curb appeal” when the house was put on the market. There they were. Blooming. lol Just some random flowers, added to the edge of the bed, visible each time I left the house. Unimpressively commonplace, I used to think. Over five years those three original primroses have become large beautiful clumps, well-established and thriving, and blooming like crazy from the earliest Spring days well past the end of summer. They do so well, and they’ve got such fun bold colors, I’ve added a couple more, on some whim, each Spring. Those are spreading too. Don’t know why I thought strawberries were a necessary addition – just divide the damned primroses! Welcome them and take them seriously!
So, now I have what feels like a proper plan in mind and I’m impatient to proceed. My Traveling Partner’s lawn is under no threat from the primroses, the strawberries will do well in a raised bed protected from slugs, and I get flowers and strawberries. Win.
It’s hard to get a clear picture, sometimes it’s better to simply observe. It’s a metaphor.
I watch the moon set over the marsh, and add a reminder to read up on primroses. I really don’t know much about them. I guess knowing more makes sense. They’re pretty. Do they have history? Where are they native? Are there wild varieties? I know so much about roses. I know so little about primroses. Are there other colors and shapes that might look good in my garden, too? What else is there to know? I smile to myself. Such a simple thing to give me so much joy.
Where are you finding simple joy? What do you do to cultivate that in your life?
Begin again.
A mist has developed on the marsh, clinging to the ground, thick in low places. It’s a cold morning. I look down the trail. The full moon attracted quite a few early risers to the trail this morning. I lace up my boots and grab my cane. The clock is ticking and it’s time to walk the path I’ve chosen. Another day, another beginning.
I went to the usual trailhead of my favorite weekend morning hike. Pretty morning, but… the trailhead is busier than usual. A parked vehicle (vacant but with hazard lights left on), an especially disreputable looking old van (windows covered by foil), and an old RV with signs of being someone’s long-term dwelling, are in the parking lot. My skin crawls, and I experience a sense of “stranger danger”. I could be overreacting, but by the time I could be certain that I am or am not, it could easily be too late, eh? I move on, and go to the western trailhead of the park, on the far side, nearer to my usual “halfway point”. I’ll walk the trail in a different direction, approaching the views from the other side, and I’ll take a route that doesn’t approach the other trailhead at all (skirting the marsh instead of crossing it).
A calm sentinel.
It’s a lovely morning, and I’ve no regrets over the change of direction. I walk the trail contentedly. I see geese, and nutria, robins and squirrels. I walk along the river for a while. I look across a different bit of meadow, at a different stand of trees on the other side.
A change of perspective.
The morning is chilly but not cold, and I am warm from walking. I feel relaxed and rested, and my (quite minor) seasonal allergies are not vexing me; I remembered to add allergy meds to my morning medication. I feel comfortable in my skin and merry as I walk. I am supported by my cane (it’s actually a very strong, lightweight Leki trekking pole with some shock absorbtion), and my ankle does not yet ache from the walking, nor do my feet hurt. I would be walking in spite of those things, but it’s nice not having to fight that pain, this morning.
I think about the day ahead, but my thoughts are scattered, fractured by distractions: birds, flowers, movement in the underbrush. I walk on, enjoying the scents of Spring. I try, briefly, to recall whether I have errands to run, but I fail, and for the moment I don’t actually care. I’m wrapped in this moment, now, and it’s quite enough.
I walk, thinking about my beloved Traveling Partner, sleeping at home. He’ll likely be quite sore today after physical therapy yesterday. I resolve to keep myself occupied until he alerts me that he’s up and about for the day, to do what little I can to ensure he gets the rest he also needs. I smile. My heart is filled with love and my thoughts with fond memories. He is so much part of my life and experience after 15 years together. May 1st is our anniversary, but “that moment” that he truly became part of my life and my future was actually on his birthday, in December, at the end of 2009. By February we were the best of friends, by June he had moved in with me. Even then, I don’t think either of us anticipated marriage being part of our journey (less than a year later), we were both pretty sour on the notion from our past experiences. Still, here we are. Feels almost as if we’ve “always” been together. It’s easy to forget what a short time it has been. I grin to myself as I walk. He could not be more dear to me, nor further entangled in my heart. I am wrapped in his love every moment of every day. I sigh happily, and keep walking.
An enormous flock of Canada geese pass overhead. I think about my Granny, and wish that she could have met my Traveling Partner. I think she would have liked him. I know my Dad would have. I chuckle over the ways of men, and wonder what it might have been like had my Dad and my partner had a chance to enjoy each other’s company? I walk on wondering when I stopped being angry at my father? When had I truly forgiven him? It’s clear that I have… How strange. I once thought I never could.
Time passes, and the passage of time heals a lot of hurts, given a chance. Forgiveness isn’t for those who have hurt or wronged us, my Traveling Partner was right about that; forgiveness benefits most the one who forgives. Forgiveness is a letting go of the terrible weight of lasting pain and lingering rage. Forgiveness is another way to begin again.
My footsteps on the path are regular and even, steady like the tick of a clock. The clock is ticking. I walk on, with new perspective, toward the next curve on the path, the next opportunity to begin again. It’s time. It’s always time. I’m okay with that.
I woke up abruptly this morning, lights on at full brightness. I’ve felt like I’m “running behind” ever since, though it is an entirely ordinary day in most regards. Well, not really, it’s a birthday (Happy Birthday shout out to the Anxious Adventurer!). I’ve some things to do related to that event, later, and a plan to cram the full measure of my work day into the next 4 hours, and cut the work day short. I sip my (terrible) (iced) coffee and consider the day, and this moment right here. Things seem pretty okay, although I’ve got my headache riding shotgun this morning, and my arthritis has reduced my mobility considerably (I’m very stiff this morning), and I’ve got a weird pain in my left side, like a cramp or something, higher up than my kidneys, lower down than my heart, somewhere just below-not-quite-inside my ribcage. It’s vexing me. It doesn’t come and go with my heart beat, but it’s also not steady. A dull ache that waxes and wanes in a sort of arbitrary way.
…I probably talk about pain too much…
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I sip my coffee and think my thoughts.
A colorful distraction
A moment of whimsy distracts me from my bullshit. There are bags of colorful gumballs on the desk adjacent to mine (which is otherwise bare). I laughed with delight when I first walked in and saw them, and they catch my eye again, now. The colors delight me. I enjoy color. I once dressed all in black, and had a lot of “stuff” that was also black, but it’s generally been as a backdrop to things that are quite colorful as contrast. (I learned late in life how much more powerfully a neutral gray background can highlight bold colors – maybe there’s a metaphor in there somewhere?) I don’t wear much black these days. Some, not a lot. I’m not all that gloomy or negative about life, generally, nor am I as serious as I sometimes may seem. I paint in colors. I decorate in colors. I enjoy colorful light. I don’t know what I’m trying to communicate here – certainly I have no beef with people who choose to wrap themselves in black. The colors we choose say things about who we are, but it’s not for me to say what things they say. You do you. Please. Definitely be who you are – the best of who you are. No one else can do that as well as you can.
A happy colorful space.
I think about my office, which was previously also my studio. I’ve decorated it for my comfort. It’s a place I can retreat to to meditate, to read, to work, or just to chill in a moment of solitude. It is a colorful space, comfy and cozy, and too small for everything in it, which seems to suit me just fine. I don’t like clutter, though, actually, and I find that yielding to clutter creates chaos in my thinking and my experience of life, generally, so I like to avoid that if I can. My Traveling Partner knows this about me, and when recently cleaning my computer for me, he noticed that my desk had become a bit messy. Understanding how much this vexes me, and how little time for tidying up I’ve had lately (and how little energy), he suggested adding a couple little drawers under my desk.
What love looks like.
He 3D printed the little drawers for me in colors that delight me and fit the color scheme in my office (yes, I think pastel rainbow colors and lavender, green, and pink are entirely acceptable office colors LOL). I sat down to a new opportunity to create order from chaos, and once again my desk is quite tidy and free of messiness or disorder. It’s lovely. I worked efficiently all day, smiling and grateful to be so loved.
Today I am in the office, and honestly it is a disappointingly bland space. Earth tones, white, black trim, very “corporate”, very neutral, wholly uninteresting – some days I find it hard to work here. The bags of gumballs made me smile. I don’t know why they are here, placed where they are. This space, and this day, needed some measure of whimsy. I feel merry in spite of my pain. It’s a good start to the day.
I sip my (dreadful) coffee and think about the path I’m on. This path that I’ve been on now for some 15 years, I suppose. This path I’ve chosen to walk, that leads me… where? When I “get there”, will I know it? When I get there, where will I be? “The journey is the destination.” I say it a lot, as a reminder that my choices, words, and actions right now matter every bit as much as whatever awaits me out there in the future, further along the path. I’m not perfect – but perfect isn’t the goal. I only want to be the most me, the best version of the woman I most want to be, that I possibly can be – knowing what I know now, and using the full measure of my abilities as they are, and working each day to become just a little more of who I could be. Some days it doesn’t feel like much of a goal – other days I’ve no idea why I set the bar so high. lol Depends on where I am in the moment, I suppose.
Who are you at your best? Who do you most want to be? How often do you ask yourself these questions and take action on your answers? Are you walking your path with your eyes open? When your birthday comes around, do you take an honest look in the mirror and reflect on who you have become, and whether this is who you most want to be?
Dawn comes. The sky is dull and gray this morning, and I’m grateful that I can fill my world with color, anyway. Color that I choose. Color that fills me with joy. Color that reflects agency and whimsy and lessons learned over time. There are so many choices in life’s Strange Diner. So many lessons learned over time. I choose my path, and I walk it.
The clock is ticking. What will you choose, next? It’s time to begin again.
I’m sipping my coffee and ignoring (as much as I can) the chronic pain of my osteo-arthritis, which radiates upward from my spinal fusion, which was done years ago, when the state of the art was quite different than it is today. I knew then that my surgery was a new approach to the problem, and that some outcomes were unknown. The goal was to prevent me from ending up in a wheelchair partially paralyzed, and to allow me to continue to serve on active duty (Army). I guess for most values of success, my surgeries were a great success. I’m still walking. I did continue to serve (was even deployed to war in the 90s’), after a period of convalescent “retirement”, although I got “RIF’d” after that war (which broke my heart, but is an altogether unrelated story). So, generally, I’ve nothing to regret about that surgery if I’m just thinking about those details. But…
…There were consequences – of both the injury itself, and the surgeries that followed. The arthritis started to develop in my spine about 3 years after my surgeries. I didn’t understand why I was in so much pain all the time, and it took a rather stupid amount of time for that to be appropriately diagnosed; I was young. Medical bias being a real thing, many doctors were persistently just as “mystified” as I was. What could be causing my pain? How could I have arthritis at my young age? I still feel frustration and annoyance by that lack of curiosity, and lack of diagnostic skill (or persistance). Pain they could not feel themselves did not matter to them.
Then, there were the other things… the persistent chronic itch below my left shoulder blade, that I couldn’t quite reach and that scratching didn’t ease. A “phantom itch” that still bothers me occasionally (CBT really helped with that). A chronically cramped muscle down low on my back, on the left side of my body, most likely a result of the disturbed section of musculature attaching to my spine being put back “not quite in the right place” during my surgery (to make room for the hardware that was there for a year) and which healed into a new, less than ideal, location. This, too, still bothers me, often. Most of it I had to “figure out” in pieces, with limited help from too many doctors, and a lot of study. Sexual challenges (both neurological, and also to do with practical matters like lubrication) that were awkward to discuss were another thing; I was past 60 before a physician finally said, with some surprise, “of course that’s related to your spinal injury” after looking at my records, surgical reports, and images, and listening to me with great care. She seemed so matter-of-fact about it, I ended up enraged for days that no one else had said as much. I went through some shit over that issue with more than one lover, I can tell you. Turned out it wasn’t “my fault” or “a lack of desire”, or anything I could actually do much about; I have a spinal injury. Duh. I spent a few days moping around pretty pissed off about it.
What I thought I understood.
Why am I on about this, today? It’s to do with perspective and knowledge, and how those create our understanding (or don’t). I knew coming out of my surgery all those years ago that I had a permanent “30% stenosis”, and I felt that I understood what that meant. I mean, words having meaning, and I knew the meanings of the words…so… I understand? Don’t I? I thought I “got it”. My lack of real understanding was stunning, and it would be decades before that changed. It wasn’t actually a doctor that changed my understanding. It was math – and a moment at the dining room table with my Traveling Partner; a “lightbulb moment” to do with circles, that was completely unrelated to my spine, my injury, or my pain. lol (Pay attention in school, kids – math matters, and it’s useful stuff.) Something clicked.
What I hadn’t understood, in spite of seeing the images, reading the reports, and discussing with doctors, was what my stenosis meant in my case, specifically. For many years, I imagined 30% percent stenosis as a uniform 30% reduction in a circular area. (I felt pretty stupid when my understanding changed.) Firstly, the spinal canal as a “tubular structure” is not a beautifully perfect mathematical cylinder wherein a slice would appear circular. Not at all. It’s quite different than that. Also, and more importantly, my injury (which crushed two vertebrae, and broke off a spinous process which was then forced into my spinal canal by the impact and subsequently could not be removed) and the repair of that injury did not result in anything like a uniform reduction in area all the way around. Not even close.
Geometry for the win. lol
Reality doesn’t care what we believe. Our pain doesn’t care what we think we understand about our body. Reality is. Pain is. Conditions are what they are regardless of our understanding. So, for years I had struggled with symptoms that made no sense to me – because I so poorly understood my condition – and which I could then not clearly articulate to doctors, who may also not have understood my condition, because (let’s just be real about this, eh) doctors are also human and also have limitations to their own knowledge (and limitations on the amount of time they can spend reading patient histories with the care needed). I understand more/better now, but… I’m still limited by all the things I do not know. I still live within a reality that I perhaps only partially understand because of those limits.
…And reality doesn’t care at all what I understand…
Our perspective and our knowledge limit our understanding – but reality goes on being real, regardless of what we think we know or how we think we understand the world around us.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. Living with the pain is pretty much a requirement. There is no option to live without it, at least not now, not really. I do my best. Maybe that reality will change at some point in the future? Technology changes. Medical progress is made. I’ve learned to practice fairly skillful pain management in the meantime. I’m not complaining, not really. Good self-care and skillful pain management may not add up to a “cure for pain” – but it does help.
I sip my coffee thinking about my Traveling Partner, his injury, his surgery, his progress… he’s come so far, so fast, relatively speaking (although I know it doesn’t feel that way to him). We both deal with pain, and I don’t personally see a future where that’s not a thing we deal with, each having our own experience, each doing our best. I feel fortunate to have a better understanding of my injury than I once did. I’m grateful for a conversation at the dining room table about math and circles and ratios and areas, and grateful for a partnership that understands pain and makes room for love anyway. Grateful for love. Things could be worse.
I look out the window. My mind wanders away from the pain I’m in – probably a change for the better. It doesn’t do to dwell on the pain. Don’t get me started about this fucking headache. I sigh quietly and glance at my calendar, and the clock. It’s time to begin again.
Evening Light 