Today my traveling partner will return home. I will likely be asleep when that time comes, and with work tomorrow that is as it must be. I’m content that he will be here, and I will see him tomorrow. I will spend some portion of the day quietly making our home ready for his return. My at-home partner will head out to spend an evening gaming with friends, and she’ll return with our traveling partner, and a house guest who will be among us for at least a handful of weeks. In principle, I’m entirely comfortable with that. In reality, my PTSD may raise its head to express a different opinion on the matter, at some point, and the knowledge that this is a potential part of my experience would have once set me up for failure by spiking my anxiety level simply from contemplating it. For now, I’m calm and relaxed, and looking forward to sharing time with a new friend; I have skills that support my needs, these days, and find myself generally able to practice them when I need them most. Growth. Change. Choices. It all matters.

I will paint today. It feels good to say it without also anticipating having to tidy it all up, and put it all away, simply because it is Sunday, and I’ll have to spend the week working elsewhere. I’ll pick up enough to be tidy, but without disrupting work in progress. What a luxury!

I’ve had an exceptional week with my at-home partner. I feel good about life and love. I’m eager to be in the arms of the traveler-returned-home. We have each taken time to work on what we needed most to deal with, address, or resolve within our own experience. We’re each, based on the things we’ve said to each other, made great strides along our individual paths. These are beings I love, cherish, and enjoy; being together matters to me, and although love endures time away, it thrives in company. I am eager to see where love takes us now.

It was a beautiful day for love. Today is too.

This morning was an odd one. I woke quite early, around 4:00 am, and as is my practice, went ahead and got up long enough to take my morning medication and go back to sleep for a while. I was groggy and a bit off-balance, not fully awake, and none of that felt amiss – it felt pretty normal for being not-quite-awake earlier than I wanted to get up on a Sunday.  That wasn’t the odd part. It got weird when I woke up a bit later, around 6:30 am; I was incredibly dizzy. I don’t mean ‘dizzy like I turned my head too fast’. I was dizzy like I’d had a LOT to drink, dizzy as if I were wasted on alcohol, or ‘still drunk in the morning’ dizzy… it was a very specific and quite severe amount of dizziness. (I don’t drink these days, and haven’t for a long while.) Vertigo. I rarely experience it, but I’m familiar with the concept, and it didn’t freak me out. I had turned over in bed, possibly quite quickly…it’s never had that outcome before.  I waited for it to pass, observing the effects calmly and soothing myself with deep relaxing breaths until my balance was restored; the room spun wildly for several seconds, perhaps as much as 2 minutes. I was grateful in the moment that I hadn’t also tried to get out of bed straight away.  That wouldn’t have gone well.  I make a mental note to make an appointment with my doctor; taking care of me means following up on changes in my health that may be a cause for concern, rather than blowing them off and hoping for the best. I jot down some quick notes about the experience, and the moments afterward, to share with her.

I consider the return of the traveler in the context of also taking care of me, and as so often happens with me, the ideas collide and get jumbled up together. I find myself considering what I can do to take care of me, each day, as a traveler returning home, myself. I leave the house each day to work, returning later with little remaining of the day. There have been many days in my life when that homecoming hasn’t been an easy one, or particularly pleasant for me, because I didn’t do small things in the morning to be ready for my own return. I think it matters; I am starting the day fresh in the morning, and I will return home tired and needing to relax and take care of me at day’s end. Mornings when I take time to quickly make my bed are followed by evenings returning home to a space that looks more orderly. This nurtures and supports something within myself that I value. If I toss my towel on the bathroom floor after my morning shower, it’ll be there when I come home, most likely, and the resulting sloppiness and chaos are unpleasant for me, where the moment of effort, the small action, of either hanging it up to dry, or dropping it in the laundry, would likely be unnoticed in the morning routine. These are simple things. I look around my room and observe the disorder that has crept in over time: a couple stacks of papers unfiled, unsorted, and balanced on books, a small assortment of miscellany that hasn’t been properly put away, my still unmade bed…I can do better. I have. I even prefer it.

Small details matter.

I smile, still relaxed, and enjoying a personal change; there’s no self-directed judgment or criticism, no nastiness or blame. This is new for me. I’m just sitting here contentedly observing opportunities to treat myself with greater care and courtesy, and contemplating how to best make that happen straight away – because it matters to me, and I matter to me. When did I get here? I like this perspective; the view is pleasant.

Today, yoga, meditation, laundry, housework, and some aquatic gardening – and painting.  Today is a good day to enjoy change.