A lot of my studying, my focus, my journey is about a search for balance, contentment, perspective, and sufficiency; somehow that’s ‘all one thing’ in my head, but I don’t know one word for that thing.  We’ll get by with a few more words, that generally works well enough for me. lol

It’s been a strange few days. Even though I’m over whatever odd sickness struck me down last week, I feel somehow a bit ‘off’. Still tired. I hurt more than usual, but that could be nothing more than setting myself up for failure on the expectation that warmer weather would be equal to a reduction in my arthritis pain, simply because in years past that has been true; I know I hurt more than I expect to. I’m cross with the world, but can’t put my finger on any reason I ‘should’ be… I feel vaguely ’emotionally disoriented’ and ‘cognitively disheveled’.  Still, I’m getting by.

This morning was hard. I woke to the morning, eyes gritty, mouth dry, a lingering feeling of panic from a bad nightmare. A shower didn’t refresh me. Instead of finding joy and delight in a partner being up so early to share coffee and companionship before work, I felt distressed, crowded, angry – none of it felt ‘appropriate’ to my experience-in-the-moment, at all. It felt inexplicable. I managed to salvage enough mindfulness and perspective to communicate my challenges, and take the space and time I needed to get my head right… just about when I was feeling still and calm and as I rose, ready to face the world, I kicked over my coffee mug and although the internal turmoil was pretty messy, and not particularly grown-up, I managed to get through it with only a tear or two, and a grim visage – no tantrum, no rage – but endured a moody gray cloud on my experience the entire day. I can count it as a success… I wish it weren’t in me to be so inclined to count it as a failure.  Today it is harder to treat myself well.

I still make the effort to take care of me, to give myself some compassion, to be kinder with myself, in spite of being so incredibly irritable and moody, and that’s where I see the success and the growth; I have the will to act in my own interests, even when I am wading through emotional bullshit, hormones, and wreckage.  That’s lovely and new. I find, to my very great delight, that being able to take care of me, time and again, proves to be an exceptionally direct route to also being able to take care of people who matter to me, and even simply to treating others well, as a general practice.

It’s a good thing, too, because I frankly couldn’t have treated people with the nastiness and raw volatility I had within myself today, it would not have been acceptable, at all.

The calm of approaching twilight. Tomorrow is a whole new experience.