Going with the Flow?

For the longest time after my collapse, I was unable to read.  The words were there and my eyes worked--- albeit I now need reading glasses to interpret the small print---- I just couldn't put many words in order and I certainly could not retain their meaning.  To someone who values reading and learning, it was incredibly confusing and frustrating to have lost the joy and comfort of being able to escape this world into another for a time.

 

Thoughts move in and out of focus, manipulated by an unseen hand.  I feel like if I could just clean my glasses, I would be able to see; to get it; but then it is gone and my eyes are skimming over the next line with only an echo of comprehension for what came before. 

 

I now use a pencil, and fold down corners.  These mark small nuggets of

wisdom that resonate with me in the moment.  It is still difficult to string them together.  I feel like I need to take notes; to find the common thread among all a read and knit them together to form a set of core beliefs that will help sustain me in this next part of my journey.

 

Perhaps that is why I am reading blogs?  Their message doesn't hide in 7 easy steps or weeks of self-reflection.  They deliver what they promise in a few hundred words and I can find the thread, hold on, and find my way through the message. 

 

So while I can now manage to read more than I did, remembering what it was, remains the tricky part.  I can remember if it inspired me, bored me or made me angry, but the meaning sometimes slips away, like a child playing hide and seek; it is gone.  And there are so many out there hiding, when I have finished counting to ten, I can hear them giggling out there, I just don't have the energy to go looking. 

 

Perhaps it is the medication behind much of it.  It dulls the sharp corners that once defined me.

 

But I laugh more; full out, head thrown back, deep throat laughter.  I laugh more with my kids, at TV, as my Sista Perfectionista and I sit on her couch with the third cup of coffee that day because we are so enamored with the immediate satisfaction and variety a Keurig provides.

 

So another word to add for this year is Flow. 

 

It's a bit like the waves.  They come in, carrying fish and shells and seaweed and constantly carve the landscape into new form.  Sometimes they are violent, and thunder and crash ashore.  Other times they barely ripple  the sand in a shush of being.

 

But they are always there.  They are constant and yet unique.  You can fight them and stand strong against their power. Or you can cast yourself adrift to see where you end up.  Who you end up being.

 

I would like to say I will be like a piece of drift wood, and let the waves shape and move me wherever and whenever the Universe decides; that I will be exactly where I am supposed to be. In this way I will reduce the pain in my life by accepting what is.  However, I feel in my core that there are just some thing worth fighting the current for.  They are the things that make me most uncomfortable.  They are the things that turn my skin into burning hot coals of nerve pain, send my IBS screaming into action and yet I know, without them, I cannot be me.

 

So I will continue to work with the current on reading.  It is coming back.  It is

just not my time.  Or in time, I will come to peace with the fact that this is the best I can do on medication and will learn new strategies that don't cause an adrenalin bomb to go off throughout my body when I remember that I was trying not to forget to do something.

 

I leave for my trip soon.  For that I will ride the wave.  Figuratively, if not literally. 

 

I am, a Work in Progress.