Being

To be or not to be. The choice is to be. You see, I've spent my entire life doing. Now I want to live on the narrow path of being (paraphrasing Eckhart Tolle here).

Meditation has helped me conquer my overactive mind. It still runs in circles at times. But when that happens, I breathe and focus on my body and it dissipates.

Pain has actually helped me to conquer some of my restlessness. Being forced to breathe and just lay, and relax, has been helpful. 

Creativity, at least for me, has always stemmed from somewhere deep in my soul. It always emerges and if I can capture it, and sit and write, it just comes out, almost fully formed. Why writing is my medium, I do not know, it just is.

I spent most of my life doing. Trying to get to this place or that place, figuratively and literally, for fifty years. But now, the thing I've realized, my epiphany for today, is that I am right where I need to be. 

That's not to say that goals are meaningless. They're important. But what I'm saying is that the striving, and the reaching and yearning always for more more more, that has gone away. I'm just happy to be. Right here and right now. Doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. 

Being me. Just me.

3 am October 2022

It's 3 am. I lay in our guest room listening to Chewbacca the shih tzu snore. I came in here to avoid waking Adrian up. I'm in so much pain, But breathing through it. Inhale in. Exhale out.

Pain is a hard thing to write about it. Adjectives do not suffice. Agonizing. Brain numbing. Unbearable. But I'm bearing it. 

Verbs capture it better. Shivering. Clenching. Writhing. Weeping.

Or maybe add some nouns too. 

Wet towel. Crumpled blankets. Curled up body.

This form of mine will get better. I know that. Pain is real but it too will pass. 

I urge myself to remember. Remember. Even this moment, lying on my side in bed writing these words, squinting at my phone, is precious.

Every moment matters. The big, the small, the adjectives, the verbs and the nouns.

Here are more nouns. 

Family and friends. Cards. Flowers. Well wishes. A back rub.

With some adjectives. 

A hot cup of tea. A warm compress. A golden light.

With a verb.

Sleeping. 

Let's put this all together now. We will get there eventually. I promise. This is not wishful thinking. This is wish filled thinking.

Here goes: 

She lies in bed writing, dog by her side, warm and comfortable, and puts down her phone, finally managing to drift away into slumber. 

Good night. 

A lightness of being

Lately, my posts have been dark. Yet, there is so much light. So right now, I have decided to focus on the light.

There's a warm glow upstairs. My dog sleeps next to me and I'm snuggled in a warm house, in a warm bed. 

Since my surgery, my husband has been caretaking. I've been unable to do much, it hurts to move, yet I'm well tended to. He's even putting up with me rewatching old seasons of Top Chef. He's so good at cooking for me (though right now my diet consists mostly of fruit) and watching over me. He's worried and attentive and I'm thankful that most of my major issues have happened when he's asleep. 

I have everything a girl needs, including, thank god, medications to ease the pain which is admittedly intense. 

My mind is clear. So clear. It's as if I'm seeing everything in sharp focus for the first time. I've thought about the stress over the last two years and have realized that the best thing to happen to me was this surgery. It forced me to slow down and take a much needed break from it all. 

Covid has made many of us question why we do what we do and the cost of it all. It has made us realize what is important and has shown us there is a light at the end of all of this.

That light is everything. It illuminates your character. It's the soft glow from a lamp that will show you the way home. Because in the end, home is what matters more than anything.  In some ways, it's all that matters my friends. 

2:35

It's 2:35 in the morning. It's watching the clock. It's wondering if this night ever will end. 

It's the longest of nights. 

There is no second hand of old. Don't we all yearn for those days? When we could watch the seconds pass. 

Now everything moves so fast.

Yet slow. Shivering in a warm shower, beefy legs barely hold you up. Your knees would buckle but for your hand on the wall.

Shoring you up.

Praying. Swearing. How fragile you are. How fragile life is. How precious. 

Like the morning. Like the sun. 

You picture your morning cup of coffee. The bitterness of your coffee cut by one sugar cube, okay two. 

You wobble into bed, curl up. Towel in mouth.

Your husband snores. The neighbors blast sad Spanish songs, the music echoing into the sky. The vibrations travel across the landscape. 

What used to be a quarry feels like a graveyard.

Is this what you needed to wake you up? Pain so deep it rocks you to your bones. Biting down on the towel you think, this is how your dad must have felt before he let go. 

But you won't let go. 

You can't. Life won't let you. There's too much left. Too much left you think, as you bite down again. 

Change on the horizon

The last few days have been hard. A struggle. I just had surgery and the pain is very intense. At some point yesterday I thought, I can't do this. But I did. It made me realize I can get through anything. 

And I also realized something. Change is on the horizon. I always feel it when it's imminent. It's in the air. The energy in my life has shifted. Will the change be good? Who knows but it's change.

"Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge."~ Eckhart Tolle

Change has always been good for me. Always. But as the Tolle quote points out above, you don't always know it at the time.  Change is an increase of the volume of your life. It's a shift in place and in your body. It's space. It's time. Time to think and to reconsider, and readjust.

I have always felt a higher power in my life, some call it God, and some call it the divine, but what it really means is the universe's consciousness.

My goal, even through the painful healing process I'm going through, is to be conscious. In the moment. Without allowing my mind to go in circles. 

Pain helps me to focus, believe it or not. It's why it's easier to write when I'm sad. Because the suffering creates space, like change, to think. We get caught up in the minutiae of life and that's what we focus on. But life is greater and bigger than minutiae and for me, I'm here to reach my life's purpose.

Wherever the road takes me, I'll go. I'll go. I will accept each moment as if I had chosen it (as Tolle suggests). 

Because I'm here. And ready. 

My ass has a timer

Chewbacca is whining. Again and again. I'm awaiting surgery in a week so I am taking a break from work. I don't have to get up early. Chewbacca doesn't care.

I'm side sleeping and I tell him, "Be good, I don't feel well," and he whines again. "Please?" 

"Stop! It's 5 am!"

Bathroom time. More pain. Bath. Shower. Twice. I go back to bed in a towel. Mediate the pain away, breathe.

My husband says, "Your ass has a timer". I laugh even though it hurts to giggle and tell him, "I'm stealing that line." It's true. Plus, that's a good line. Don't we all have timers?

Life is short.

My pain heightens. 

Chewbacca whines again. With a moan, I get up gingerly, carefully, slowly (I know I'm overusing the adverbs here but it's purposefully ha!) and pad downstairs with him behind me. 

He needs to go out. Now Frodo wakes up. He sleeps downstairs because with his bad back, he can't climb the stairs. Everyone in this house has issues. 

Bark. Bark. Growl. They fight. Like hobbits in the shire, they wrestle. 

The dogs are unrelenting. I picture the bowl of homemade beans I'll eat later with a tortilla. My diet is bland right now, mostly vegetarian. I love toast with butter. Tea. Steaming hot, one sugar cube. Those treats get me through the day right now.

I'm laying off all the sauces. Hot sauces. Alcohol. 

I make my one cuppa black coffee. It tastes like heaven.