Bright life big world

It's amazing what feeling better health wise can do to one's mood. I'm feeling hopeful, excited and eager to get my life back.

Before my surgery, I don't think I realized how much pain had ruled my life. Every day had been a struggle for so long that I was accustomed to the pain. I had acclimated to it in a way. Then one day, everything fell apart. My surgery was the result. 

For weeks after surgery, the pain was even worse. It was the hardest physical test I've ever gone through. I fought to get on the right pain medications and once I was properly medicated, I began to heal. 

That healing process is still ongoing but I'm beginning to see the light. I'm chomping at the bit to move on and start my life again. I'm missing it all. My job, my friends, my family and my artistic endeavors.

Yet, I have to tell myself, take it easy and slow down. Because whenever I do try and push, I take a few steps back. 

This will be all better soon, I tell myself. You're almost ready, you're so close, but you need to give yourself a little space. Time. Just heal. Breathe. Rest. You're almost there.

When my life resumes, I have decided to pull back on some things. Before, I was doing too much. Way too much. Running myself ragged really. So I've decided that when I do finally go out into the sun again, I'm not gonna do so much. No more striving. 

Instead, I will focus on my family, my career as a deputy public defender and my books. And maybe do a podcast or two. But less. Quality not quantity. That's a lot, so everything else may have to go. The radio show was a dream come true for me. And it did come true if only for a few episodes. But I'm pulling back.

Now don't go thinking I'm going into a shell. I'm not. I'll be out and about doing my job and my art. I'm going back into the world full-time in a couple weeks. My second book drops in January.

But this "new" life, I say new because it feels that way, will be different. It will be full and colorful, all in technicolor. Yes it will be. But it will also be a long film with a focused narrator who knows her worth and who gives full energy to all she does and who knows how to pull back.

What's most important is that I've realized that I love my life. I have so much. I'm lucky. This experience has made me realize that. I don't want to be stuck in bed. Plus, I've watched everything on Netflix and Hulu (including rewatching numerous seasons of Top Chef). 

Truth is, I want to live. I want to live big. 

What I know now is that I want to live a bright and beautiful life my friends. And I will. Promise.

Warming

I'm warm. Snuggled in bed. Relaxing. Healing. Breathing.

It's been an interesting year. So much has happened and I've been forced to look at myself and my life and think, why am I here?

I know why. To write. To live. To love my husband, my family and my dogs (of course). 

Soup helps. Especially the one I get delivered, butternut squash. It's soothing. The taste reminds me that simplicity is best. 

When I'm fully healed, my goal is to do less. To focus on the writing rather than the running. To see the world. But to be me. Just be me. 

And stay warm. Happy. Content. Always.

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.