Autumn

Yeah, it’s been a long time since I posted. You’re not the only one to mention it.

The truth is, until a week or so ago, I really didn’t have the energy or the will. I’ll be frank, my mental health has not been the best, for a lot of reasons, and I am fortunate that I knew what to do, and thankful that life has more or less cooperated.

I have a card, framed, on my wall that says:

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”  -Eleanor Roosevelt

I am amending it. I’m adding an asterisked note. “Only one thing at a time though.”

I’m not going to go into any detail, it’s obviously personal stuff, but I’ve been overwhelmed and not functioning particularly well. It’s been one of the hardest years of my life on many levels and I have done a lot of reflecting, some of it pretty painful, on why that is, how I got where I am, and what changes I need to make.

That’s why I say I’m fortunate that I knew what to do. I have had to simplify my emotional environment, sometimes to the cost of others, and sometimes I’ve had to accept it being simplified for me, without resistance, even though it was painful.

I have made other, subtler changes too, and rediscovered some stuff I’d taken for granted and neglected on some back burner for years. I think I had forgotten who I am to some extent. But I feel as if I’m starting to remember.

Maybe it was what gets dismissed as a midlife crisis by people who are not involved. At any rate, I have done almost nothing practical, beyond the absolutely necessary, for a long time, and that only with a clawing, desperate effort that left me spent most of the time.

I’m not sure why I’m putting this all here, knowing everyone from my mother to my mother-in-law reads this, as well as all my friends and a considerable number of strangers.I suppose I believe in openness and that stigma and embarrassment lead people to be isolated when they are in emotional need, and that’s bad, so I try live as if it shouldn’t be that way.

I’d like to thank everyone who knows me for whatever patience and kindness they’ve been able to show me during the past year or so. I’m not always soft and sweet and fuzzy, I’m sharp and raw and I can cut. But I love my friends and family, my lifestyle and the ways I am able to overlap with people as I move along, the volunteers who have lived here and helped out, the neighbours who return my smile and lend me things and come over for a chat, and all the people who have helped carry my load while I have been laid low.

A few things have got done around here since my last post, so I will try to catch up and do an entry for each subject over the next few weeks. I appreciate your continued interest and support. Thank you.