Where Even To Begin, Again

I’m sitting at work, contemplating getting my lunch, and thinking about how to re-start doing something you haven’t done in a long while. How do you re-ignite a relationship that’s fallen fallow? A simple hello?

Hello.

A bit of a simple conversation?

What have you been up to lately?

Reply: Not much, life…really. My son has started playing a lot of hockey. The transition from little kid to almost-big kid is a bit tricky for all of us. There are so many complex emotions, it’s a lot, really.

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A bit too heavy for a first post after many years, perhaps.

For the last three years, I’ve been working at a publishing start up, which isn’t much different from a regular start up. Lots of hours, lots of stress, lots of travelling. And by the time I get home, my brain is mush. It’s impossible to think. I’ve tried reading. I’ve spent a lot of time on the couch watching TV and eating apple blossoms (and chips). Watching movies with my family. Trying to clear away the space that needs to exist between me, and them.

But how do you begin to begin again? I suppose you just have to start. Open up the program. Set your fingers up across the keys, and go.

In a way, this online place has always been a way for me to start. To get things flowing again. To remind myself that I exist in this world in a concrete, up and down way. So many things are still true:

1. I am a person with a disease

2. I am a mother, a wife, a member of a family

3. I am someone who works in an industry that I enjoy

4. I am happy to be in my own home (even if we’ll probably never pay for it)

If I ran into someone on the street I hadn’t seen in a while, it’s not the minutia of life that get’s discussed, it’s the broad strokes that get attacked. But, as always, this has been a space for me to try and work out the wonder of my life as well. And my life is filled with wonder. It’s just something that I easily forget when the drudgery of the days threatens to hold me down, and smother me with its pillows.

The photo of my boy is from a hockey tournament we went to a few weeks ago, in Niagara Falls NY. I love the photo of him in action, trying so hard, even if he’s not always succeeding. In the last few weeks, I’ve been philosophically struggling with where I am. Physically, I am here. Physically the disease is stable, and I am relatively healthy, although exhausted all the time. And those struggles, the ins and outs of constantly defining and redefining who I am and what I’m doing, maybe that’s the point. Maybe I’m searching for other people’s words because I’m find it ever-so hard to find my own. Like a habit that’s broken, I need to get my 66 days under my belt (apparently, according to Gretchen Rubin that’s how long it takes for a new habit to stick). No pressure. I’m just going to keep talking, if that’s okay.