Blessing

I actually took this picture on our vacation. I should have gotten my passport stamped.

Today, I’m taking a deep breath and counting my blessing. The past two years of my life have been difficult. The past year has been extremely so. I’ve spent it either in the rush of whatever current emergency I was in, trying desperately to rest up from the last emergency, or trying to tell myself everything was okay and being a good girl and moving on.

I find myself trying to minimize it all in my head and force myself not to allow myself the space to recognize what we went through as a family. I’m going to work to stop myself from doing that. I learned a long time ago that if I “cowboy up” and suppress things, I pay heavily for it later. We went through Hell. I spent a lot of time banging my head on a wall, sometimes not so metaphorically.

But, today, I count my blessings.

My father is healthier than he has been in years. More importantly, he has the dedication to do what what it takes to stay that way. It fills my heart with so much happiness to see him like this. After being so sure I was going to lose him, spending the day with him yesterday doing something we love to do together is a gift from God, the Universe, whatever you believe. It was also a gift from modern medicine. A lot of it, though, was a gift of a sure force of will from Dad. The blessing is recognized and counted.

I have my Viking who is my partner, my best friend, and the love of my life. We aren’t perfect. We have our issues, and we are far from a normal couple, but we are taking the time to learn how to handle being not perfect and having issues. Being a normal couple sounds boring as shit and like something we should never ascribe to anyway. I love my wonderful and strange man and our wonderful and strange relationship. (He finds that I giggle at farts charming. Where else am I going to find that?) These blessings are counted and recognized.

I was describing one day how luck I was that I have friends who understand my weird little things and my anxieties which always feel huge. I feel so weird and so flawed all the time, and I have these people who love me anyway. They love me even though I hate the phone and never call, and I can’t focus long enough to send texts. They know that I love them and care for them. They get me, and they forgive me. They support my writing and make me feel like my writing is important. They make me feel like they care that I have things to say and write. It means so much to me and drives me. Sometimes, they sense I need out into the real world and stop letting me make excuses and pull me out of my world into something wider. Y’all are the blessing of a life time.

I started writing again last week. I didn’t write a whole lot. My production was piteous compared to what it was before I had to take the year off, but it took me awhile to get to that level of production, and it might take me a bit to get back to that level of production again. I have to focus on the fact I am producing again. Most importantly, I reclaimed that piece of myself again. I feel like I’ve handed myself over to the people in my life. I’ve pushed down my dreams and what I want to take of others and do what needs to be done. Writing is a little piece of taking that back. I feel like I had faded, but now I’m returning. This blessing is big and counts for a lot

It’s still life. Shit still happens.Who knows how long this will last. I plan on grabbing hold of it and try to squeeze everything I can. I think that is the only way you can live.