Feeling worse today than I did yesterday, but I expected it. I ate foods I knew would be irritating to my gut and temporarily exacerbated my ulcerative colitis flare. I know I shouldn’t have, but sometimes you have to live for the moment and the moment was pistachio ice cream.
I woke up early but couldn’t make it out of the house for my morning walk. It’s actually been a few days since I’ve gotten out and around the neighborhood and I’m really missing it. I’m also grappling with feelings of failure and anger. I’m angry that I’m still feeling so cruddy I can’t even get out for a walk around the block.
On top of all that, watching my wife get up and get moving and knowing both that I am in a way being left behind and worrying how she may feel at having to move on and to do things alone because I have to rest, stay in bed, and not push myself, hurts deeply.
It’s helped to remind myself that sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to do nothing. If these last few months have driven home any lesson it’s that, right? It’s helps to turn your attention from what you can’t do to doing what you can and what I can do is write, schedule some “scrapbook” posts, and read and getting to lose hours to just these three small things has turned my whole outlook around.
I made a lot of progress this evening on the lengthy and unwieldy post I’d started and lost control of and then began to avoid over these last few months. For a moment I was back in my old groove where the words and emotions flow freely, where the path to the end is clear, where I know I am doing what I was made for, even if I’m not always a very confident or competent.
I do my best work when none of that matters. I don’t mean best as in happy. Writing is almost always a purely cathartic exercise for me and I feel best when something deep, painful, and or meaningful has been pulled up, examined, expressed, and expelled. That is my measure of good for now.
Lisa Marie Blair 