216 – Lisa Marie Blair

216 // Trying on Other Lives

I’ve been away from my life for a time now. I’ve been busy trying on other lives, other anxieties, and other pleasures. I’ve spent time remembering the people I might have been and forgetting all the reasons why I’m not.

All that is to say I have had a long summer of hard work, delightful travels, and exhilarating adventures but the summer is winding down now, though with this blazing heat you might never know it, and something is calling me back to reality—my reality. It turns out that all those other lives aren’t meant for me. They are only costumes to slip in and out of for a bit of excitement and spectacle. I hope to slip into others still next summer and every year after.

I’ve begun to think of my life as a cycle of seasons, and the summer sun has always beckoned me out and away from myself. I am a citizen of the world and in love with all of humanity. I want to be where the people are and I want to want all the same things they do. The season is for soaking up the experience of living and shoring up enough stimulation to carry me through the dull and dreary winter.

With the school year beginning again in just over a week, and my work schedule forcing me back to regular and routine, I find myself returning to the internal and the intellectual. I’ve, unprompted and quite by surprise, picked up reading again and rummaged and rooted through desk drawers for notebooks that have been buried since spring.

Life is a cycle of seasons, a going out and a returning to the self with a clearer understanding and a deeper love and appreciation not for who I dreamt I might be, but for who I am only just learning that I really am. You have to see for yourself that who you already are is the best version of yourself there is. It’s the long way to self-love, but it is the most fun you can have while healing.

216 // Moving in Strange Ways

My mind is moving in strange ways today. I’m wired but fuzzy, optimistic but irritable. I’m moving forward, but only ever in circles. My mind is marching on to nowhere.

Tomorrow is coming too fast, and a slow panic is rising, an uncomfortable excitement. I’d rather today drag on a little longer, a day or two longer, a week, a month, a year more of solitude would fix me right up.

This morning was better than this afternoon. I felt more focused, driven, productive, then. This afternoon is all restless energy. I hate it.

I’m trying too hard to harness the evil power of the steroids my doctor has put me on for good, but all I’m getting is jittery and angry. Headaches are rolling in and out because, I’m learning, steroids, though they provide their own kind of energy, are not a replacement for caffeine, but the prospect of mixing the two terrifies me so withdrawal is setting in.

It’s not all bad, of course. I made time for myself, for blogging, for cleaning, for meditating, and tackled a couple of to-do items I’d been avoiding. The littlest activity wears me out though and each task requires another 20 minutes of napping before I can move on to the next. I’m letting myself have all the rest I want though because with each waking I feel just a tiny bit better than when I laid down.

I’ve promised my team, and myself, that I will make it into work tomorrow, but I’ve made no promises to them or myself from then until Friday. I have a feeling forming even the least of expectations is setting us all up for failure.

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216 // Words Mean Nothing

I woke up this morning absolutely devastated. Another mass shooting less than a day after the last, this time in Dayton, Ohio. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t want to say anything at all because words mean nothing anymore. I’m tired of talking and hearing others talk, even myself I guess. I feel guilty for turning off the news but it’s all too much. They are showing surveillance footage on a loop and it doesn’t feel very good to watch people being shot and possibly killed over and over again.