Once again, autumn descends in a flash, last Saturday, we were sweating it out in the city, listening to street musicians, licking ice cream and today, we are debating whether it's time to heat the house. When I set off on my bicycle this morning, I put on mittens! Not the thick ones but mittens nevertheless.
It's been a bit of an exhausting week what with blood and stool sampling and gruesome results and all that it entails (change of meds, mostly) and the urge to basically sleep A Lot. And there I was about to celebrate a month without doctor's visits. Still the relief when a slightly alarming diagnosis confirms what my body had been telling me in recent week, with increasing urgency. But hey, I am an old hand at this game and so did all the right things incl. a three hour wait in A&E.
Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.
Virginia Woolf
And once again, there it is staring into my face, this for-ever narrative, unable to find a linear explanation for the state I am in. It's fruitless, at this point in time, apparently inevitable, but I admit, it's hard, so hard to carry it like a middle name, the disease, the diagnosis, the inevitable consequences. Plus, the new angle, the one when . . . at your age . . . I must apparently not expect too much improvement.
But then again, I do know there are ways to change it, even if there may be circumstances that won't make change possible (like, your immune system is fucked), I can and will, once again, challenge the way I view it, the way I place myself in it, battle with the victimhood I so easily could accept. The way it seems inevitable. Only, I just don't have the energy for it right now. It'll come. I am in a safe place. We harvested all the pears, all the apples and all the pumpkins. What could possibly go wrong.
To celebrate life and to cheer myself up, I am seriously contemplating to purchase this dress all the way from Jaipur, Rajasthan, India ( https://www.nilajaipur.com/). Blue is my favourite colour. In our conversations, we establish this fact almost daily, the grandchild and myself. The grandchild does a lot of drawing and colouring.
I hope you buy that blue dress. Maybe the grandchild will draw a picture of you in the blue dress.
ReplyDeleteBuy the dress. It will do more for your spirits than almost anything else could and that will be good for all of your being.
ReplyDeleteblue is also my favorite color and has been my whole life although green took the limelight for a while and various shades of purple has had precedence for a while but blue, always blue. it's starting to cool off here, a few days between hot ones. still getting into 90s but just barely. this morning the door is open. sending you whatever strength and acceptance I can. where's my magic wand when I need it?
ReplyDeleteYou should absolutely buy the dress, even if you can't wear it until next summer! Seize those little pleasures, right?
ReplyDeleteI really like that dress. I hope you buy it.
ReplyDelete"I can and will, once again, challenge the way I view it, the way I place myself in it, battle with the victimhood I so easily could accept. The way it seems inevitable." Thank you for these lines. They are instructions for me, and I am grateful to be reminded of them. And buy the dress. It will thrill both you and your grandchild.
ReplyDeleteI think I've read your post at least three or four times and mean to leave a comment each time, and then forget. The dress is lovely, just buy it.
ReplyDeleteOur bodies eventually all turn on us, some much earlier than others, sometimes in slow increments, sometimes all at once. You are wise to accept what is and to fold it into your life, as one more thing. I'm having a hard time accepting the natural course of aging, not a fan of change:)
Take care Sabine.