Tag Archives for journal

InkTober 2017: Day 2 – Divided

Divided: that’s a loaded word for me. For a long while, I’ve been feeling that my life is divided. It got that way four years ago, on the day my illness showed up. I didn’t know it then but, since the first moments, it divided time into before and after illness. I’ve tried not to think of my life that way, at least not from a negative perspective, because I know that my life is greater than these two dimensions. However, the truth is, I have to acknowledge that my life is not the same.

It may never be what it was before the day two extra-strength Tylenols weren’t enough to soothe the pain as it grew in my lower abdomen. It may never be the same as it was before I lost control of my trembling body. Trembling that became uncontrollable shaking because the pain was so overwhelming. My life may never be the same as it was before the ambulance ride that took an eternity to get me to the hospital emergency room. Before the months of multiple doctors’ misdiagnoses or the reluctant surgeon’s year of waffling about whether she could or would ever try to help me by doing the surgery she trained to do. Nor may it become the same, as after illness, since finally having surgery didn’t result in the end of any of my pain.

The interesting thing is that the space I occupy now is nowhere near after illness. It can’t possibly be when there are moments when all I can think about is freeing my body of pain and when that pain-free time will become permanent. My current existence is probably better characterized as ‘since illness’, which is an altogether different division. So far, each pain treatment I’ve undergone has delivered negligible short-lived relief or completely failed; and if the ongoing pain treatments are any indication, I may never achieve an after illness state.

Yet, I must continue living without losing hope, or my sanity. I have to keep myself grounded to avoid causing myself unnecessary grief because, as I’ve been taught: suffering is wanting something other than what exists in the present moment. Therefore, looking back at what was in my past (before illness) or what’s in store for my future (after illness) is unhelpful.

My life didn’t stop because of my illness. Although I fully accept that it changed, there’s no need to divide it into pieces and compartmentalize events into good and bad. I will, however, continue to live in the present, mindful of focussing on each moment as it comes.

The image I’ve chosen today to illustrate the word divided is a pie. We divide whole pies into slices to feed others and ourselves. If a thing must be divided I prefer to look at the possible positive outcomes from its division.

 

InkTober 2017: Day 1 – Swift

Last year, I participated in the month-long InkTober challenge for 2016. It was the first time I did something like that. It required me to draw something every day and I put my twist on it by using the daily prompts to inspire mindful writing to pair with the drawing I posted. Drawing something, every day, was challenging but it was also fun. However, it was a challenging month – for a few different reasons.

The first was that, in my opinion, my artistic skills were not very strong so it was an opportunity to improve. Mustering the energy to complete the challenge each day was often difficult because of my health. Some days it was exhausting to divert energy from coping with my pain to concentrating long enough to draw – and write – something then post it online, but I got it done. It was also difficult to figure out what to draw each day, even though the challenge provides a single word prompt for each day. The words from the prompt list (e.g. fast, noisy, collect, hungry) were sometimes difficult to depict in a line drawing, but I managed to figure something out each day.

I ended InkTober 2016 feeling that I accomplished so much, that this year I’ll be using the challenge in the same way. Today is the first day of InkTober 2017 and the prompt is ‘swift’. Here goes…

The first thing that came to mind when I read the word ‘swift’ was a horse: a wild horse. I envisioned a wild horse running across unending green prairies. There was just one problem. I had no idea how to draw a horse in motion the way I could see it in my imagination. So I went searching online for a photo that might help me figure it out. Thankfully, I found something better. On Pinterest, the treasure chest of everything DIY, I found a quick visual step-by-step tutorial for a galloping horse. About 30 minutes after drawing a few basic shapes and lines, I had drawn the horse I wanted.

Looking back at what I was capable of drawing last year and this drawing for my first entry of InkTober 2017, I feel that my skills have grown. I’m looking forward to seeing where I’ll be in 30 days…

 

 

Building On Happiness

The passage of time coupled with perchance interactions, have ways of presenting answers to questions we may not even be aware we’ve asked. The answers aren’t always worthy of celebration nor what we want to hear or see; however, when the information gleaned is unexpectedly joyful it can affect one’s perspective in delightfully life-affirming ways.

Throughout my life, I’ve had these experiences, but my tendency was to analyze and seek out more pieces to puzzles that only existed in my head. This created greater angst than necessary then it became nearly impossible for me to accept anything that presented itself to me at face value. Thankfully, I no longer have the need to analyze EVERYTHING in-depth and in recent years, because of my health challenges, it’s become impossible to invest copious amounts of energy into speculative mind, heart, and stomach churning overanalyses.

This brings me to a few nights ago. In what many of us may still refer to as “Kodak moments”; I saw for the first time since walking away, that I may have dodged one of the biggest bullets – actually two – in my entire adult life; and I smiled. Because of what I saw, there will never again be any looking back. There will no longer be any mournful sighing or wondering what might have been. And this smile – more like the grin of a cat after eating a succulent canary – will require no effort to reproduce. I will forever have in my mind’s eye the images that answered questions I never consciously asked and succeeded in dousing embers of lingering doubts.

 

Since then, I’ve been grinning from ear-to-ear and laughing out loud. (Not out of madness. I don’t yet spend that much time alone.) My laughter is akin to the way one’s fingers lightly skip across piano keys causing each note in a crescendoing scale to sing effortlessly through the air.

The heaviness that connected me to a long gone episode in my life lifted without any exertion on my part. The murky disjointed memories that held sway over me for years and caused me to doubt decisions I made in my best interest, lost all power. Then, as what I once characterized as meagre beatable obstacles replayed, a soothing calm fell over me as they became illumined to show they were, in fact, countless hazard symbols appropriately placed for me to dodge potential disasters on my path to becoming wholly me.

As cliché, and probably whacky, as all of this might seem to some people: the energy that becomes available for living one’s life when we let go of doubt(s) and the need for incessant forensic examination of the past is astounding. I feel freed from a thing I wasn’t aware was holding me captive. Part of my consciousness was running on a treadmill while the rest of me believed it was outside road running and hill training, stretching me and building my strength for the longevity we all need to carry us through life.

Although those physical activities are off-limits to me now – and I miss them, more than words can describe. I feel as if I’ve jumped off an invisible loop. Moreover, within the space now purged of subconsciously felt doubts, I can and I will exercise my conscious mind, emotions, and creativity to build on the happiness I already hold.