Sitting at the kitchen table, plopped down in the middle of a mess.
Staring at a blank screen…..
Smelling the herbs just picked from the garden and hung to dry……..
This has been a very different summer. Different than any we’ve ever had before. I’ve not written a lot. I gave myself the summer off. Well, if I’m honest, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted regularly. Stress is a funny thing, and by funny……. I guess I mean horrific.
Stress is a killer…..a killer of energy, a killer of focus, a killer of creativity…..
Even now, I have so many words floating through my brain and I’m not sure which ones to grab onto and which ones to banish and which ones to allow to continue to float around in there.
I’m doing a lot better than I was…….at least I think so. And yet, I’m not sure where I’m going.
Angelica came back from Camp Goodtimes (The camp put on by the Canadian Cancer Society) and was quite emotional as she shared with me how she was realizing that she could never “go back” to normal. There is no “going back”. There is no “picking up where we left off” or “getting back to where we were or the people we used to be”.
This is such a tough concept to grasp. There is so much grieving and letting go to do and it just keeps going on and on and on……so much so that this feels like the new normal and yet……I don’t like this. I don’t like this new me. I don’t like the me who is exhausted all the time. I don’t like the me who can’t organize and plan and arrange things instantly. I don’t like the me who forgets things and lets balls drop. I don’t like the me who can’t accomplish very much in a day.
I feel like I used to be SO. MUCH. BETTER. at everything. And recognizing that I’m no longer that person is a tough thing. I want to be that person. I want to be able to do more and organize more and think more and handle more and yet what I’m stuck with is SO. MUCH. LESS!!!!!
Less organizing, less tidy, less capable, less focused, less disciplined, less stable, less energy, less…….just SO. MUCH. LESS!
And I hate it!
And yet, what I feel that I need to do, is to recognize that the “Old Me” is “no longer……she was buried under a mountain of stress and cancer and grief and loneliness and exhaustion and……
This…..the me sitting here right now with her scattered thoughts and messy table and even messier kitchen, with no clear schedule or plans or meal plan (that one really gets me – and yet everytime I sit down with my paper and pen….the blank sheet mocks me with my inability to “make it happen” and I put it all away and allow myself to get distracted by something else that doesn’t require so much thought or energy)…..the woman who prided herself on the healthy foods she fed her kids has been replaced by one who allows her kids to forage for cookies and tortilla chips or dry sugar cereal and calls that breakfast. This person is who I am now….this is what I have to work with…..and I find that so difficult.
I’m trying to accept her. To love her for all her faults. To recognize that for all the things she can no longer do or be…….that there are still things that make her incredible. I’m trying to love the fact that she is more compassionate than she has ever been, that she is more understanding and accepting of people, that she is less judgmental, less controlling. I’m trying to believe that there is good that has come from all of the bad and that even though there has been so much loss…..that there is still “gain” and yet its hard…..
When I see all I could do and to try to stack it up against what I can do now…….I fall so short.
It’s a tough concept….to let go of who you were and to accept who you are…..much more difficult than you’d think.
I’d like to think I’m getting there, but I’m still not sure I like this new me…..and yet, I can’t go back. I’m not even sure I’d want to.
