Part One, No Sudden Movements
Today is the day I decided to stop writing about things too heavy for me to carry. I have to find the strength within myself to move forward and do so in a healthy way. There are things I will never know, and I’ve made peace with that. I am no longer lost. I’ve found my way.
It’s been about three months now, and another domino effect has begun. Good and bad, both. Let me explain.
For a long while, I’ve been mentally and physically ill. If you’ve read my earlier writing, you already know. If you’re just starting here, you’ll see it soon enough. What I’ve only recently learned, finally, is that the answer, both good and bad, is that my mental health medications had been slowly turning my body inside out. I had a painful, emotional reaction to something that left me a different person. A big eye-opener. A lot has come to light, and I found the culprit.
My doctor is helping me come off all of it. I’d gone numb, and now I’m coming out from under a heavy fog. My muscles aren’t rigid anymore. I can lift my head up high. Best of all, I can see clearly, mind, body, and soul.
I still don’t feel great, my stomach, mostly. But I’ve stopped vaping, stopped smoking, stopped even the gummies. What I need now is good food and exercise. I’ve made it to my barre class once in the past two months, and it was hard. On a brighter note, I went to church, a God-loving, non-denominational church. I went alone, and I’ll keep going alone, looking for something. I’ve lost so much: love, hate, faith, hope. And trust, that’s gone completely.
But I feel it, in my body and my soul: my sanity is returning. I’m beginning to relax. Maybe it’s the medicine changing. Maybe it’s that I finally know where I stand.
It’s been a long week. I’ve been trying to do better, trying to get back into the Y, back into exercise. I forced myself to barre again last night, my second class this month, and I was glad I went. I sweat through the whole thing, sweating out the poison, it felt like. It was a tough workout, and it felt amazing.
We got home around 6:30 and made dinner, rice, a hamburger patty, and cauliflower. The most food, and the healthiest food, I’ve eaten in months. My appetite is coming back, and I can feel myself moving with less effort than before. This morning my jean shorts nearly fell off. Things that had been getting tighter are loosening. Normalcy is returning.
I had Jason help me rearrange the living room, even the big buffet that hasn’t moved since we put it there. It’s nice. More breathing room. A change I can actually feel. I brought over everything I need, like lotions, perfume, my Daisy by Marc Jacobs, my medicines, my diffuser, my candles, my stones (just in case). Windows on both sides, a door in front of me. Open, close. Good, good.
Now I just need to gather the blankets and pillows still scattered around.
Then, a change of scenery. We both went outside. I worked through my to-do list while Jason mowed, weed-whipped, and edged the yard. We stayed out until it was nearly dark. Beautiful. Later we watched TV, and I fell asleep on the couch not long after Jason went to bed. I’m trying to get back into The Young and the Restless, the DVR has a hundred and ninety-six recordings waiting. I might just start at the end. Or the middle.
I fell asleep on the couch and slept well. I remember hearing Jason leave for work, the dining room light was left on for me. I even dreamed, just a short dream, but it was there. Something about loneliness, or maybe about being alone. Everyone was gone, or maybe I was the one who was gone. Each time I dream, it gets a little clearer.
I need to focus on myself, and only myself. Keep following what’s good, peace, quiet, calm. No fighting, no friction, no negative waves. Just friendship, re-bonding, a kind of mental fasting.
Freedom from my mind. Freedom from my heart. Freedom from my soul. The freedom to heal and grow, to think, to feel, to make a choice, and feel good about it. I don’t know yet what that choice will be. I need to wait.
Because I’m going to be busy. Doing what, you ask? Exercise, of course. I’m adding another class, cardio drumming, Tuesdays and Thursdays, right after barre.
We were out all afternoon in triple-digit heat, and by the time we got home it was almost time for the Y. Too hot to go back out, so we stayed in after putting the groceries away, ordered a pizza, and I fell asleep during America’s Got Talent. Slept a good ten hours, waking only once to turn off Jason’s light and use the bathroom.
I noticed something else this morning: the constant, nagging issue I’d been dealing with hasn’t shown up in a while. Better, every day.
Part Two, Good Things
Today I noticed two birds have taken up residence in the birdhouse out back. I’ve been watching them trade shifts all day, wondering if there might be babies coming, even this late in the season. They’re definitely building a nest; I can see cotton being pulled in.
I had my first meeting with Minister Shawn Williams this morning, and it was exactly the step I needed to take. He asked about my beliefs, where I stood with God and Jesus, how involved I’d been with church growing up. My answer to all of it was the same: I want to learn, and I need to. Had I ever read the Bible? No. So for thirty minutes, he read, and I listened, genuinely uplifting. Some prayer meetings are in my future now.
It was a scorcher, almost a hundred degrees. By the time I left the church, it was hotter than when I’d arrived. Everything in the car was hot to the touch, and it felt like forever before the air conditioning kicked in. The heat drained every bit of energy out of me. So what did I do when I got home? Sat outside in it anyway, letting the fan blast my face like a furnace.
It. Was. Hot.
I turned in by eight, next to my candles and stones, and slept more calmly for it, through until four. I made it to the bathroom, stepped out back to watch the insects swarming in the dark, came back in, and opened the front door to let the morning in. Birdsong. Running water. My new favorite spot.
It’s the Fourth of July, a day of barbecues, parties, and fireworks. We’re deep in a heat wave, which means storms are never far behind, and we got them last night while the kids were over for cards and spaghetti. I love those boys, happy, happy little souls.
More storms are expected tonight, possibly right through the fireworks, a forty percent chance, eighty-four degrees, plenty of sweat and mosquitoes to go around.
We’d been invited to spend the day on the lake with Justine’s side of the family, and we’re still hoping to make it work, though Rod and Marcia want to get together today too. I want to get out of the house, I need the breathing room. There’s too much going on inside these walls already. Picking up the trailer today is the last thing I want to do, but the yard needs attention after last night’s storms. Not bad here, but Tecumseh took a beating, downed trees, downed lines, no power. Typical.
There were two fires in Tecumseh. One of them I knew well, a place that had been there since before Jason and I moved to town, somewhere I used to go often. It burned to the ground. A family-owned shop, full of glass and games, run by the same family for years, growing right alongside the town. Between the fire and the insurance, who knows what they’ll do next. Buy, buy, buy. Money, money, money. It’s strange to watch a place tied to so many of my own memories reduced to a business decision, and it’s part of why I’m glad my life doesn’t run on that logic anymore. I have nothing to offer that world, and for once, that feels like relief instead of lack.
Today I could put something in the offering plate, bible study at nine-thirty, service at ten, if I go. I wanted to go yesterday, but it poured all day, lightning and all. I stayed in my spot instead, door open, listening to the birds and a gentle, constant shower.
Service is happening right now, and I’m not there. Not because I didn’t want to be, I had things to do. Got dressed, put my hair up, brushed my teeth, visited with Sherry, did the laundry and the dishwasher. All the ordinary things. Done, and good to go. So why do I feel like this? Because it’s still raining, and yesterday was the Fourth, heat, humidity, sweat, and bugs, with fireworks that didn’t go off until ten. An incredible show, out at Portage Lake. Somewhere I wouldn’t mind going back to.
I remember those days, watching fireworks in parks full of young families, kids running wild, laughing, without a real care in the world.
A time I wouldn’t want to return to. But I remember it fondly all the same.
Part Three, Some Kind of Plan
It finally stopped raining. Yesterday’s rain held off just long enough for the fireworks, then picked back up overnight and into this morning. By eleven, it was starting to mellow. I’m on the couch, watching, listening, feeling a little off, heat exhaustion catching up with me, maybe, after a long weekend. That heavy, overheated feeling didn’t lift until I got home last night, and then I woke up with heartburn that lasted all morning. I thought I might be sick, but a long, hot bath washed the day off me, and a good nap in my new spot left me rested before we headed back out to work the yard.
Jason mowed while I tended the garden, which had gotten a little overgrown. I cut back some of the greenery so the sunflowers would have room to bloom, and there are going to be a lot of them. Big and small, short and tall, yellow, yellow, yellow. The only yellow in my garden right now, since I don’t even have any yellow annuals yet. I noticed that this morning, walking to the end of the porch.
I also noticed how I was feeling, physically and mentally. Physically, I’m doing well; the weekend was a real test of comfort. Mentally, I feel free of the hurt and the distrust, free of the pain of not knowing. Free of feeling lied to, free of the blame, free of being called mental and delusional. Free of the medicine. Free of being wrong, because now I know things I didn’t before.
Freedom. My shoulders are relaxed. My head doesn’t feel heavy. My mind has let go. I’ve been set free from something that’s weighed on me for years.
So, here’s the hard question. What do I do now?
I know: I make a plan. Today feels like the first day of the rest of my life. There are choices ahead, plans to make and begin. I think a page has turned. I hope so, anyway. I can’t take another second of anything less. Things in my life are going to change again. They need to. This has been building for a while, and I’m finally starting to see results, both good and bad, and they’re helping me move forward.
It’s strange how, in a single second, your whole perception of the life you’ve been living can shift completely. Today, I want to start living from this moment forward. I wish I’d felt this way sooner, but I didn’t, and it’s now that counts.
So I’m making a plan. A plan to live the rest of my life, built on everything I’m learning, something new, every day. Sherry sends me a different prayer every time she finds one that fits, and I love reading them. I’m going to my first prayer meeting on Wednesday.
I’m learning about myself too, something I’ve been doing for a while, but it feels different this time. I feel different, all through me. That’s how I felt yesterday, and today I feel it again, whether it’s from sleeping on the couch or from my hip, which has been aching. I have a physical with Sarah at the end of the month, and I’m not even going to mention it to her. No time, no patience, no money for extra steps right now. I need to focus on the plan instead.
The 27th is coming, a day full of doctors, and also Jason’s 55th birthday. “Double nickels,” he’ll say, first thing, I already know it. We’ll celebrate that weekend, most likely, the usual: food, cards, games, and golf if the money allows. The boys should chip in, honestly. I have two appointments that day, one at two and one at four-thirty, so it’s a ways off still, three weeks, minus a day.
Tonight, I’m going to barre. It might help, physically and mentally. It feels like a chore I have to push through, I don’t really want to go, I’m overwhelmed, overstimulated, just over all of it. But that’s part of what I’ve learned through this whole process.
My dad was right. I see it now. He used to tell me good things come in threes, he even showed me once, during an Easter egg hunt in Dunsmuir. I only found three eggs that day. My parents had hidden real eggs alongside plastic ones filled with candy or pennies. I opened one, then another, maybe three. I don’t quite remember. But I remember what he told me.
Good things come in threes.