It is amazing how silence can clear your thoughts. I have spent this day alone. I have meditated and written in my journal, I have prayed and cried. But I have also come to clarity on many things. Yesterday it was sunny and I was overwhelmed with the news of Steve's surgery. It is good news, we have a surgery date and it will just be in a few weeks. But it was a lot of phone calls and discussion with family. It is spring almost, and with the the breaking of spring I can experience symptoms. I stayed home today while Steve went off island in order to preserve and heal my energies so I can go to work tomorrow. It is important to manage myself in this way to know that I won’t be overtaken by anxiety and feelings that are really hard to describe. I call them symptoms, but there is so much involved with how I feel in my body and my mind. I become tearful, afraid, overwhelmed, and I usually have some physical symptoms of tightening in my face, and a feeling of almost being high.

I realized I have needed a day of being by myself for sometime. It is only seven full hours of alone time, but it feels really good to be alone with my thoughts. I came to some clarity about a manuscript that I would like to publish, and I started a Go Fund Me campaign to raise money for the cost of the company who has already approved my book. This feels good to take this into my own hands and to not abandon the writing that I put so much work into. It is a project that I can be proud of and gives me purpose.

The day is grey and the rain just keeps falling. It has been grey for several weeks, though we had a minor break of sun yesterday. I feel spring on the horizon, and this both excites me and makes me cautious. Last year I had a break around my birthday and that is in less than two weeks. It is interesting when the year anniversary arrives of such an event how you can feel reminiscent of the year before. I had some major changes this last year. I left my job, and I started taking a new medication that resulted in some weight gain. I am glad for the peace of the meds, and I do not regret taking them, but I have some work to do to get myself in shape. I am doing that and I have spent the last four weeks at the gym, trying to make my body strong. The trick is not overdoing it, and I must be gentle with myself for so many reasons. As I have said, it is a gentle balance when you have an illness as I have. Too much of anything can be a recipe for disaster.

This makes for an interesting life drama. I have been built on an identity of achieving. The first seven years of my life I developed who I was, and my story is that if I could accomplish something, anything, the world would be at peace and I would be loved. So as I try to accomplish things in my adult life, I come up against my illness, which is another major part of who I am. The two natures fight each other, and this results in tears over the fact that I will never be loved because I will not ever to be able to achieve in the normal settings of work, exercise, or school. These are the main ones. At the same time my illness is a blessing because truly, achieving at these things will not bring me happiness, as it is a false truth that I will be loved if I achieve. I have found a place for God in my life, and I can have Faith and know that I am loved without these senses of accomplishment. Real accomplishment comes through accepting and loving myself as I am. I am learning this and it is a road of healing and discovery.