leaving me only
broken
and lonely
and not knowing which way to turn

Broken.

I think my marriage may be over.

Loss.

15 years ago this month I had a miscarriage. No one knows. I was two months along, alone, scared and not wanting to be pregnant.

When I started bleeding I cried, and I couldn't tell if I was happy or sad.

10 years ago this month my ob-gyn put me on bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy that would result in my daughter. The whole time I was expecting her I dreamed of a baby boy with dark brown eyes and hair.

At the first follow up after she was born, I was advised that I shouldn't have any more children if I was interested in living to parent the one I had currently.

Now I look back, and I'm so sad about that miscarriage. Though there is no rhyme or reason to it, no logic or sense at all, I believe that that was my baby boy.

I never knew I wanted a son until I learned I would never bear one.

Struggles.

I am struggling with a lot of things right now. My illness, my weight, my marriage, parenting, housecleaning. Nothing is coming easily. I get so very tired of having to work so hard at everything.

Hell, even blogging this my mind is jumping in, criticizing the language (see that black and white language, all or nothing thinking is unhealthy and wrong).

I hurt. My body hurts. My mind hurts. Thinking hurts. I feel trapped, lonely, desperate, wracked with despair, and broken. I feel weak, ugly, fat, crippled and useless.

Life feels alien, the way walking into a strange church for a wedding in some different religion feels. As if I am a stranger in my own skin. Things taste wrong, sound wrong. Textures feel wrong.

Desperation, despair, desolation, other things that begin with the letter D. And Cake Wrecks. I've been reading the Cake Wrecks website obsessively for a few days now, because it makes me laugh. Really, honestly laugh.

The power of pills.

I'm not exactly happy about my pill situation - on top of the psychiatric medication I've started this year, my psychiatrist keeps suggesting this supplement and that supplement, and now I'm taking about five things daily, which bugs me.

It's hard to feel healthy when breakfast is oatmeal, oj, and a cup of pills.

But...... it's really helping. My mood is stabler and happier on a consistent basis then it has been ever before in my life. I'm sleeping a bit better (there's nothing in this world that could make me sleep well), and all around things are improving.

So, I need to learn to how to over come this feeling of pill-quantity induced ill health, and while I work on that, work on figuring out how use the nutritional parts of my cooking program, so that I can eventually get my various nutrition needs from meals instead of pharmacies.

Today is a good day.

Today I have recorded and shared memories of a pleasant time in my life.
Today I have crafted with my daughter, teaching skills that give me pleasure.
Today I have baked, filling my home with goodly scents and a feeling of worth.
Today I have cleaned, creating order and comfort in my home.
Today I have planned, foreseeing what is to come and preparing for it so that when it comes a hard time will be easier.

Today is a good day.

Knowing when to quit.

It's one of the most difficult pieces of advice to accept - to quit doing something that is too hard. We're taught from earliest childhood that "winners never quit, and quitters never win" , that "the only sin is lack of trying", that "if at first you don't succeed, try and try again."

But sometimes, you need to quit. You need to stop doing what creates only pain.

That's what I'm looking at right now. I am - was - a backpacker, and there's a lot of pride and sense of self tied up in my being a person who backpacks.

But these days, it hurts. I suffered a leg injury a couple of years ago, and spent a big chunk of time in physical therapy getting my ability to walk back to normal. There is, however, a big difference between walking around town or hiking with a daypack and compacting the whole of life into 35 lbs, strapping it on, and heading out into the woods for days on end.

I just got back from a backpacking trip - 3 days, short 4 and five mile days, 33lbs, trekking poles to help compensate for the leg weakness I know I have. A planned shake down hike for the long vacation hike I've got planned for August.

And it was no good. Even with the physical training I've been doing, even with the additional physical therapy work to make sure that the joints and all did what they should, it was no good. Better, yes, much better then last time I tried this hike, but still..... I hurt too much to be able to enjoy it. I didn't hurt so much I can't move afterwards, which is an improvement.

But it was no fun. It was mile after mile of low-grade agony that didn't let up, and stole every view, despoiled every sudden wildflower, and left me weeping at the end of each day.

Maybe if I only hiked for being to say I got the miles done, this would be enough. That I could do the miles.

It is time, I think, for me to try and find a way to be happy without being a person who backpacks. It's a very challenging thing to try and do, especially right now, when I have train tickets, and motel reservations and child care arranged for a three week hike that I want to do so badly... A hike that I have dreamed about being able to take for years.

A hike that I am - despite having trained and focused on preparing for it since January - physically incapable of hiking.

I am not strong enough to say today that today is a good day.

I am strong enough to when it is time to quit.

Despair.

Today I am alive.
Today I am making chicken stock with two chickens.
Today I am drinking tea.
Today I have a fountain pen to write with.
Today I can think about today.
Today I am alive.

There is despair. There is grief. There is anger, and loneliness.

But today I alive.
Today I can drink tea.
Today I can make chicken stock with two chickens.

So today is a good day.

Happiness and Fear

I am doing something today, right now, that I haven't done in many many years. I am consciously listening to music. Not music as an afterthought on a radio variety show, not music as an aspect of a film, not music just to add sound to the air.

It can be frightening to stretch past ones habits like this. Frightening because of the unfamiliarity, because of the threat of newness.

And frightening, for me, because of mental illness. I have clinical depression, and pleasure in newness scares me because - as desirable as it is to be happy, as good as it is to enjoy what is new and different - it is also a potential symptom of a worsening of my disease - a symptom of mania.

It is, I think, an irrational fear for me to have - my diagnosis does not include mania, and I trust the physicians who interpret my experience for me. I believe - I must believe - that they are able to accurately characterize my difficulties.

Still it is difficult to choose this happiness. It is very challenging to let myself feel as good as I feel, because I have no gauge for it's normalcy.

None the less, there it is. Today I am listening to music, and I am happy.

Today is a good day.

On Today

Today I have rested, and read, and played.

Today is a good day.

Good food makes me happy.

We ate lunch out today, at a Thai restaurant that just recently opened in our town. It was a wonderful experience -- the food was well prepared, well seasoned, and well presented, the service was great and the atmosphere was pleasing.

The food. Fresh well treated ingredients, carefully cooked and with every flavour just right to sing in the mouth. The classic Thai trio of sweet sour and salty was in full play.

Good food is a pleasure in it's own right, but the happiness it gives me goes beyond the pleasure of the physical. I enjoy understanding my food - knowing why the broccoli is that particular shade of pure brilliant emerald green, why the tiny clams are ruffled along the edges, why they are tiny. I enjoy seeing high quality ingredients cooked with care and respect so that they shine with their own qualities.

To know my food, and to know that it is well cooked, and that the person cooking it knew it, and knew how to cook it well, and did so.

Good food makes me happy.

On Today

Today my daughter called me from the other room to come look at the "most beautiful sunset I ever saw".

Today my daughter and I sat and talked together while watching the sun set.

Today we sat at the table all together for lunch, said a blessing over our food, and ate and talked together.

Today I organized all the tea in my tea cupboard, and put out the tea bags in a colourful wicker basket on the counter.

Today is a good day.

The Contradiction of the Orange.

This time of year I bake with oranges a lot. Oranges are in season, plump and juicy and fragrant. I enjoy the meditative chopping of orange peel for candying, and the spray of oil from the peel of a fresh orange. I love the taste. And the scent of an orange stuck with cloves hanging over the stove...

Oranges fulfill my winter need for sunniness, glowing in the glass bowl on the table, perfuming my kitchen, swirling zesty through the center of the saffron orange sweet buns on Yule morning.

It bemuses and pleases me that this sun-ripe citrus is at its best in the darkest coldest times. It is a coincidence of place and palate that never fails to make me smile.

On Today

Today I have created some order out of some chaos. Today I have read poetry to my daughter. Today I have filled my kitchen with the scent of oranges and cranberries as I bake. Today I have rested. Today I have knit, making progress on a hat that will warm my husband in the cold.

Today is a good day.

On Illness

Illness imposes luxury on us - the luxury of sleep, of sunlight across the bed at hours we are normally up and busy. The luxury of being cared for - brought toast made by a child, given a cold drink that someone went out and got just for you. The luxury of time to think slowly - indeed, illness often forces us to think slowly by stealing away the energy needed for panic and worry.

I am never happy to be ill, but I find that it isn't not impossible to be happy while ill.

Five things

Sun hot tomatoes

the scent of lemon

knitting quietly at night

friendship

chamomile tea at bedtime

Harvest

The first harvest of tomatoes is in - five twee cherry tomatoes, three yellow and two red.
The deliciousness of summer distilled into a single sweet explosive bite.

Today is a good day.

Happiness

I believe that there are two kinds of happiness -- a deep soul happiness that allows you to live with quiet contentedness even through the hard times, and a welling joy that is most often lured out by outside events.

When you have that deep soul happiness, it is much easier for that welling joy to appear in your life.

I think that often people become confused, and believe that the welling joy is the only kind of happiness there is. Perhaps because the deep soul happiness is so rare that we do not know how to recognize it.

On Today

Today the first tomato came in. Today I made tabouli, a food I love beyond reason or speech to tell.

Today my daughter snuggled on my lap under a gaudy neon sunset and we sang 'Well done, Sister Suffragette' to each other.

Today I have played, and worked, and taught, and learned and laughed.

Today is a good day.

On Today

Today has been a good day.

Today I have celebrated, today I have worked, today I have played. Today I have finished a piece of knitting. Today I have floated in the scent of tomato and read sweet words. Today I have prayed.

Today is a good day.