No Idea

This has been a good week in some ways and a lousy one in others. On the plus side, I walked nearly 10,000 steps and did not collapse into a fibro flare afterward. In fact, this week has been harder mentally than physically.  Thursday was nearly a perfect day aside from getting lost on the way back from getting my sugar checked. Even that turned into a positive because I ended up walking over 9,700 steps and used my bus pass for the first time in a long while. But that was also when the bad luck for the week seemed to begin. When I got home, my key would not work in the front door, so I had to use my phone to get into the building. I assumed it was a one-time problem and just sent a message to Ruth to let her know. Friday I stayed home and did food prep using what I had left in the freezer. I managed to make enough dinners to get me through to Thursday, which felt like a small victory in itself. Other than being tired from all the walking the day before, it was not a bad day. ...

  The theme of May is nostalgia and memory. I chose it because Mother’s Day is this month, and while working through my poetry, my mother appeared once again, bringing with her something I had not fully realized before. A part of me that is also her. We shared a history that women of neither generation openly acknowledged or talked about. I wish that silence had passed with time, but it hasn’t. There is a statistic I have remembered for years, one that still makes me terribly sad. One in three women will experience sexual violence in their lifetime. It is called many things, but when it happens to a child, it is still violence. It is still a violation.  I have five granddaughters. Statistically, two or three of them may experience or has experienced some form of that harm in their lives. That thought weighs heavily on me sometimes. I am not entirely sure why this is where my mind went tonight. This week was supposed to be about “what stayed,” and at first all I could think abo...

Tests, quiet fear, and the small ways I kept going while I waited.  The type of adventure I have been on this week is a little different than the others. It started with a pain in my left shoulder. I assumed it was just a simple rotator cuff issue and didn’t think much about it. I worked around it, took something for the pain, and carried on. I do regular self breast exams after my run-in with breast cancer a few years ago, and I noticed a strange texture along the skin that connects my underarm to my breast—on the left side, the side that was operated on. I noticed it, but I didn’t really notice it. I told myself it was probably just skin changing with age… but only on the left side. I didn’t go to the doctor until I put on a bra and saw the swelling on the outside of my left breast. That was the moment it shifted from something I could ignore to something I couldn’t. The doctor didn’t seem too concerned, but he sent me for a mammogram. The next day, they called and said there ...

March has a theme for me: Recovery is not a reward. It is part of the program.   That idea sounds simple when written on a page, but living it is something else entirely. For a long time I treated recovery like a break you earned after doing the real work. Push hard, finish the task, then rest afterward if you had to. That approach worked well enough before fibromyalgia entered the picture. With fibromyalgia, it doesn’t. What I’m learning slowly is that recovery isn’t something that happens after the work. Recovery is part of the work. Protecting it is what makes everything else possible. Since January I’ve been experimenting with what recovery actually looks like in my real life. Not the textbook version, but the daily version. The one that shows up when I’m deciding whether to go to class, whether to walk to the YMCA, or whether today needs to be a heating-pad and stretching kind of day. Some patterns are beginning to appear. Learning to Read Pain Instead of Fighting It For most...

  I have begun to notice that if I create a plan sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. When it works it includes space to breathe and rest. When it doesn’t, it’s because there is absolutely no structure — or very little. For a long time, I thought the problem was over-planning . I assumed that needing structure meant I was trying to control too much. But what I’m starting to see is the opposite. The plans that fail aren’t the structured ones. They’re the vague ones. The hopeful ones. The ones built on the assumption that I’ll “just manage.” When I leave my days too open, I drift. I underestimate fatigue. I say yes without checking tomorrow’s cost. I end up reacting instead of choosing. But when I build in shape — not rigidity, just shape — my days feel steadier.   Shape looks like this: A recovery hour placed on purpose. A walk measured in time instead of distance. Meal components stored in a way that protects future energy. Evenings that are intentionally simple. ...

 Have you tried the Meta AI with Llama 4 in Facebook Messenger. I only discovered it recently and today I decided to pretend it was a friend I could talk to about my Mental Health. It is interesting because this is the first thing I've done besides read and play my game in a couple of months. It always seems to go like that when the hot weather comes. I have no idea where I should start. With the meds I guess. I went off my medication sometime near the first of the year, I just could not connect with my doctor and I gave permission to the pharmacy to renew it but it's been a week. I am out of Ciprilex also known as Lexapro. The withdrawal symptoms are below and of the six of them I have experienced all of them.  https://www.verywellmind.com/lexapro-withdrawal-symptoms-timeline-and-treatment-4707910 I did this once already this year and I am not happy I'm going through it again. Medication has become a huge hassle, I keep forgetting to take the ones I do have.  It seems th...

 I am back on my medication, the last two months have been a wild ride if my writing is anything to go by. At first I felt light and airy like I finally had a purpose in my life. It changed quickly between the stress  of caring for this building and the yukyness of the weather. Even the visit to Rob's didn't help in some ways it made it worse because there was nothing for me to do but think. I no longer care about much of anything, that is what the medication does, puts a muffler around me so I feel nothing. I am trying to pack to move upstairs but it is slow going. I just can't find the energy or the interest. Today as I was working on the 5 x 5 I was thinking I don't care about any of this I should just give it away. Myles suggests doing a yard sale this year with me doing the posters and him doing everything else. I don't want to hang on to any of this stuff, none of it. Its all pipe dreams, things I'll never get to because I simply have lost interest in ever...

 Coming to ground touching down looking around I am here where I should be. Touching down looking around I am found I flourish where I should be Looking around I am found in my place I am home where I should be Coming to ground I look around I have found my reason to be where I am. Well that was interesting those words found their way to my hands without spending much time in my head. I am glad and for the first time I feel like I have finally reached my reason for being on this planet, in this town, in this building. So many roads lead me back here where I first found happiness. Short though the story may be I met my ex-husband on the front steps of this church and for 5 years I was happy. I still do not know for sure when that changed but I think it was on the trip we took out to BC to visit a friend of ours and ended up staying for a couple of years. Everything changed after that between him and I and I do not know why. Not the topic I was planning but it is preying on my mind s...

 That is how fairy tales start and I wish the last week was just a story! I am a disciple of Aphrodite  and for years I did my spells as women for thousands of years have done on my back. As age creeps up on me I no longer have that option open to me so I opened my heart and my home as a place of acceptance for those who have no home of their own. I do not regret my decision except to those who abuse the options I offer. This story is about one such person she calls herself Cash/Ash depending on who she is talking to. Her name on the street is "No Pants". I do not know how long she has been on the street though she appears to be in her mid-twenties so upwards of a decade possibly. She does not wear anything to cover her privates as far as I can tell so that she doesn't have to find a bathroom. When she needs to go she just goes like an animal would. At first she seemed reasonably mentally stable aside from that little issue mentioned above. I treated her as I did any othe...

You say that I do not understand what it is like but I wonder if you do? You laugh at the pain of being molested how dare you laugh at another s pain? It isn't funny at all but you find it hilarious. You think calling other people big back is ok, it isn't really fat shaming but it is. You are cruel on purpose, saying things to people to make them feel bad about themselves. Why? What do you get out of making others feel bad? You literally don't care about anyone else, a friend gets burned and you have no apparent compassion for them. Why? Are they really a friend or just someone you have claimed as one? A person should not treat their friends like they are there just for you to ridicule while not being alone. Why? I have tried to understand that many things have happened in your life that caused you some mental pain and hurting other people is how you cope but I don't understand why that was your choice. There were so many ways you could have done to deal with your perce...

 It started simply enough, a mistaken identity and a guilty conscience, many of you can relate I suspect. Since the person in question is a 12 year old female related by blood it might be even more understandable by some of you. It gave me a big shock I'll tell you, so much so that I went overboard, something I try not to do but it happens. With tears in my eyes yet feeling like I was laughing not crying, the guilty conscience took control. I made a prayer and started the procedure to bring her some stability, except she likes things the way they are. I inquired about a two bedroom in the building that wouldn't require me to pack everything up to move it, the only downside was that it was upstairs, I kinda like my first floor apartment, I've been here since a year after the building opened, I was next door before that. That aside I though two bedrooms so we both get some privacy and quiet away from each other and I can make sure she goes to school and gets fed. That it was ...

 if you are cursed? Yes it is a dumb question in an age where belief in magic is not strong save in the intentions for a better life than the one you are living. Yet... I am tired and listless, my energy is up and down like a light switch. Ditto my viewpoint on life. Sometimes I wonder just what is still keeping me here on earth instead of free in the aether. Not my kids and not my grandchildren not E, they don't need me any more. I do not need to be alive but here I sit anyway. I know what I should do, I even know the difference between should and must. I am discontent with my own laziness and procrastination and yet... the musts and shoulds are societies rules not mine. I am tired of trying to be what I should be and doing what I should be doing but even the musts have no power to move me. All I want to do is sleep away the days, at least in my dreams I am happy I think. I think because I do not know, I no longer recall my dreams not even the ones you have in the between times ju...