Collected Moments

When we talk about our summer, we talk about big things. The first beach day. The family barbecue. The vacation everyone remembers years later. But that is not summer at all.

Summer is built from moments. Trying on a new bathing suit, discovering a new café, or returning to an old haunt. We remember fireflies and the sounds of a summer night with crickets and June bugs and, if you live in the right place, the bullfrogs' nightly song. That is what the last two weeks reminded me of: moments from my childhood remembered today.

The walk to the local beach, swimming, always swimming. I loved the water. The first ice cream cone from the local ice cream shop. As I grew older, it began to include the taste of new strawberries fresh from the plant and the vanilla iced coffee that became a fixture in my summer life. The first road trip to anywhere was also a treat. I've relived those moments every year, this year included.

Those moments may not seem important when they happen, but they are often the things we remember long after the larger events have faded. This has been my focus this week: Seeing, with a capital S, all the little things that make up summer.

Some of those moments have come through my camera lens. A rain-covered oak leaf caught my attention after a morning shower. The water droplets transformed something ordinary into something worth stopping for. It was only a leaf, but for a few minutes it became the entire focus of my attention. The many shades of green crowd around, asking to be noticed. The world is bursting with life if you take a moment to look beyond yourself and into the natural world around you.

Don't get me wrong, bad things happen too: careless fires, spoiled food, and sometimes something that sours the mood. But if you look up and out, you can always find something that brings you joy.

Other moments arrived through routine.

Aquafit has become one of the rhythms of my week. The class itself matters, but so do the pieces around it. The walk to the YMCA. The familiar faces. The relief of moving in water rather than fighting gravity on land. The few quiet minutes in the hot tub afterward.

 None of these moments would make a headline. Together, however, they tell the story of a summer that is unfolding one ordinary day at a time.

This week also included errands, appointments, and unexpected frustrations. A damaged birth certificate meant another round of paperwork. Appointments brought waiting rooms and uncertainty. There were moments when I felt tired, discouraged, or simply overwhelmed by the number of things demanding attention. Yet even within those days, there were small things worth keeping.

A successful photograph. I managed quite a collection of those, from the oak leaf to a dress I found at a yard sale to all the green of the world as it exists in summer. The purples and yellows of late spring flowers followed, or mingled with, the pinks and reds of summer blooms. The blue sky and drifting clouds are there too. They are all things I've collected with my camera.

Summer lives in our senses.

The sounds and songs of summer are there too. A shared laugh with my daughter. Crickets and June bugs. Children at play. Music blasting in the air. They are all sounds that surround me day and night. The rain on the windowpane is in there too, and everywhere the laughter of people simply enjoying the sun.

The taste of strawberries I savour. The iced coffee that is my everyday order from Tims and the ones I make myself. That is summer. Ice cream, all kinds of ice cream, and recently a place called Crumbl with the most delicious cookies I've ever tasted. Salads of all sorts blend flavours beyond compare. They too are part of summer.

The smell of newly cut grass and lilacs perfumes the air. Other flowers too; their scents mingle and linger, transformed and strengthened by the summer sun. Suntan oil and OFF are in there as well, but I prefer the perfumes from the flowers.

The velvety feel of peony petals. The tickle as I allow my hands to float through the leaves as I walk. The softness of grass beneath my feet is a favourite, but so too is the slight burning sensation of walking on hot pavement. Soft dresses comfort me, and the elasticity of my swimsuit always makes me smile because it means that soon I'll be in the water. Nothing compares to that feeling except maybe a cool shower after a long walk.

The older I get, the more I realize that collecting moments is a practice of attention. The moments are always there. The challenge is noticing them.

When I began this month's Summer Threads theme, I imagined gathering small signs of the season. What I am discovering instead is that I am gathering evidence of a life being lived, of days that are full of sensation and pleasure, and of moments spent with family too long ignored.

A life filled with appointments and errands, family worries and household chores, cups of coffee and photographs, pool visits and quiet evenings. A life that is made meaningful not by its grand achievements but by its accumulation of ordinary days.

 It is not a perfect life. It is not always an exciting life. There are difficult moments, like filling out forms that require me to put my mental pain on display, or days when worry and uncertainty take up more space than I would like. Yet it is also a life rich with small pleasures, familiar comforts, and the people I love. My gratitude knows no bounds for the bounty Mother Nature shares at this time of year and for the reminder that even ordinary days can hold moments worth collecting.

That is what my journal pages have been reflecting this month. Envelopes filled with scraps, photographs tucked between pages, notes written quickly before they are forgotten. None of it seems particularly significant on its own.

Together, however, they become a record. Proof that these days happened. Proof that I was here. Proof that even the quietest seasons leave traces behind, and proof that I am alive and living my best life within this season.

As summer continues, I hope to keep collecting these moments. Not because they are extraordinary, but because they are not. The small things matter. The ordinary things matter. Perhaps that is what a season really becomes in the end—not a collection of major events, but a gathering of moments we cared enough to notice.

The Small Days Count

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.

As the weekend went on, though, the front door still was not fixed. Each day I sent another message to the building manager, and tenants started stopping me to ask about the problem or tell me their own experiences with the door. I also sent an email to her and her boss because it was becoming clear this was no longer a minor issue.

Then on Sunday, when I went to do laundry, I found a broken crack pipe outside the laundry room. After that I checked the hallway connecting our wing to the other side of the building and found a pile of garbage blocking part of the fire door area. Again, I contacted the building manager.

 Later that same day I discovered someone had stuffed paper into the latch section of the outside door so people could come and go freely without needing a key or access code. That was the moment the situation stopped feeling frustrating and started feeling genuinely unsafe. I live in an area where there are a lot of crack houses nearby, and with the building now easily accessible, outsiders could come and go as they pleased. Many people in this building do not lock their apartment doors during the day. Suddenly the possibility of break-ins did not feel abstract anymore.

Sunday was also Mother’s Day, which always brings its own wave of dysthymia with it. Physically I was fine, but depression has a way of making everything feel heavier. Mother’s Day usually leaves me struggling for a few days because of my mother, now gone, and the complicated history between us.

By Monday the depression was still sitting heavily on me, so I stayed home from the Y and decided to work on my poetry instead. Unfortunately, the poem I chose to work on was one about living inside depression at its worst. Unsurprisingly, that did not exactly help.

Physically, aside from a stupid headache, I am okay. Mentally, not so much.

Which brings me to today and the pièce de résistance for the week. I tried to contact the Landlord and Tenant Board and instead ended up being scammed by a site pretending to be legal help. On top of everything else, I now need to replace my bank access card.

I know situations like this eventually pass, but sometimes when I am in the middle of them I have a hard time remembering that there is always a way around or through even difficult circumstances. “This too will pass” is something I have lived with for a long time now. Sometimes it is the only thing holding hope open long enough for things to begin easing again.

 And the small wins — walking nearly 10,000 steps, preparing meals for the week, continuing to show up for my life even while mentally struggling — they matter. They count.

Sometimes far more than the bad days do, even when the bad days temporarily seem louder.

What Stayed -What I Chose to Keep

 

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 about was mental pain. Maybe it is because this is Mental Health Month. Maybe it is because memory does not separate itself neatly into pleasant and unpleasant things. Our memories are often built from the moments that shaped us most deeply, and for many women those are not always happy memories.

What happened changes you. I know that now. It changed my mother. It changed me. It changed my daughter. Trauma leaves behind fear, anger, shame, and mistrust that can touch nearly every part of life if we let it.

For a long time I believed that was the only thing that stayed.

But as I kept writing, I realized something else stayed too.

Compassion stayed.

I often say that I do not know how to love properly, but people tell me I have a big heart. What I understand best is compassion — recognizing the pain in others because I know what pain feels like myself.

 I try to listen more than I speak. I try not to judge people too quickly because I know how much hidden suffering people carry. I give hugs instead of harsh words whenever I can. Sometimes my words still come out wrong, and when they do I think about it for hours afterward because I genuinely do not want to hurt anyone.

 My father used to call helping others because you can “being a good neighbour.” That stayed too.

So did determination.

People have called me stubborn all my life, but I think much of that stubbornness is really resilience. I decided long ago that I would never live only as a victim of what happened to me. Life has given me many setbacks, including cancer, but somehow I have continued moving forward through all of them.

And maybe that is part of what stayed as well — the refusal to let suffering make me cruel.

I remember when I told CAS about what had happened to my daughter. My mother was scandalized by it, but my daughter protected her own daughter fiercely from experiencing the same thing. That matters to me. The silence did not continue unchanged. Something shifted between generations, even if imperfectly.

That realization may be the most important thing I have learned.

We are not our history.

Our experiences shape us, yes. They leave marks. They influence how we move through the world. But history does not have to repeat itself forever, and pain does not have to consume every corner of our lives.

We still have choices.

 I may not always be able to prevent painful things from happening, but I can choose what I do afterward. I can seek counseling. I can learn coping strategies. I can remind myself that what happened was not my fault. I can remember that I am not alone in suffering and that I do not have to spend the rest of my life trapped inside old pain.

What stayed was not only hurt.

Compassion stayed.
Resilience stayed.
Choice stayed.

And after everything, I still want to be kind.

Not the Kind of Adventure I Expected

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 was some thickening and that I needed to come back for an ultrasound. That was on Monday. 

There’s a space that opens up when you hear something like that. Everything keeps moving—appointments get booked, days go on—but underneath it, there’s this quiet thread of what if. I didn’t go to the Y this week. I needed the time to sit with it, to be quiet, to not have to be anywhere or do anything for anyone else.

Instead, I worked on my poems. I didn’t think of it that way at the time, but looking back, that’s how I was handling it. Sitting with words that didn’t quite fit, turning them over, letting them be messy, staying with something until it felt a little more true. It was something I could hold onto while everything else felt uncertain.

Yesterday was the ultrasound. When the doctor told me it was only a swollen sebaceous gland, the relief was immediate—physical. I remember making prayer hands on the bed without even thinking about it. Just… thank you. I don’t know much about sebaceous glands, but I do know they are not cancer, and right now, that’s enough. I’m nine months away from being five years cancer free.

 This week didn’t look like much from the outside, but it was. It was a week of waiting, of quiet fear, of trying not to get ahead of myself, of finding small ways to stay steady while I didn’t know. The poems, the pauses, even the decision not to go to the Y—those weren’t just small choices. They were how I got through it. I think this is what a small adventure looks like sometimes—not going somewhere new, just staying with yourself while you wait to find out.

I’m still here.
Still paying attention.
Still finding my way through, one small thing at a time. 

🌿Protecting Recovery

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.

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Learning to Read Pain Instead of Fighting It

For most of my life pain meant one thing: something to push through.

If something hurt, the answer was simple. Work harder. Ignore it. Finish what you started. That mindset worked for many years, but it doesn’t work very well with fibromyalgia.

One of the biggest shifts I’m trying to make now is learning to treat pain differently. Instead of treating it like an obstacle, I’m learning to treat it like information.

That doesn’t mean it feels helpful. Most days it still feels like an interruption. But when I look honestly at the pattern of my flare-ups, I can see that ignoring the signals is usually what leads to the crash cycle. The harder I push through, the more my body pushes back later.

I often find myself overriding those signals anyway. Fighting my own mind gets quite exhausting sometimes. One day it tells me “You can do more. You did once. You can do it again.” The next day it says “Are you nuts? This is too much.” Both voices sound convincing when they show up.

But the lesson keeps repeating itself.

Pain is not an obstacle, even though it often feels like one. Pain is information. It’s my body’s way of saying that something needs attention. Learning to listen to that message is becoming part of protecting my recovery.

 

I’m also discovering that listening requires a level of body awareness I haven’t always had. Sometimes the signals are obvious, like pain in my shoulders or back. Other times they show up as fogginess, headaches, or just the sense that my energy is draining faster than usual.

There has been a disconnect between my body’s reactions and my mind’s ability to notice them. Rebuilding that connection is part of the process. Recently I came across something called somatic tracking, which encourages paying calm, curious attention to body sensations instead of reacting to them with fear or frustration. The idea is not to force the sensation away but simply to observe it and remind yourself that you are safe.

It’s a small practice, but it fits with what I’m learning. If recovery is going to be protected, I need to become better at noticing what my body is trying to tell me.

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Discovering the Pattern

Since January I’ve been actively experimenting with what works for me.

Right now the pattern that seems to work best is one day of activity followed by one or two recovery days. It’s not the rhythm I would have chosen, but it’s the rhythm my body seems willing to cooperate with.

February was a good reminder of why this matters. External busyness can easily disrupt the balance. When I try to do more because things look manageable in the moment, the effects usually show up later as fatigue or increased pain.

What I’m learning is that consistency matters more than ambition.

 

In February I attended about two YMCA classes per week. It wasn’t the increase I had hoped for, but it was steady. And steady counts.

For March I’m hoping to attempt three classes per week and include the walk to and from the YMCA, while continuing to monitor how my body responds. I also plan to participate in two walking events: a small march for International Women’s Day and a longer walk I’ve been using as a 5K test.

Even as I write that, I can see that the plan itself is part of the experiment. Will I manage the whole distance or do I need more practice? I suspect it will be the latter, and that’s fine. Recovery for me right now means continuing trial and error.

It means treating pain and fatigue as information and keeping track of what I’ve done so I can see the patterns more clearly. It means resting when things get too bad instead of pushing until total collapse like I did in February.

Recovery is not about doing nothing. It’s about maintaining a rhythm that allows progress to happen without triggering a crash cycle.

---

Protecting Capacity Before Expanding It

Of course, the goal isn’t to stay exactly where I am.

I would like to expand my capacity over time. Ideally I would move toward needing only one recovery day between activity days. Not because I want to push through pain, but because I want to gradually build endurance.

But growth only works if recovery is protected first.

 

The 5K walk I’ve been thinking about is a good example. When I first imagined it, I didn’t factor in the distance to and from home. What looked like a 5K quickly turned into six or eight kilometres.

That realization forced me to pause. Not because the goal itself is unreasonable, but because the timing might be.

If I push ahead anyway, I will probably spend the last week of March exactly the way I spent the last week of February — tired, sore, and paying for it afterward.

So the adjustment becomes part of the process. Maybe the walk gets shortened. Maybe it becomes a test of progress rather than a finish line. Adjusting the plan isn’t failure. It’s simply responding to the information my body is giving me.

I’m also experimenting with the idea of making days ten percent gentler. Sometimes that means catching the bus home instead of walking both directions. Sometimes it means using a prepped meal instead of cooking from scratch. Sometimes it simply means lowering my expectations and accepting that I don’t have to do everything on my list.

Small adjustments like that reduce friction. And reducing friction protects capacity.

My goal is not to eliminate pain or fatigue completely. Right now that isn’t realistic. My goal is to build a version of normal that feels steady and sustainable.

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Closing Thoughts

Protecting recovery is turning out to be less about dramatic changes and more about quiet adjustments.

Listening when my body signals that it needs a pause.
Choosing consistency instead of bursts of ambition.
Allowing progress to happen slowly rather than forcing it to happen quickly.

Recovery used to feel like something that interrupted my plans. Now I’m beginning to see it differently. Recovery is what allows the plans to exist in the first place.

If I want to expand what I can do, I have to protect the foundation that supports it. That foundation is recovery.

Slow and steady might not look impressive from the outside, but for me it’s becoming the path toward something much more valuable: a life that feels steady, sustainable, and possible.

 

What I’m Learning About Stabilizing My Days

 

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.

I realized that if recovery is important, it can’t live in my head — it has to live in my phone. Good intentions aren’t enough. Reminders, alarms, and anchors turn intention into something visible. If it isn’t scheduled, I tend to negotiate it away.

This week, that structure showed up in small ways. I went to class on a day I wasn’t sure I could manage it — and instead of collapsing afterward, I had a protein shake ready and a quiet evening planned. I set up medication reminders so I’m not relying on memory. I placed posture resets into my day instead of hoping I’d remember. None of it is impressive. But all of it reduces friction.

None of these are dramatic changes. They’re small design decisions. But I’m noticing something important: when I include space to rest inside the structure, the structure holds. When I leave everything loose, I end up more tired, not less.

That has surprised me.

I used to think freedom meant fewer plans. Now I’m beginning to think freedom might mean thoughtful ones — the kind that assume my energy is limited and fluctuating, not endless and dependable.

I’m also noticing that the plans that work don’t push me to expand. They protect me from collapse. They stabilize.

And stabilization, at this stage of life, may be more valuable than expansion.

I’m not trying to build bigger days. I’m trying to build days that don’t undo me.

As we move toward March, I find myself thinking more about recovery, about endurance that is gentle, about growth that is steady instead of dramatic. I don’t have it fully figured out. I’m simply watching what works and what doesn’t — and adjusting.

As of today, what works includes structure with breathing room.

That feels like something worth continuing.

I don’t know that this is a formula. It’s simply what I’m noticing right now.

When there is no structure, I feel scattered. When there is too much pressure, I feel trapped. But when there is gentle structure — with breathing room built in — my days feel steadier. Not exciting. Not dramatic. Just steadier.

And steady, I’m learning, is not a small thing.

At this stage of life, with chronic illness as a constant companion, I’m less interested in proving what I can still do and more interested in protecting what allows me to keep doing it. That shift feels quiet, but significant.

So as February closes, I’m not setting big goals. I’m paying attention. I’m noticing what holds and what unravels. I’m keeping the pieces that support me and letting the others fall away.

If you’re in a similar season, you may be seeing your own patterns emerging. Not grand resolutions. Just small adjustments that make tomorrow a little more manageable than yesterday.

For now, that feels like enough.

 

Back again

 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 that Meta is good for easing the thoughts out of my head but then I no longer have them to write here.

Here's the summary:

• You were dealin' with depression meds and their impact on you.
• Your doc's changin' focus to more surgical stuff and is less available.
• You're waitin' on a prescription for a second depression med (not sure you wanna take it) and dealin' with withdrawal plus seasonal allergies and low energy/vibe.
• We brainstormed some tiny, low-effort solutions to maybe help lift your vibe.
• You tried spillin' thoughts in Blogger for 10 minutes with a timer I set.
• Your blog's got a lot of disjointed thoughts and ideas.

  Cept the spilling thoughts are nothing, I am nothing, life is nothing and suicidal ideation is just below the surface everyday, I am just not willing to die just yet. I am frustrated with my doctor, and with myself. I do not know what happened to me but all the things I used to be I'm not any more!

Who did I used to be, I was active, I loved crafting and learning new skills, I read but not at the level I do now. I went outside my home and I did stuff by myself. My house was never white glove clean and I've always had a hard time keeping my home and myself clean but the last couple of months since I went back on my meds I have become frozen in time again.  I was this living person but now I am a fly in amber. 

 Here are at least 10 tiny steps you could try to help break out of the "frozen" feelin' : 1. Tiny movement: Do like, one stretch or move your body in some super gentle way each day . 2. One task: Pick one teensy task you can do today – like makin' your bed or openin' a book . 3. Notice somethin': Notice one thing in your space or day that you kinda like or appreciate . 4. Breathe slow: Do some slow breathin' like we talked about before . 5. Look out a window: Just glance outside and notice what's there . 6. Touch somethin': Touch an object nearby – like a pen or a plant . 7. Say one word out loud: Pick a word like "hello" or "sun" and say it out loud . 8. Open a drawer: Open one drawer in your house and look inside . 9. Listen for a sound: Listen for one sound in your space – like a clock tickin' or air movin' . 10. Write one word: Write one word down on paper – like "today" or "breathe" . 11. Pick a color: Pick a color you like and notice things in your space that are that color . 12. Do one inhale/exhale thing: Inhale for a count of 4, exhale for a count of 4 .
If only I could get past the "I can't"

Lost Again

 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 everything. 

That is where I was before I went off my medication and it is where I am now. I think that means that the depression has worsened. The thoughts of death are never far though they only slide into conscious thought once in awhile. The beginning ones that is like I wish I was dead, there and gone in seconds. But I have the means of my death hidden away as I have had for a long time since Covid. It wouldn't be an easy death though and I think I would prefer an easy death. To die in my sleep without pain is my dream.

Yeah I've given this some thought but that does not mean I will act on it. I liked my life but something changed, something fundamental changed in the world after Covid. Something sad and scary. It's been 5 years and things just keep getting worse.

I want to do something to help but I can't even help myself, how am I going to help others who are even worse off than me. The headaches are a daily occurrence as is the inertia, the utter hopelessness of being unable to fix even one thing that is wrong in this area, in this building, or in myself.

I understand that I can not lived unrestrained, it makes me careless and bold in ways that could get me killed but there has to be something better than this muddiness in my brain and total lack of interest in anything.

 

Sunday March 23- Coming to Ground

 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 so out it must come.

We packed us, two kids and a big grey cat into a mustang and headed out west to visit our friend who had moved out there. We took everything we had with up because we were looking for a new life.

Back in those days you could travel from Ontario to British Columbia without any money. Each night we would stop in a large town or city and visit the nearest Welfare office. They would direct us to any nearby shelters we could sleep at and give us a $100 bucks or so for food and other necessities. The next day we would do it again. 

When we arrived in Britannia Beach, we stayed with our friend for a few days until we could find an apartment. We ended up in Squamish in a nice apartment building. The kids loved it and so did I but he (my KISA, as I called him), didn't. Thats not quite right there is information missing in my head because I do not remember how he felt about it and I should.

There are a few highlights like finding a super thrift shop that became a favourite place to visit and my work at Whistler cleaning up after tourists, climbing the mountain and seeing a mountain lake for the first time.

The memories are very disjointed. I fell down a flight of steps going to the basement, though I'm not sure why I was going into the basement at all unless it was to do laundry. There was a shadow behind me that I feel pushed me so I stumbled on the stairs but I think I staggered but managed to maintain my feet.

There was the man KISA claimed was his uncle who managed the building and who tried to hypnotize me and got pissy when I broke the trance by laughing.

There was a woman who I thought KISA was having an affair with.

When we decided to leave because he was missing his mother (I think that is why we left, he wanted to come back to Peterpatch), I gave some money to the kids and put them on the bus because we were not sure we would be able to places to sleep for four of us and a cat. 

I don't remember the trip back at all beyond an argument because I thought we had more money to travel with then I found in my purse. I accused him of giving some of it to his lover. 

Its such a jumbled mess because maybe the man did manage to hypnotize me and planted the thought of KISA cheating on me, because the shadow that pushed me evolved into KISA. I don't know, that is the story I remember but I am beginning to think there are too many blank spots, that it is not the true story. That things didn't go the way I thought they did and that it wasn't KISA's fault, that my anger was misplaced.

I still feel anger when I meet with him and it feels that every word out of his mouth is a lie and I am not that person. I have never been that kind of person. It feels wrong, incorrect, like maybe it was a dream or an implanted memory. I've always thought that I broke the trance with a laugh before I fall too deep yet what if I didn't?

What if it is like the fever dream that turned pleased laughter and cheers into scornful laughter and jeers from when I danced with the shadows after watching my first ballet? It is scary what the mind can convince us is true even when we know it can not be. 

I admit to some jealousy because KISA has had some of his poetry published, while only one of mine was. The difference of course is that he got himself someone to publish it for him while I never really tried. My poetry was my way of dealing with what ever shit was going on in my life. I had no plans to publish it yet I feel jealous that he did manage that and so much else in his life.

Its weird I have known I was standing still in much of my life, not taking chances but I never understood why. I just say I am not competitive, I don't push I drift. Nothing has ever been that important to me that I would chase it, nothing. Perhaps I need to find that drive.

Perhaps I have found it, the thing that is important to me but I can't even put it into words properly. I want to help the homeless and the addicts through little acts of service as I have done since last summer. I want to provide shelter for them. I have no idea how to go about it and I am terrified to try.

What if I start and it is too much for me? Drifting is easier. Fear really is a mind killer. Fear is the enemy I have to find and overcome. Isn't it?

Once upon a time

 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 others who came to my window giving food and water as I had it available. 

Until one day I found her in the building at my door. That was my first glimpse into her mental instability, it was a cold night and while she had a reasonable top on she wore only a simple piece of cloth around her privates like a skirt and a longish coat.  I dismissed it as a casual thing and allowed her inside my door. I gave her a granola bar and sent her on her way, though a little creeped out that she was in the building at my door

So far so good right, a few small issues. However the next time I saw her she was back to the rag around her privates and she stunk. I later found her asleep in the hall, the back of her legs were shit stained. I didn't say anything about it because I assumed it was just a minor episode and she would be back to herself (as I saw her at the time) the next time I saw her.

No I was not stupid I was being tolerant which is something I'm pretty good at. The next time she came back she was decently covered again and she didn't smell so I invited her to sit and rest. I made her a coffee and offered her evaporated milk for it. I didn't realize until she left that she had used the whole can. Now you would think that that would sour me on her but when she came to my door the next time I gave her food and sent her on her way.

That was the first time she asked for money. I don't keep any money around except my laundry money so it was an easy no. She came around a couple of more times and I gave her the granola bars like usual  but did not allow her in. Again she asked for money and again I told her no.

The next time she came I just sent her on her way as I was out of granola bars and she was beginning to stink again. The next time she came I just told her to go to the sleeping place. A bit later maybe half an hour or so I went looking for her as I felt a little guilty about not giving her food. 

I found her in the hallway cleaning up some garbage that was in the hall. Someone had dumped a couple of garbage bags on the floor in there. She was cleaning it up when I found her so I did not suspect her. Now I am not so sure.

After the last big storm I went out to go somewhere and there was garbage all over the step. Since I had refused to open the door to anyone before and after the storm I figured it was retaliation by someone because the door was blocked.

Last night someone knocked on my door and I told them to go away, I later found out that it was Cash, she had been bugging Len since I hadn't answered the door for awhile. This morning I woke up to find the connecting hall had had several garbage bags dumped in them including some food. Later that day I found out that someone had done the same to the front step and the stairs leading to the upstairs units. I was also told that the loft area where they sleep had also been trashed.

Now I don't know why the retaliation essentially tripled but it was the last straw for me, after informing the building management I preformed a protection spell for the building and I am hoping that will be enough to prevent it from happening again.

I am so tempted to go to the crack house and tell them that the church is now off limits to everyone since one of their number turned the building into a dumpster but I do not want to stir that particular pot so I am writing my thoughts out instead.

Respect is big with the street life and I gotta wonder why that respect doesn't apply to building interiors of course it could be that she is just one of the crazy ones. 

I'd say that only about 10% of the street people would do something like this but it makes it hard for people like me to help the other 90% without some of the anger at the disrespect coming through.

No happy ending, just an ending I hope.

A Conversation

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 perceived "rotten life" but you chose to hurt others with your words and your actions. Why?

It is hard to understand why any person would choose bullying as a way of coping with their issues rather than trying to be a better person than the ones who made you feel inadequate in some way. I understand anger and fear I've had a lot of it in my life but I am not cruel unless I have no other choice. As of this moment you have left me no choice. 

I am sad that I need to do it this way but you are toxic and I can't have that in my life. My door will be closed to you from now on and you need to figure out how to feed yourself because I am done doing that too. Perhaps some missed meals will get you to thinking about what you do. How sometimes words can hurt worse than sticks and stones.

I doubt it though because your poppa will look after you until he can't any more. That makes me sad for him but it is his choice. For me and you - you are banned from my home until August 1st 2025.

When you come back you will have one month to prove to me that you have mended your ways. What I want to see is no more name calling, some gratitude for what is given to you food wise and other wise, requests not demands, and last but not least respect given to your elders ( all of your elders from your dad on up).

The cruelty that is your go to is going to come back and hurt you many times worse than you have hurt others. That is how karma works, I hope you can fix yours or you are in for a really rough life.