At least I have my health

It's surprisingly nice to say that with sincerity. After nearly two weeks of being largely house-bound (not to mention a solid week of being quite nearly bed-ridden), it feels amazing just to shave my legs and do the dishes. This winter has been pretty hard so far, with lots of twists and upsets and some not-inconsequential heartbreak, and I've had plenty of time with nothing better to do than think about all of it. I spent a good chunk of that time in the altered consciousness of a high fever, so my musings haven't always been the most lucid, but I have managed to keep myself from melancholy and self-pity more often than I did through most of the fall. All in all, I think I can actually count this particular bout of pneumonia as a blessing. Which is weird.

I had the thought today that the last couple weeks have been about getting a taste of the things I've longed for, then having them stripped away, along with my ability to do even the simplest things for myself. It's made me poignantly grateful for every tiny bit of good that does come my way. It seems to me today that maybe I needed to have everything stripped away for just a bit, to be laid even lower than the self-pity I'm so habituated to. It means that as I get things back (like, for instance, the energy for basic hygiene) I can take joy in the ability, instead of lamenting the responsibility. I know this rush of gratitude and euphoria won't last; this sort of feeling is a sprinter, and shouldn't be counted on for the long haul. But right now I've got a chance to build some new, better habits and focus my thoughts in new, possibly healthier and more helpful directions.

I didn't live up to my own expectations last fall. In fact, I failed in exactly the way I had been so afraid I would if I took the risk and went back to school full time. And the world didn't fall apart, and the people I respect haven't written me off as a failure. (Well, not all of them anyway, but I'm not in the mood to dwell on that just at the moment.) Furthermore, I did get some other things done. I made a bunch of new friends, something I was very worried I wouldn't be able to do, and I think a couple of them are the quality of people I really, really want in my life. I put real, concentrated effort into my poetry, hours at a time and often several times a week, and the work shows. I'm seriously considering cleaning up a couple pieces for the NT Review, and maybe, just maybe, putting together a chap book and sending it to a couple periodicals. I mean, it'll only cost me a stamp or two, right? Why not?

And I've grown my understanding of social interaction as much in the past three months as in the year previous to that, possibly much more. Maybe it's more helpful to say that all the seeds that Sam and David and I had been planting in my psyche over the past several years have suddenly had an amazing growing season. It's been hard to deal with in a lot of ways. Actual compassion and insight aren't always gentle, easy things. They often mean accepting that people just don't fit together, or aren't giving each other anything good, and no one is at fault and no one is to blame, but everyone is hurting all the same. That part isn't so fun. But recognizing it sooner can only make me a happier, healthier person, not to mention a better friend. This is why I say understanding of social interaction and not just social skills, but really neither of those really captures what I'm getting at here. Awareness and self-possession have a lot to do with it, as do social grace and confidence.

And the most amazing thing to me is that all that interpersonal stuff, the social skills I've agonized over and the compassion I've always been burdened with/lauded for/confused by... it's the exact same thing that will make me a better writer. Because it's all about the exchange of information between human beings, and writing is just a narrow, focused version of the same.

In truth, I'm mostly communicating with myself right now. That's what I created this space for, after all. And there are a handful of people who have access to these words and will know that they're mine, and I'm aware of those individuals as I type, as I read through to make sure this is lucid and not riddled with typos. Is Lain still following after my two year hiatus? Has David finally decided to come check all of this out? Will Jacob or Laura have anything to say in response to all this? There is some potential for inter-personal exchange here, and that's what motivates me to get this all down instead of letting all these ideas chase themselves around my head all night. I think in the long run, though, the real value will be in having a snapshot of where my thoughts were running in the first few days of 2010, as I waited for my body to heal and my heart to... Huh.

What am I waiting for my heart to do? Heal? Be happy? Just pick itself up by the bootstraps and miraculously feel happy about the same things that have made me sad for so long? I would very much like to be ready to start trusting again, but that's a complicated, scary thing. I'm becoming more aware of my tendency to distrust, and that can only be helpful. Am I waiting to stop loving David? I hope not, because that would be a fairly stupid thing to do, seeing as I don't particularly want to. Maybe what I'm waiting for is the knowledge that there's room in my heart for new things and people, and that it won't be a betrayal to the people I've loved in the past when I start to move on. That he's not betraying me by moving on himself.

Well. This ended somewhere very different than where it started. I'm fairly certain that if I try to continue on from that last thought I'll circle back around to melancholy, and frankly I'm just not interested in that. I love him and I miss him, but there's a hell of a lot more to me and my life than those two little facts. What else? See above.