Bed Arrest

After a week, of feeling miserable I think I am actually on the mend. My temperature is normal.  I’m not chilled.  I’m not achy.  I still feel tender where the infection is, but I can move without doubling over or feel like I’m going to hurl from the pain.   That doesn’t mean that I’m going to rush out and start training for the Blossom 5K, or hop on my bike and head up to Red Canyon.  But I do feel like I can join the land of the living again, and maybe put on pants and drive a stick shift and maybe, just maybe, eat something that isn’t a saltine or has the word broth about it.

You’d think being in bed would be great.  Read books.  Watch TV.  Draw pictures.  Write.  I watched season three of Crazy Ex Girlfriend with Darian.  I don’t like that show.  The main character is so messed up.  I know that’s kind of the point, deconstructing crazy, but I live crazy every day of my life.  Watching is too close to home.  My cousin brought me over the Outlander series.  I love those books, but for some reason, watching the miniseries just seems like SUCH a commitment.  One day I’m going to work on my commitment issues.  I swear.

I spent a lot of time on line, but I didn’t post witty updates like when I had my kidney stone.  Kidney stones are funny; colons, not so much.  I reconnected with a friend from high school who is going through her own health challenges,  And had a great time in a three way with friends from college.  Three way used to mean something way different, before group texting.  I’d put an emoji here, but I haven’t figured out how to do that on WordPress yet.

And I wrote.  I’ve been working on a memoir about my experience with breast cancer.  I don’t think I can I write that story without including the night Mom and Dad died, and about Shayne’s mental illness.  It all goes together.  Someone said to me recently, how can anyone survive such intense things, all at the same time?  I don’t know.  You just do what you have to do.  And trust me, a lot of people have it way worse than I do.

So I started writing about the night Mom and Dad died, like in detail– what I was thinking and what I was feeling.  I got to the part about seeing dad and and I was writing with tears streaming down my face, falling all over the keyboard, making it impossible to see what I was even throwing on the screen.  I had to stop and take a break.  I loved my father so, so much.  It really is impossible for me to think about losing him for more than a minute.  The sadness is so deep and impenetrable, that I think more than a minute in that space will take me to a place I could never come out of.  But I feel good about trying to write about that night.  Maybe it will be healing.  It feels like it might be healing.

And that’s why I’ve been in this bed anyway, right?  To heal.