Sitting in the living room in the sunshine and thinking about my life now and then. In a present-focused way, but still looking back.
Early July and it is six months since I had that hysterectomy. More than a year since I had an unsuccessful eye operation and briefly went completely blind. A year and a half since I stopped drinking and decided to live sober. About eight months since I started corresponding with S, with whom I am now living. Five months since I left the media company for good. A month since my beloved red dog was put down; four months since his companion, the Blonde, was put down.
A very busy and traumatic time, as years go. But the change within is calmer and grounded most of the time. I live with uncertainty. I live in hope. I keep loving, keep writing, keep taking risks.
It’s not enough and there is the sense of pausing at a threshold, not moving into decision, waiting for someone else to help me move forward. Waiting for love to grow. living with an ageing and imperfect body that is in better health than it was a year ago. Remembering that experience of losing my sight and how I reaslised I could go on, that I would find a way to go on in the darkness, the terrifying blizzard of grey in which I fumbled for the edges of tables and door handles.
Sometimes I think I am living in a fool’s paradise and that one of these days I will wake up on a bleak hillside alone. Or wake up to the old chaos of alcoholism. I am afraid, I don’t know how to live with the vulnerability within. I don’t know how to live unloved. And I am so unsure of the future.
All I need to do is stay in the day. That is how I have lived through this last year and a half. Rebuilding the present by creating a sober context. i dream about my beloved dog and feel I have somehow not mourned him enough, being so far away. I dream of the media company with anger and even bitterness, feel a lack of closure there. I miss my old life at times, feel guilty for leaving. But mostly I wake up in the morning and pay attention to the here and now. I live with the consequences of what I did yesterday, look at whatever comes up today. I live what is here to be lived.
And I wait for more understanding, more insight, more wisdom. Another way of speaking about God. The sacrament of the present moment.
