I must write something for if I don’t I believe the stoppage will become a blockage and blockages can turn into ugly things like tumours and cysts as they prevent the oh-so-vital flow of necessary things.

I sit on my phone and type furiously with 20% of my finger capacity because well frankly, I’ve developed a fear of my computer. After all the Apple Tech Support hours and headaches and anxiety, I have become quite adverse to its taking any role in my life. It was for a time, a co-star to me realizing my creative endeavours through my writing and photography. Both of which have not just gone into bear-like cave hibernation but full blown amphibious-like beneath the muddy layers of earth’s crust, heart slowing to a complete stop hibernation. It is barely there, but yet there it sits, buried in mud beneath the frost line. I will get back on that horse eventually, this is me actually now, sitting on my miniature pony trying to revive some semblance of what was once my creative outlet. Here, on my smart phone. Two finger typing.

Part of my non-creative flow had been protectionism. It’s been hard. “It” as in life. “Hard” as in moderately to highly challenging. Bad things happened, at least that’s how one might interpret them in relation to the scale of other good or normal happenings of life. There was a bunch of challenges, cascading over the ledge like a waterfall, as beautiful as waterfalls are, when they are filled with say…piranhas I don’t want to been in the serene pool below awaiting their arrival. But most fish go with the flow, so I must too. There’s that flow word again. Oh how I’ve missed it.

I don’t really wish to detail every challenge as I fear I might breathe more power into these events and although I don’t have control about what happens to me I do have control in how I respond. So my non-writing has been a peaceful response to surrendering to what is. Being with it and seeing how I feel through the process. That has been tough though as writing is such a powerful outlet to me managing my shit, as in my body, my mind and spirit. Turns out writing is a highly effective way to handle my shit, even if I do breathe life into some of the shit I am frankly, sick of “dealing” with. I have been plain sick of myself and the let’s say “downturn of events” lately.

But here is something I am sure of. I mean like, almost 99 percent sure. This too shall pass. There is nothing in life that says a bunch of hard times should be spread out to make it more manageable for the receiver of hard times to cope. Sometimes it all comes together in the word I lovingly use as a “clusterfuck”. I’ve stopped bargaining with myself that “my luck will turn” eventually or that “now that I’ve got that over and done with, we won’t have to worry bout that anymore”. All I can do is look at each difficult moment as its own and decide how to feel, how to respond and if I’m really lucky how will I learn.

Here is one detail I will address because it’s significant in many ways and I hope to one day read these words again and warmly reflect back on its occurrence as a turning point to my growth as a human being. I had a migraine, my second one inside of a month, which had been altogether blissfully absent from my life for a year and a half before abruptly making their return. Rude and unannounced. The first one was scary but manageable (pain wise and life wise) but this last one…gawd…it was…what I imagine being possessed might be like.

Friday night as we were sitting down to eat as a family I had noticed something wonky with my vision. Not the usual flashy light show I get as the opening act to the main event. This. Was. Different. It was like a part of my brain had shut down completely. A bald patch on my white plate where my uneaten carrots should have been, a swathe of nothingness where my ring and pinky finger attached to my hand, a growing void on the back half my son’s LEGO trailer. I knew it was there but my brain wasn’t getting that part of the puzzle piece. As the blank space grew larger, I called it. I let my family know and sent myself to my dark, quiet room to wait out the storm.

By the time I had resigned myself to the thought of lost family time, washed my face and got under the covers in my PJs-all by 6:30pm the pain began to bloom. Just as the growing void bled through my vision, the pain grew in voracity. It was like a scalpel blade had been surgically tied to the hungry caterpillar’s back end and he was set loose to meander his way through the left hemisphere of my brain. It was a slow, erratic pathway that cut its way from the front quadrant of my head over my eye nestled behind my temple and grew, as the caterpillar ate his muffin, then his leaf, then his hotdog, looking for fuel to transform into something new, finally stopping to rest his aching tummy at the back of my brain. I not only could feel his path as he cut, I felt the residual of every square inch he had inched out in my brain. MY brain, where he had no business being. So so uninvited.

The pain was excruciatingly profound. I had never experienced that level of physical anguish without pain meds until now. I lost track of time. I dozed or fell unconscious for moments or hours, I’m not entirely sure. The next day, after fitful naps that stitched together what should have been sleep, I awoke with what I could best describe as my “normal” migraine and into Sunday where the migraine hangover had it’s way with me.

And the only thing that got me through, without me losing my rational, calm-self and allowing myself to become completely unhinged and hysterical, was, this too shall pass.

That was it.

So there are a lot of feelings being had these days for me. I am trying my best to not label them as good or bad. Because I don’t know. What I might think of as something good now could ultimately turn out to not be such great fortune in the long run, so letting go of the attachments of labels and how things should be. Life or God or Universe seems to have me registered in the accelerated crash course of “Beingness” right now. And I am realizing it is not for me to give consent to partake, it is only for me to pay attention. To think less. To feel more. To trust in what is. I endeavour only to not give into the suck.