Monday’s Small Blessings

• 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
• Sipping coffee with your husband while the sun shines.
• Listening to Coltrane’s A Love Supreme .
• Feeling a little sharp bump in a tiny mouth.
• Running into an old acquaintance that you are happy to see.
• Finding a tiny blossom on a pepper plant.
• Remembering to remember the everyday things that make life beautiful.

At some point I folded in on myself. To say that my life has become narrowed and myopic is too simple. I am neither disengaged with life nor dissatisfied with it. It is as though most of me is engaged in solving a problem and has left me running on the back-up emergency system. This has meant that I am able to focus on one task or contained engagement but anything that requires me to be truly present has resulted in me shutting down. I have caught myself a number of times being in a middle of a conversation or event and physically turning away. I am not necessarily uncomfortable in these situations, I enjoy observing and listening I am just unable to participate. In my head I have something to say but then when I open my mouth, the words have become bungled and I grasp for something to fill the space. This has meant that when I have attempted to join in I become the ‘that weird person that disrupts the flow of the conversation with their incongruous statements.’ It makes me wonder if there is much point in trying to engage or if it would be better to read a book or make muffins.

Oddly, I am still able to be sharp when attending to matters like meetings at work and solving various issues that have begun to come up in the planning for next year. However, that part of me is easy to access. She is the fall back personae, the doer, and the one that is running the show at the moment anyways. However, she is also the person who refuses to read anything that may be thought-provoking which has meant that I have to go further than the local library as I have read their collection of Terry Pratchett.

Occasionally I look for the rest of me, the parts that make life more than planning for dinner. When I find them they tell me “not now we’re busy” and then shut the door. I hope they are done soon because I would like to go out and play.