Summer is finally over and I am starting to walk my dogs again. Except they forgot how to walk, at least with manners. Has it really been that long, since I wasn't so absorbed with myself and my own problems, that such regression was able to occur? Porkie exuberantly gallops as she yanks against the leash like a bucking bronco. Yorkie thinks we can stop for 30 second intervals every 50 steps so he can sniff and pee, and still keep our target heart rate in the cardio range. It's not their fault, though. The only one I have to blame is myself. If blaming did any good. Reality doesn't change if I blame, though, so I've kinda stopped doing it. I can go all Opus Dei on myself, like the albino in The Da Vinci Code, and it still won't change the fact that when I walk my dogs tomorrow Porkie will gallop against the leash and Yorkie will lag behind.
It's been two and a half months since I declared myself utterly unable to keep living life like I was. I quieted everything down and decided to focus on improving things before they totally blew apart. Wow has it been a lot of work. My life was a chaotic mess, all of my attention focused on how terrible I felt all the time, and exacerbated by massive stress flares whenever something went wrong. Usually something which could have been prevented, had I only been on top of things. Which I wasn't, because I was obsessed with feeling awful. So two and a half months ago I started slowly attacking the tangled ball of yarn which had become my life. Because of a shift in both my mindset and nutrition I wasn't knocked on my fanny three days, or even two weeks, later. This means I didn't go off running to lick the wounds of sickness all by myself in the corner while everything got messy all over again. Not to say it's been a perfect journey down a smooth road, or I haven't had profound moments of regression, but last Friday I completed the last duty which had fallen to my dereliction.
The absolute last thing I thought I would be doing at the age of thirty-seven is learning how to wake up to an alarm, go to bed before the sun comes up, keep a house clean or count on myself to be organized enough to not be late everywhere I go. The other side of the coin reminds me there was a time when I didn't think I would be able to do any of those, ever again. I feel like a woman climbing up a cliff of ice, with only those sharp picks to aid me in the ascent of a lifetime. The more I focus on progress, not pain, the higher I can throw my arm in the sky, embed the metal anchor in the frozen sheet before me, and pull myself up out of the abyss.
Thanks for joining,
Leah
Leah
