I signed up for a screenwriting workshop and attended my second session today. Once a week for three hours I get to intellectualize and hypothesize with a round table of folks I have absolutely nothing in common with. They don't know me from Adam, and I know sorry little about them, seeing as I have a hard time remembering details like people's names. But we are bonded by the common desire to animate a story we wish to tell. It's wonderful. Having to be somewhere, establishing an identity beyond wife and blogger, using my brain creatively.
But as I am driving there with the bright warm Arizona sun shining over my head and Eminem blaring from my speakers the feeling of how excellent, how marvelous, how truly wonderful being alive and out in the world, actually is. See I wouldn't exactly call myself a shut in, but when I had the strokes in 2010 and left my job I effectively severed my anchor with the outside world. In the two years of insane recovery I have been through, blogging, The Crusade and The Fun House have been my saving grace. My link to a world beyond me. Unfortunately without physical tethers to the outside world it is easy to lose relevance and a sense of placement in society. Many a day I've lamented how bad it sucks that this is where my life is at. My identity sits vacant.
Hope is critical through every stage of this journey. Tiny little baby steps of hope gain momentum along the way. When I was disabled and couldn't leave the house for more than an hour I bargained with myself. I figured I was functioning at about 10% of my healthy capability and vowed I would not stop fighting for my health until I got to 70%. To my relentless type A personality anything less was unacceptable. I laugh now, eight years later, having endured so many triumphs and even more set backs. So little is actually in my control. But each day I will insist that just because I got sick again and again and again I am no less deserving than the next person. It's my sunshine, my music, my life to live too. And I am going to live it the best way I can.
Thanks for joining,
Leah
