I Got Something I gotta share with you:
Last year’s word was Courage. Little did I know what that was going to mean…to take. It was going to include many health issues. It was going to include huge degrees of life changes, it was going to include remaking myself, resetting, reexamining, and learning how to be calm and peaceful and learning to live quietly with a great deal of grace. It would include settling in. I have been quiet, I know. I dropped blogging, doing art, and was going to have months of sorting to get to a place of nesting.
I spent Spring and Summer having test after test to figure out why I was having strange numbness come on the right side of my body. It was as if my right side had gone to sleep, like a foot does betimes. Heart showed a build-up of calcium. But it did not cause the numbness. My oxygen level was 81% at best. Several lung tests showed that I have scar tissue at the bottom lobes of both lungs...from previous pneumonia and covid. It may or may not cause the numbness but it was not an absolute. More meds and the numb spells have diminished. Then it was my knee and the next and the next until the bones caved in and pinched a nerve causing incredible vicious pain and leg spasms. More drugs. For now, things have settled. I am tired of tests and treatments and I await a bunch of brain scans.
Life handed me reasons to put on my big girl’s panties and make one of the hardest decisions I have had to make. I was beaten down by drama, disrespect, and chaos of not ‘being with my tribe’. No one stood beside me nor braced my back. I had to move away and take care of me for once in my life. Agism is a terrible thing in so many ways. The years I have left, I have to allow myself to be more self-centered. Even typing it sounds so nasty to me. I am not a selfish or self-centered person. It felt so cruel. I knew I was abandoning my partner to his end years of being unattended to…to the wolves. It took me months to finally make the decision, or basically go down in defeat in a battle that was eating me alive. So much disrespect. Dealing with others’ addictions. I was burned out. I had done all I could do. The weeks and months after I left, I had to simply let happen what would happen. It felt so cold-hearted. It still does. I do not ask, any more how things are going. I cannot help. I cannot rescue. I cannot solve his problems anymore as I have my own to deal with.
I grapple with who I am when I am not in service of someone. It has taken me months to try to sort it all out. I am such a service-oriented personal. I dedicate myself to and in someone and it is very difficult to withdraw that. As I finished (ok, I may never get finished, but nonetheless) sorting out the bins and boxes and try to fit a house in an apartment, I began to feel the sense of needing to be in service of something. I joined the dual-town library board. It does not require much. I help out with movie nights, plan to get involved in art activities, and go to a meeting once a month. I gather up my art students and take them to the movie. I have become a surrogate grandmother to several families and love the relationship of being “Big Bad Wolf” to a little neurodivergent boy. (My maiden name was Woolf” and ShirRae has my honor gift of a Wolf hide, with head, on her upper stairwell, that he is enraptured with.) He has always called me Big Bad Wolf because I played a pretend game of Big Bad Wolf outside in the yard; hiding behind trees, wide-eyed, and thrilled with the adventure. I am only doing what I can. I will be teaching two main art classes in January, for larger groups. I am beginning to paint again. No need to go top speed and cram every moment full of ‘stuff’.
This year’s word is going to be ENDURE. Not enduring as in being victimized. Enduring, as in gently accepting life that is vetted so that outside ‘stuff’ doesn’t come in. Then simply dealing with myself. Solo Aging, in a way, except I am cloistered, safely, in my daughter’s basement suite. I have family support, and for the first time in decades, I am, where my kids gather. Here, I can watch Bridgerton, for the fourth time, I can paint, I can create, simply, as I recreate myself. I am taking care of business I have not thought to deal with. I bought, “Oh Shit, I’m Dead, Now What?”, an end-of-life planner that includes finial wishes, final preparations, and a book that will help my kids figure out my details more easily: A legacy of sorts. I am becoming more resilient. I am enjoying life more. There is more joy, more laughter, more enduring love.
And, so it goes. I am happier than I have been in a long long time; totally soulfully happy. I intend to blog often. I intend to try some new crafts and art. Maybe I will even do flowers and environment. I can, if I want. I won’t if I do not.
Come, share this journey with me.
©Carol Desjarlais 1.5.26
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