I was searching for something on this site today and was reminded how much fun I used to have writing it.  It’s always been a place for me to get out the bad stuff, remind myself of the good stuff, just declutter my brain so I could enjoy life.  The ability to use this place as a tool got away from me some where.  I feel like I’ve been in Survival Mode for too long.   And now I can look back and see that I did it, I survived.  I beat the anxiety brought on by my Uncle and Mom having cancer.  I survived a stroke and 9 months of probing doctors testing for all sorts of other horrendous health problems.  And hell, I’ve almost paid off all that probing!

Last year as soon as I was strong enough I left this town for a weekend of alone time.  I needed to fix my head, plan for the future I hoped I would be given, and remember how to have fun again.  I needed to prove to myself that I could survive on my own in the most basic way.  I took off to San Diego and ran myself ragged soaking up new sights and the familiar ocean.

I look at this picture now and I don’t recognize that person.  I remember wasting away from the medications and the bed rest, but I don’t ever remember looking that sickly.  I don’t remember why being near the ocean, and driving up Pacific Coast Highway wasn’t enough to make me crack a smile.  I vaguely remember having to cut my hair off because it was falling out, but I don’t remember how short it is under that hat.

I’m ok with not remembering.  If giving up this site, if ignoring this outlet, has helped me heal from the last two years in a way that the pain feels far away, then it did it’s job even in it’s absence.  I know that there is a years worth of pictures to go through, and I put it off.  Today I don’t look anything like the girl in that picture, but I don’t look anything like the girl I was before the stroke.  I’m not sure I’m ready to see a year of transformation.   I also know there is a year’s worth of writing directed at people in my life that is extremely raw and painful.  Sometimes I think of transferring that here, to keep the history intact.  But I wonder if maybe the fuzzy memory of this time is best left just that, fuzzy.  What I need to do to keep it in the past and yet rectify the historian in me will work itself out in time, I trust that.

In a few weeks I take my Annual Solo Road trip, and I’m returning to San Diego.  I’m excited to go knowing how much progress has been made, and that I don’t have to worry about my physical ability to go alone.  And most of all I’m blessed enough now to have a life and a love that I know I will be anxious to get back to.