W.T.F.

This week I've had very bad headaches again - very similar to the ones I had the week my retina detached in my right eye. I've been writing them off, thinking it has to do with my wonky prescription (I'm still waiting for my new glasses), but yesterday I saw a ring on the white floor of our bathroom when I looked down. I thought, "Well, that's odd."

Tried to figure out if it was coming from my right eye or my left, tried to figure out if it was related to something I had just been looking at, etc. Then decided to write it off because it was a dark ring, rather than a light ring. And hey... they just looked around recently and said: Everything is fine. You could wait until August for the second surgery if you wanted to.

Today I keep thinking there is a smudge on my glasses (there is not), and I can see floaters in the left eye. So we've moved from coincidental to worrisome, and I've got an appointment at 5:15pm. Andy has had jury duty this week and is in deliberations this afternoon and is therefore unreachable. His arrival time home is unknowable. This is not helping, seeing as how he's my anchor and best friend and husband and our 2 year-old will be up soon and needing to eat... right around 5:15pm.

I hope history is not repeated wherein I am forced to drop everything and drive to St. Louis (or rather be chauffeured by an amazing and selfless friend) to have emergency surgery. But at this point, honestly - I'm not really holding my breath. It's been a rough year or two and every time we think we're out from under the little black raincloud of bad luck, something new pops up and we are left shaking our heads in disbelief.

Mind you, I tend to believe everything happens for a reason, and I try very hard to stay positive. But in this moment, I am feeling upset, panicked, and angry.

So be it. Sometimes, that's how I am feeling. May as well embrace it and keep moving forward.

Grumpy

Here's what I'm thinking about today. I am grumpy. I am feeling small and petty. Angry. Tired. Sore. Fed up.

Now... some of this may be attributed to my still-healing, still very dilated, still predominantly unworking right eye and the resultant scabbing, tearing, aching, itching, and throbbing one is likely to feel after emergency eye surgery.

However, truthfully, just as much - if not more - has to do with my own insecurities and human imperfection. My own fears, worries, and lack of impenetrable self-love.

Mind you, I've met very few people who actually possess impenetrable self-love... but when you do come across those folks (even those who, while not impenetrable, have it in such large supply they look well-stocked and somewhat impervious) - WOWIE! They can really knock your socks off. Especially when they're nice people to boot.

No... today I am just left thinking about my own frailty and how this comes into contact with my daily ins and outs, ups and downs.

I feel small today. I'm really not sure how else to put it. I have lost a sense of larger connection and am very aware of my own negative emotions and tiredness... my sense of giving up and feeling exhausted and somewhat outdone by life at the moment.

I don't consider this pretty. I don't consider it particularly inspiring. But I trust it's not totally unfamiliar to some of you. And I hope that, in being honest, I can provide us the space to heave a collective sigh of relief and have it be okay that we are less than perfect today. One might even say ugly.

Sometimes it's nice to know you can stand in the middle of a collective stare, naked and honest, and know it's okay to be less, to be a work in progress, rather than feeling like a stubby troll who must stand in the corner and wait for the world around it to notice and take pity.

If we really are to accept one another, I suppose, it should be with eyes open. With acknowledgement of underbellies and skeletons and mistakes. Maybe there's strength in the knowing... or in the openness and willingness to be imperfect.

Maybe it's just personally helpful, today, to imagine a group of fellow works in progress being able to embrace the ugly, grumpy, stubby troll that is sometimes me... and to know it's ultimately okay.