A Lucid Moment

So I've been here a month. That rather passed in a flash. I'm not sure I've ever liked living somewhere this much and the space is getting comfier all the time. There is a gentle ease to living here that means I actively like coming home and spending time here. I cook and relax and even just gentle pottering about the place doing housework has an aspect of defining this as my own space, I've had a few people drop by and I find that I like that a lot as well. This is all very good stuff.

It's been the catalyst for a lifestyle reboot as well. I've picked up my cycle commute again properly and apart from during the heat wave last week when it would hove been downright stupid, I've been out on the bike more days than not. It's starting to feel normal again even though it's still exceedingly hard going and I'm still disconcertingly slow. 18 months of sloth have taken their toll but I'm hoping I can regain a fair chunk of the fitness I once had fairly quickly. I'm also regaining my cooking mojo. Having access to the kitchen that's both physically and emotionally unfettered is a delight. I know what's in the cupboards, I know where it is and I can eat any of it any time I like. I'm gradually building stock again to the point where I have the basic dry and tinned staples that will allow me to make good food on an ad hoc basis as well as a a few special items like a selection of cheeses in the fridge, wine in the sideboard and random things like cacao nibs and muscovado sugar which just make me happy. I *like* mucking about in the kitchen. I still don't quite make the things in my head but often the results are pleasingly close. I consistently have lunchpacks of a good variety of leftovers in the freezer as a result so buying lunch is now the exception rather than the rule.

These are all little things but there's a sense of agency in the day to day aspects of my life which in retrospect had been missing. When none of the bills were in my name and I was hermiting in my bedroom it did rather feel like I was the teenage child of my housemates in some ways. This in no way reflects badly on them but the reality of moving into an established sharehouse is that the communal spaces have already been claimed, particularly when everyone else in the house is a family. So having all the bills in my name and having the running of the household entirely up to me gives me ownership of my home that lets me feel like a proper grownup again. That seems a silly thing for a 43 year old woman to say but reclaiming all those basic day to day aspects of my life make me realise how much I'd missed them and how much that sort of thing informs my sense of being responsible for myself.

I spoke with the tattoo artist who's going to be doing my sleeve the other day. It seems the first half of this year is tied up with her dealing with already started pieces but true to her word, she's stuck me at the top of the waiting list for new large pieces which means it'll happen around June. I'll be seeing her for a consultation session in a couple of months and she made me realise that I can alter the existing image as much or as little as I like. I won't be playing about with it too much but I can feel free to do what is necessary to make it fit on my arm, not only spatially but pleasingly. I can play with the palette and mess about with some elements or even introduce new ones to make it work. It's going to be a bit horrifically expensive but I have bond coming back to me and have had a Medicare rebate for a potion of my surgery costs. Those two sums just about neatly cover what I expect this to cost so the universe is sort of providing in this instance. I am excited and impatient and very much looking forward to this. I adore my existing ink and have rather predictably been bitten by the tattoo bug. I like this bodymod thing, I think.

This is all very positive indeed. Let's see where this goes and what 2014 brings. It's about damn time my life settled a little.

In a week's time I'll hopefully be mostly if not entirely moved. I'm in the process of packing and it's going slowly and painfully, mostly because I'm utterly exhausted and keep bursting into tears. I am not coping well. I keep telling myself that I just have to get through this last week and hold it together and it's all done. Just so long as I do what I have to that's enough. I don't have to like it. I don't have to do it especially well. I just have to do it. Please god don't let me miss something important. The money is paid, the consent forms are sent. I still have to fill me post-op care shopping list, but that's not huge.

I'm having not grownup responses like wanting to curl into a ball and have someone else fix everything for me. This is not reasonable but then that doesn't appear to be a criterium for how I'm feeling at the moment. I guess this was never going to be an easy week. So I'm whining.

I'm whining because I feel awful and my body does things to me like make me cry randomly (like right now) and want to fall asleep at inopportune moments and because I want to have this record of me whining so I can look back at it later and value what I have just that little bit more because fuck it, I have *earned* this.

Oh but I hate it though. I hate the feeling of not being in control of myself. I hate the feeling of suddenly not having enough time when the wait had dragged on forever. I hate not having the personal resources to simply harden the fuck up and simply DO what would at any other time be a fairly straightforward thing. I hate feeling like some kind of fraud because on some level I'm not registering that this is real stress and it feels like some weird scam I've concocted. I hate the way in which I'm kind of bewildered at my lack of ability to just get on with it.

Can I just be finished please? I really really want this to be finished.

Time rolls on. Tomorrow will be six weeks to go before surgery and it's starting to get big enough in my mental view that I'm losing perspective and it's now just a Very Big Thing™. How I will be feeling in a few weeks wouldn't bear thinking about except that I'll be moving house about then.

I confirmed my new home today. I'll be sharing with two lovely people from my derby league and the six year old son of one of them. They're both good, low stress friends and I'm really super pleased to be moving in with them. Rather nicely, what I'm getting for my rent is essentially a corridor that leads off the loungeroom; the two smallish bedrooms and ensuite that open into that are all mine except that the ensuite also constitutes the laundry. It's for all intents and purposes my space and that will be a very nice thing indeed. The rest of the house is a nice space as well.

The fact that I'm sharing with a couple of people from my league and that there will be a steady trickle of people from my league and others through the house will be a gentle way to stay connected that isn't going leave me overwhelmed. I've also got my own space in which to hermit if I have to. Being in Thornbury also puts me much closer to a great many friends. For that reason and a few others, I'm looking forward a great deal to moving back north of the city. The plan at this stage is hopefully to move in there the weekend before surgery. This could involve using most of my reserves of coping but at least it's positive stress. Then I get a full Monday to Friday at work. Having said that, it will also be the last week of my secondment, mostly due to the fact that I'll be away from work for five weeks after that. I have no idea what's going to happen after that. At all. I can't begin to predict my life post surgery. It will, of course, be much as it was before but I'm having trouble picturing it.

Eep.