The prompt-writing is after the 🎃🎃🎃 and the daily sorting after the 💖💖💖
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Today I feel good. Really good.
I’ve been concerned about my health lately. My last blood panel was worrisome. So my clinician adjusted my medication. I have added a few more minutes of walking to my every day. I’ve tried to make more meals for my family. I’ve spent more time with the ocean. More time focusing on the things that bring me joy. I’ve actively reduced my consumption of stressful things. Be they movies or media.
Today my clinician called me.
She started naming things. Sugars. Thyroid. Lipids.
All in the normal range again.
I cried on the phone. Tears of joy. My lovely clinician (I don’t have a doctor here, and the list I’m on to get one is long, it could be five years before I have a primary physician again) she said it was a joy to work with me, and that was so happy to be giving good news for a change and that my tears were welcome and reasonable.
I told my partner, hugged them tight and then took my pup for a walk. I know that feeling not exhausted like I do right now is a privilege. I know that feeling full of energy is not a forever thing. But when I do I don’t want to have to hide it. I have been exhausted and chronically ill my whole life. I’ve been in pain on and off my whole life. I’ve dealt with two cancer scares. I’ve had surgery to remove the growing cells on my cervix…six years ago now. I survived a stroke in 2021. My insides don’t always cooperate with me. My skeletal structure causes me regular pain. My brain and body are easily overwhelmed by the world.
But today. It was a superb day.
I have often been afraid to say good things. My OCD has me convinced that if I say good things that bad things will happen. Even writing this is causing me anxiety. But I know that bad things happen. I know that people die. I know that I am not responsible for those things.
Last night I received an email from a friend who was like my sister when I was 19 and 20. I dated her brother. Her parents welcomed me into their life, their family. I think at some points I thought I would marry that boy. He broke up with me and broke my heart. But that is life. When he proposed to me a week later…I said no.
His sister told me I did the right thing. That she supported me. I stayed friends with his sister. I continued my relationship with his mother, in a good boundaries way. They were my family.
We have stayed in touch for 25 years.
Then I got off the internet last year. In October. And I sent letters.
I hadn’t heard from my friend, or her mother, for awhile. So I sent a letter to her mom, telling her how lucky I was to have her in my life at a time where I needed thoughtful parents guiding and shaping me, my parents hundreds of kilometres away.
Last night my friend sent me an email to tell me that her mother, this wondrous woman who loved me and let me love her even though conceivably we should have broken ties…she had died in April of this year.
Last night I let myself weep, knowing that I didn’t get to say goodbye. But I know that she knew I loved her. Her daughter told me she was her wondrous self until she died.
Last night I read her obituary and it said that you could plant trees in her honour. So I chose to plant five trees. One for each of those five family members who let me be a part of their family for two years. Who hugged me when I was sad. Who were happy to have engrossing conversations at the dinner table.
I’m glad that my friend got to read the last letter I wrote to her mother. That she knew how loved her mom was, even by the ex-girlfriend of her son.
I fell honoured that she took the time to tell me at all. I’m glad that I didn’t find out in a Facebook post. I’m not surprised that she wanted trees planted in her honour. She cared so much. She let me know it was okay to care as much as I did. That family never tried to take my big heart. And all of them still live in there.
I know this is the cost of knowing people. That grief is right around the corner from love. That my grief and love share a bench and stare at the ocean together. That they don’t have to be separate.
I’m sending big love to you, if you’re reading this. I don’t care if we are strangers. I don’t care if we’ve never met.
The love I have for you is the same I have for the ocean, the rocks, the trees. I love you because you exist. Because love, as one of my best friend’s in the world Steve ‘MF’ Sauvé performed in one of my favourite poems of all time…
”love is a commodity that is in constant demand, and there’s an infinite supply…all you’ve got to do is learn how to manage it.”
Steve wrote ‘Heart’ on the one year anniversary of him surviving his heart almost killing him. He performed it on the day, that he didn’t know, he was about to fall in love. He got off the stage, walked over to me, and I was weeping because his poem was so fucking good. I wish you could have heard it. Maybe you did. He came over and awkwardly tried to comfort me when a person came over to talk with him, a person who also obviously loved the poem. I saw in that person’s eyes that this was going to be a thing. I could feel it. That poem changed Steve’s life. It changed mine. It instilled me with this “live every day as if it’s your first” mentality. Not your last. Like anything is possible. Steve also helped build a part of who I am. And when four years later we lost him to an aneurysm, I knew that he would want me to keep living that way in his memory. So I do.
I live big. I love open-heartedly. I try with all my might to believe that beautiful things are possible. Is it exhausting? Yeah. Sometimes it is. But I will not give up hope. I know I only have so much time here, so I’m actively every day trying to make it count. In small gestures. In supporting people. In letting people be gentle and kind with me. In listening when things are hard. In celebrating when someone is celebrating.
I know it’s ok to let today be a beautiful one. Because not all days are beautiful.
Today I printed out the manuscript of my novelette. I sent it to my first reader, and gentle editor, Amanda Earl, whose encouragement and joy for my writing has lifted me up. I made copies for a very select few people. And then I saw the moon witch on my way to the post office and I gave her a copy as an offering to the universe. Yep that was a weird sentence I wrote, but that’s what I did. She’s a cool lady, and it felt good putting my almost book into the world in that strange way.
…so today I feel good. And I love you. I hope you know you’re loved.
Heart,
Wake
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What was your favourite Halloween costume (if you celebrate)?
Hmm. I think I’m torn between the costume I wore most years as a child. I was a fortune teller with these incredible snap on earring with dangling fuchsia crystals (damn I miss those earrings). I would tell people’s fortunes in exchange for candy. I loved the back and forth this costume drew from the people opening their doors. It let me be my big hearted wondrous self.
My other one had to be the time I spent all night hot glueing fake red and orange leaves to this elegant dress and went as Autumn with a weave of flowers in my hair. That was a brilliant costume and I felt great in it. Like a goddess.
What about you? 💖🎃💖
Wake, I just had a brilliant idea. Your daily submissions to this literary journal along with your flawless self awareness when collected could be a best selling book in and of itself. You capture my senses in a way that produces different angles and views.Thank you . 💖💖💖
I am full.of love for you,.dear Wake.