I don't know.
Its been many months since I have posted due to the face-slapping return of my auto-immune disease. Spring, summer and most of autumn were spent on the couch listlessly waiting for the drugs to help while enduring the side effects of those drugs. My energy level was so low that, on some days, just getting out of bed was the extent of my accomplishment. The physical torpor was matched or even exceeded by mental shut-down and withdrawal. Some of that was part of the illness, but grappling with the implications of what happened crowded other concerns from my mind too. All of my projects came to a complete halt....even embroidery was too hard. I became uninterested and uninteresting. That doesn't make for good blog content.
The good news is that I am improving. My energy is better and I am starting to pick up the fallen threads of my life...literally. I can do lots more things without collapse and I feel more like myself. The bad news is that I have lost confidence in my own future. The onset of this last round of disease (ANCA vasculitis) was so sudden and devastating that I am left undone. I am going to have to come to some new way of being but in the meanwhile I am very tentative and unsure. I am newly asking what is important to me and how I want to spend my time now that the fragility of life has been so freshly and personally demonstrated to me.
Of course, I am not alone in this place of shifting sands. The shock of a bad diagnosis is all too common and I now have heightened compassion for everyone who feels like their life has been stolen from them by things beyond their control. "Stolen" is the give-away word, of course. We all make complacent assumptions about how our lives are going to go because recognizing our mortality is just too scary, but we don't own our time so it cannot be stolen.
My life continues. We'll see what happens now.
I very much appreciate the on-going concern of my blog friends through this long absence. Nancy, Marti, Grace, Jude and Liz especially have been so kind with their continued comments and check-ins. Thank you, thank you.