I sit in the peaceful quiet. A cricket rubs it legs together making a late August appearance. My emotions begin to flicker free from the darkness. An uneasy nervous clench ripples through my gut. I think about my next therapy session. I have entered into a contract with myself to live a life worth living. An exploration to live a more pleasurable life. A more peaceful life. A life to smooth my roughened edges. A life for me. I realize every time I see one of my physicians I begin to feel like I am walking on a tightrope. My emotions rise to the surface like a bubble in a boiling cauldron. I focus my thoughts on my next session. It is painful to take the risks to sooth one’s soul. I will talk about those fears. For to be open to pleasure you need to be open to pain.

Magic words at every doctor’s appointments. “How do you feel?” I used to make piles. Each system I could identify in robotic fashion. Every exam, I could shed myself into a gown comfortably numb. Today I can’t answer with any clarity. The set of safe, rote words are no longer existent. The answer in truth is a muddy I don’t know.

Why is this happening? Where are my answers? Why do my fears take my attention? I sort through. My health is frankly lousy. My blood vessels are like old city water mains dry and crusty. The pain requires work to be controlled. Instead of stop, drop, roll it has become stop, writhe, meditate. The prognosis grows ever more lousy. My ever on brain has now networked to balance 5 other lives other than my own. Torn in multiple directions my thoughts run. They are a violent frenzy. How do I feel? And there it becomes clear. What do I want? What my mind and body crave? What do I need? How do I feel? How life is one thing and in a heartbeat becomes something else. How my desire for peaceful relief brings all of me out of the shadows. Where this story will go I do not know.