Happy place

At the coffee house. Headphones on, dance music playing. Sipping a drink, writing, pausing now and again for a cigarette. I will spend hours here. Sometimes, I will be productive, and sometimes, I will just "play." Right now, this is my happy place. Despite the lack of friendly felines and the comfort of my carefully-maintained sacred space, this is preferable to being at home right now.

And there are no bedbugs.

Yes, the little vermin finally found their way into my bed, and I woke with large, itchy, painful welts on both my arms. I don't think I have ever hated a living creature as much as I hate bedbugs. These tiny terrors have caused so much strife for me and Matt over the last year that I would like to see the entire species eradicated from the planet.

I could have resigned myself to it, to the fact that I felt terrible when I woke up, arms swollen, slightly feverish, generally annoyed, but I made plans to go to the coffee house and wait for Matt there, and I kept my word. He wouldn't have been upset with me if I had stayed home, given the circumstances, but I would have been annoyed with myself.

While I was walking, cane-assisted, to the bus stop, I got a call from my neurosurgeon's office. My first steroid injection will be this coming Friday at 3 pm, and two more will follow, two weeks between each treatment. I am a bit apprehensive. After all, they are going to be jabbing a needle into my spine and squirting drugs into it. If it helps, it will be worth it. If it doesn't help... well, I'll be very annoyed.

I feel in constant, desperate need of rest. Every moment I have to relax or sleep, I feel I must do so. Distraction is important, too. The din of conversations at the coffee house, the patter of rain on the window, the soothing music of not being at home allows me some semblance of sanity. Home, right now, is where all the trouble is. I am constantly reminded of all the work that needs to be done. I am always worried. I am always annoyed. Here, at least, I can get away from it. A change of scenery. A change of perspective.

When I meditate, I have a different "happy place." It is beneath a tall, graceful weeping white birch at the edge of a river, with a deep forest on the other side. It is always early autumn there, and the clouds are always thick and grey and warm. There is the rumble of thunder in the distance, and the consistent rush and ripple of the clear water flowing over rocks and around boulders. I tune myself to the flow of the river. I ground myself in the roots of the tree. I reach to the sky through its branches and cycle down again like the swaying birch boughs that brush the mossy ground below them. I can be there just by describing it. I'm there now. There's a path on the other side of the river that leads deep into the wood. I have to swim to get across. This is where the veil parts, and I journey to other realms.

But I do not choose to journey much, these days. I am content to stay grounded with my tree. I need safety. I need the deep calm that comes from nature. From this serenity comes strength, the power I need to solve my problems elsewhere. I will need this strength to handle the stress of my treatment, and the prep for the exterminators, and the cleaning of the house, and the planning of the mythical trip to Norway that I am more and more convinced won't happen...

Meh. I'm just babbling, now. But babbling is still more productive than curling up in a ball and hiding away from everything that I am afraid of. Talking about it makes me less afraid, and being less afraid allows me to take rational action.