Days of Gratitude - Strudels, Singing and Ceilings. And Murder.

Back to the gratitude.

This all seems like a long time ago.  Life has not gone as planned this month.  But that's a tale for another post like this.  Many people reading this will know what's been going on.  Things could have been a lot worse.  A lot worse.  As I type this I am waiting for my wife to be discharged from hospital after nine nights.  Nine could very easily have been a lot more.  A great relief to everyone that it isn't.

I've had some good days this month but my mental health has been fluctuating to say the least.  Too many days have felt bad.  And that's without the worries and the stresses and everything else related to my wife.

But as I said in one of the Sunday Assembly gratitude group posts, life is good.

It is good.  It really is.

There's a picture below of Jesus carrying his cross.  It is one of the Stations of the Cross outside the Schoenstatt Shrine on the outskirts of Bolton.  Yes, life and my head often feel like that.  When I was a good and faithful Catholic I used to do the good and faithful Catholic thing of offering up my sufferings.  I would spiritually unite them with the sufferings of Christ and offer them, in union with his sufferings, for the sake of the world, or a person, or for the "intentions of Mary" as some kind of meritorious offering.  In that way, through the teaching of Church and Saints, I brought meaning to suffering and to everything my head has thrown at me.

Today I cannot bring meaning in this way.  It was a consolation to me because of the belief that suffering acquired meaning through union with Christ.  I don't believe that today.  I have nothing to unite my sufferings to - and nothing to which I can unite my joys either.  Yes, I used to unite my joys to Jesus too.  I don't think he just wants our crap!

Life can still feel like cross carrying.  We all have crosses to bear of course.  All of us.  Some of us find meaning.  Some of us don't.  Right now I look at my head and the wild ecstasies and excitements it gives me and the wild lows it gives me too.  And for the present, at least for the present, I am unable to ascribe meaning to it all.  It just is what it is.  Life goes on and we just have to get on with it no matter our crosses and our blessings.

And, when all is said and done, I proclaim this:  My life is good.

October 6^th

Grateful to have got through the majority of the job list.

Grateful not to have been standing underneath the lounge ceiling when it fell down this morning. Anyone know a really cheap ceiling creation person?

Grateful for being able to get to choir tonight. Photos taken before choir when I turned up early by mistake.

October 7^th

Grateful to have survived the meeting in the day with just about enough energy remaining to get out and sing in the evening.

On some days my autism and assorted little co-morbidities can feel like this.

But life is good anyway.

And I am grateful for hope, light and creative urges.

October 8^th

Grateful for the writing workshop in the morning. There is now an urge to write a full scale monologue, learn to act it, and perform it. A challenge. I already love playing with this character even though she is a murderer!

Grateful for a friend staying over. It's been too long since we saw each other.

The picture is a photo prompt from another part of the workshop, providing something else very unexpected for me to write one day. Perhaps.

October 9^th

Grateful for a friend still here and for leftover strudel.

Grateful to be able to write more as a remorseless murderer. Happy stuff!

Grateful to have allowed myself to rest.

October 10^th

Grateful to have painted a wall and moved furniture.

Also grateful that Beth has agreed I can clear out lots of our immense (at least partly inherited) plastic bag collection.

Not sure if she will ever agree that we don't actually need a suitcase containing an old bedpan and a urinal.