This life in the slow lane

My days are not necessarily bad, they are just hard.

There is still so much happiness in my life in-spite of, and sometimes even because of, the restrictions of my health.

My normal has changed beyond recognition but maybe there is no universal normal anyway? Perhaps it is an entirely subjective ideal; based on what each of us seems to be the norm. For me, it is now normal to need to rest after taking a shower, or normal to have to block off days to recuperate after being out of the house for a couple of hours. For others, their normal is getting up and showering, going out to work, then coming home to cook dinner. Neither is right or wrong or good or bad. It just is.

I like my life. I feel quite free to champion and celebrate every thing in it. I walked up the stairs without needing to crawl or rest along the way. Hooray! I got to the door to receive a parcel quick enough that the delivery person was still there and hadn’t left yet. Hooray! I made myself a coffee in a mug rather than getting confused and almost making it on a plate(?!) Hooray! I live life so slowly that I notice when the evenings are getting lighter as we head into Spring. Hooray!

How wonderful and lucky is all of that; to allow myself to step out of the constraints of what is ‘normal’ for someone of my age and acknowledge that it is okay to serve your own soul rather than bending and stretching to do only what society is telling us to do: raise children, make more money, live only for the weekend, say yes to everyone in order to please them and not ourselves.

We are meant to want more for ourselves than what is now normal for me. But I am so happy with my lot.