Saturday, waking up

Didn't actually have the chance to take a break until 2 pm yesterday, I walked to get food.  By the time I walked back I was exhausted and freezing, the last two hours crept by.  Napped a little on the bus, but needed to go to the store, felt whiny walking the last ten blocks.  It's the type of exhaustion you feel in the chest.  Crawled into bed around 6, attempted to sleep for about 13 hours, actually slept a good deal of it, though none of it solid.  Weird thoughts.  Weirder dreams, in one I discovered a couple of fish, I didn't know I had, they were alive, but I hadn't taken care of them in ages (years, it seemed.)  There were other people around, I tried to play it off, but I was panicking inside.  What have I been forgetting to nurture (for years?)  Or is it just an anxiety dream, like having to take a math final in a class you never bothered to go to?  Anyway, I'm not sick, just tired.  I get this every couple of years. (Although, I did wake up at 4 am, and I walked to work, because I like snow...maybe it's run-of-the-mill tired.)

Had the thought this morning that I need to make some external life change, to support all the internal ones, so that all the internal shifting that I've been doing all year is not in vain, that I don't just fall back into the same ruts I was in. The mere suggestion of this (even by me) causes alarms to go off in me, still, I want to be the one to make that decision and not have it pushed on me from outside.  I don't know what that would be, I do know I don't want to start this process again.  The mean voice in me says, "yeah, what'd you really do this year?"  Some other part says, "you put yourself on the ledge of where you thought you could go over and over and over again,"...all good things, but emotionally and psychically, exhausting.  Internally, been a very intense year (right now it's not, so easy to forget), externally, you probably wouldn't be able to tell, except, I think I feel more brave than I have in a long time.  I'm not sure what happened during the early part of the century, but I lost a courage I used to have (really, the ability to hold a conviction strongly), and I'm glad to feel it returning. (It's the steady chipping away of tiny pieces of you, undetectable, but constant, and years later you realize there's a hole, a part of you that you let go because it seemed so minor every time it happened: the keeping the peace at all costs, the being liked, the trying to fit in, whatever it was...you can lose you that way.  Not suggesting to always be contrary, just not to lose yourself.)

I should get out of the house. 

Happy Solstice! (Days getting lighter minute by minute now, in the N. Hemisphere.  Something worth celebrating.)