To stem the inertia

The bright lights make the morning seem darker than in actually is.  We are in the season of darkness and water.  So much water, the sky wrings itself out.

I've just started prednisone again, and I feel weird.  My doctor spent an hour with me, trying to get me to come in and get a drug infusion to calm the inflammation, but in the end, agreed to let me go back on prednisone and anti-malarial drugs.  She also gave me a shot in the hand the other doctor said wouldn't help.  Does it help?  I don't know.  I can't tell yet, over the weekend it hurt more, but maybe it's less swollen.  Doing nothing hasn't really been helping.  Constant pain becomes a bit of a background noise, because you have to go on living, but that doesn't mean learning to live with it is the only option.  There's not really a point in being a martyr.

I figured out the notebook thing, but then had some deep experiences last week that seem more important than anything else I could say, and haven't figured out how to talk about them, or if I did, how much to.  (And I feel like we have to fight all the time just to keep things from getting worse.  More people are waking up to injustice; and many people are taking a deep look at themselves and seeing where they are part of the problem, and that's hopeful, but we continue to slide backward.)

Sometimes I feel like nothing changes, like I never do anything, but then I've also had really deep shifts this year: a couple of profound (one kinda' painful, one not) moments in Spain about identity/status/judgment; and more recently about settling and accepting the scraps others are willing to offer, and why I (or anyone) should believe that's all we are worth, and why we don't reject it outright.  Do we believe it's the best we will ever get?  I'm glad I've been experiencing all of this.  It opens my eyes (and my heart) to my own life, but also to what others have been experiencing.  My life (and yours, by extension) has as much worth as anyone else's; so why am I expected to be ecstatic for the crumbs, that the one offering would never put up with?  (Related to privilege, too, so when we become aware of our own, how do we change?)

I am grateful for all I'm learning about myself.  I'm grateful for the exposure of my tender spots that I'd been protecting so fiercely I'd forgotten they were still there, for knowing they still need love and attention.  I'm grateful for seeing my own shortcomings, for the opportunity to grow.

And if we want there to be change in the world, whether larger or immediate, we have to be willing to change as well, to give something up (ideas, fears, privilege, inertia, safety of the familiar, the past, nostalgia) and create the space for new things to enter and take root.  Love is action.  Words and promises are meaningless until we back them up.