Psalm of Friendship

I say a thing.
It is ridiculous,
but you pretend to consider it.
You say a thing.
I roll my eyes so hard I fall over on you.
It is the perfect opportunity for a
sneak attack.
Belly pokes.
I squish my fingers into your sides
but I’m laughing before you are.
Mutually assured destruction:
Friendship.

Meditation, gratitude, and medicine

In autumn of last year I came across a list of different kinds of meditation and started meditating regularly and trying out different things. Meditation had never worked for me, but I figured why not try out a few other forms of it to test the reality of that assertion? And whadda ya know. The mindfulness meditations worked really well for bringing me into better awareness of what was going on with my mental state and how I was doing as a person. I've since moved on to a thought-naming exercise which really got a handle on how noisy my brain is and now the gratitude meditations are really helping to shift around some of my reflexive mental habits towards grouching about my daily aches and setbacks. Well, the medications doing their job are also helping, but I am a lot more passive about the side effects now that I am getting used to looking on the brighter side of my own life again.

I have more gratitude for things, for people, for the complexity of life that keeps me entertained to think about it, and the simple parts of life that I can enjoy, ignore, or endure. And I can. As long as the gabapentin is doing its job, I know I can get through the days well enough. And if I have to ask for help sometimes, then that's okay. I am getting better about that, too.

I am still slowly losing weight because of the topamax extended release, but it's so fucking helpful that I don't want to go off of it. Even though it's making my pants not fit again, dammit. I don't want to have to go pants shopping again; I just did that. Also: magical silk pants of making my ass look fantastic need to fit for as long as possible. I had given up on doing bead-weaving because of how it was contributing to giving me headaches, and now that I mostly don't get headaches any more, I have started to take it back up.

We'll see how successful I am by this summer. I'll keep you posted.