16 thoughts on this very windy morning.

1. It seems early to be awake. No wonder. The clock says 6 am. I’ve only slept 5 1/2 hours. Every day since I started reducing my dose of Effexor, I have slept 5 1/2 hours, exactly. Isn’t that odd.
2. My head is pounding. The light from the alarm clock feels like it’s entering through my eyes and stabbing my brain. Okay, I’m taking two ibuprofen now; will I be able to go back to sleep?
3. This tossing and turning is more tiring than just getting up. I can always nap later.
4. The bergamot in the Earl Grey smells wonderful, every morning, one of the reliable truths about the world. This is the first time I have made my own morning tea in months.
5. After a week’s hiatus, it’s back. “I’m a horrible person.” Yes, that kind of thinking again. It started last night and seems to be picking up the pace today.
   
6. It’s cute the way my dog Daisy scrunches herself up against the heating vent in the morning. She heats up one side of her body and then turns around to heat up the other.
7. This may be the worst case of busy brain I’ve had in five years. I can’t focus.
8. Last night’s wind storm broke off a 12-foot-long branch from the gigantic spruce tree in our backyard. It’s so big that at first I thought a tree had blown into our yard from the neighbors.
9. Even if I’m sliding back into the relentless negative thinking, I can be nice to myself. I can imagine this is a sickness. It’s like scarlet fever, just without the rash. And not contagious. And not treatable with antibiotics. And not well understood by physicians. Okay, it’s nothing like scarlet fever. But I can still be nice and take care of myself.
10. I like that Billy Collins poem Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep A Gun In The House. It’s not a suicide poem. It’s about the neighbor’s dog barking, on and on and on. My brain is the neighbor’s dog.
11. Meditation is good for focus. I play one of my favorite guided meditations, the one that always works. It focuses on the breath. My mind wanders and wanders and wanders. The meditation doesn’t work today. It’s okay, I tell myself. I’m sick today. It’s a sickness. Just not like scarlet fever.
12. I’m going to clean out one of my file cabinets.
13. It would be interesting to set the iron on high, take the tip and burn little triangles up and down my arm in a pattern. Readers will think this is a sick idea. I should take it out of my list. However, it’s not such a bad idea. it would hurt all day and probably all tomorrow too, and that would give me focus.
14.  I used to think my sharp mind was one of my professional strengths. Ha ha ha ha, life’s little ironies.
15. I need to water my cyclamen so it will continue blooming.
16. I’m so afraid there’s no way out of this, so afraid.