The Dappled Path

I appreciate everyone’s comments, and am humbled by the warmth and concern I find here. I am sure everyone who writes a blog, reads any comments they get with interest, but if you could see me here in my kitchen, poring over them, I think you’d be amazed. Especially when I’m feeling low or doubtful, I turn back to the comments, re-read them, think about them, and try to act on them. I didn’t always do this, but now I try to listen more, and to take advice, because people ahead of me in this struggle show me the joy and peace that awaits me if I do what they suggest.

And so it is that I have brought forward my appointment with the counsellor, and am going very soon, much sooner than I had originally thought. You will understand, I hope, if I don’t write about these sessions; I like being open on my blog, but I need to work through some stuff outside of it, too.

Even though it is officially only Day 2, I feel imbued with a kind of strength which I haven’t always felt before. Do I always say this early on? Do I always write this? I’m not going to go back in my blog and look now. But it does feel different, I feel different.

I still have to deal with the practical stuff, of course I do. I know that later today, I may feel cravings. I still have to be super-vigilant about that or else, as Anne commented yesterday, I will talk myself out of it. While I was on holiday, I fixated for a few days on the supposed elegance of old wine bottles with their sense of history. My father doesn’t drink very much, but he is interested in wine, and the stuff they drink isn’t plonk. At the time, I felt a nostalgia for the ‘intellectual’ side of drinking. Yesterday, and this morning, I thought more carefully about this, and mentally tried to destroy this idea of sophistication in my mind, knowing that however expensive the wine, drinking a whole bottle of it is never going to enhance it. That world is closed to me now. On a similar vein, we are thinking of visiting California next year – I’ve never been to America! – and people have suggested we visit the vineyards. Maybe not. But that’s next year; I need to get through today.

My dappled path continues, but the darkness is receding.