I can communicate. I have many gifts at my disposal to communicate in many different ways. This is something to be incredibly thankful for, and I wish I didn’t sometimes slip into self pity and forget how amazing that really is. Writing is my favorite thing, it’s what I want to do most, and I can do it. Why focus on what I can’t do?

In an earlier post about Flannery O’Connor (a writer who had I had much in common with including being chronically ill) I included a quote I’ve kept on my desktop for a few years now to help remind myself of all of this.

“I am making out fine in spite of any conflicting stories…I have enough energy to write with and as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing. What you have to measure out, you come to observe more closely, or so I tell myself.” – Flannery O’Connor

I’ve been feeling terribly sick for almost two weeks now, and throughout all of it, I’ve been trying to convince myself it’s all in my head and I’m a terrible person who WANTS to be sick, so she is. I’ve been sick for 8 years now, and I still only really accept that it’s true half the time.

Today I really tried to push myself to do things, convinced that if I believe I’m ok, I will be. The pushing made things worse, my head is in terrible pain, my stomach and back are screaming, and I have hot flashes. I fear this will never stop being frustrating. I feel so useless. I have to ask my husband to get me water, make me lunch.

I wish it was as simple as wanting to be well, and then being that way.

I’m not far into it, but I’m already enjoying it and writing things down as I go.

The introduction is written by Sally Fitzgerald, a friend of hers. She talks about how Flannery O’Conner percieved things differently, probably from being ill.  I know what she’s talking about-it’s hard to explain, but I know what she’s talking about. Things are more acute, I’m more aware, more observant, everything means more-and these are all attributes I thought I had prior to becoming ill. Being sick has changed so many things in my life-sometimes I find myself almost being grateful for being sick.

In a letter to Robert Lowell and his wife she wrote this: “I am making out fine in spite of any conflicting stories…I have enough energy to write with and as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing. What you have to measure out, you come to observe more closely, or so I tell myself.”

The title of the book, The Habit of Being, comes from the concept of “habit of art” which she had read about in her early years. Habit in this case means “an attitude or quality of mind, as essential to the real artist as talent”. In the introduction to the book Sally Fitzgerald talks about Flannery O’Connor, the habit of art in her life, and then says this “Less deliberately perhaps, and only in the course of living in accordance with her formative beliefs, as she consciously and profoundly wished to do, she acquired as well, I think, a second distinguished habit, which I have called “the havit of being”:an excellence not only of action but of interior disposition and activity that increasingly reflected the object, the being, which specified it, and was itself reflected in what she did and said.”

I love reading about this woman who loved walking to her mailbox everyday. Who exchanged letters with people she had never met and kept friendships that way. Who loved the absurd. Loved quietly pointing out the contradictions that amused her. She would cut out newspaper clippings of things like birth announcements of babies with strange names and send them along to her friends.

She took her writing very seriously, and was very honest about the way she wrote. In a world full of articles about how you’r'e “supposed” to write, I find this wonderfully refreshing.

In one of the early letters in her book she is writing to this man in publishing who had criticized her work. She wrote this: “In short, I am amenable to criticism but only within the sphere of what I am trying to do; I will not be persuaded to do otherwise. The finish book, though I hope less angular, will be just as odd if not odder than the nine chapters you have now.”

Oooooooh, how wonderful! How splendid. How strange it is to read about someone so much like myself in all of these ways where I feel like no one can relate.

Balance is a hard and daily struggle.

A few days ago my friend Miranda flew in from Michigan for a day. This was her first time on the west coast, and I wanted to show her Seattle. My health was obviously a concern. I laid around for most of the two days prior to her arrival.

That morning the weather was PERFECT.

The weather affects my health a great deal. When it is very warm out I get migraines, and I get worn out a lot easier. And, obviously, rain would be a deterrent for site seeing. However, we had a very cool and clear day, and my body held up marvelously!

We did a lot of walking through hilly Seattle. Things that used to slow me down when my health was generally better-like blisters on my heels-did not slow me down a beat. My head hurt a bit but nothing life stopping, and the same for my stomach.

I am still so grateful and just ecstatic. The joy feels like it could simply explode. I spent the next day lying on the sofa, but I did not care one bit.

I love when you have one of those rare days where it all seems to come together. It feels like I can just get through anything.