The blessing of the cold water shower on a rainy day..

Body is flushed after doing the house work and even though it is raining, place not so cold. Mind is in turmoil as I try to sort out the things to be done.. thinking of what has to come after the shower.

The shame is there that I can longer do the paid uncaring work with the unpaid caring work. The embarrassment of saying no to work which I would like to have done, because of the work which I cannot do but have to do, and the anger at myself for not switching modes, for not finding patterns, for not organising things. For not putting things into compartments so that I could be productive and unproductive so that I could recover to be productive again.  But I am always recovering, never recovered and I have not accepted as yet that this is the life, or end of life before I expected it.

The anxiety of cooking , cooking food which might not be eaten, in favour of things which are wanted but not there because I forgot to buy them... and forgetting other things which have to be done, including reading the lists. 


Of my body now, every week, it seems to have some cut, some bruise which is not healing.

I mindlessly stand under the water. I realise the water is cold from the night.  I feel the water on my skin.. the cold water kind of shifts the mind to the nerves on the skin.. to feel the cooling of the body.  I remembered, to enjoy every shower now, every bath because a time will come when I would not be able to enjoy standing in the shower.

It is 27 days since the day I promised myself, no sugar, cut back on the flour. Increase the exercise, but also battling with why bother to do this. And break the promise every day , more than once.

So I walk in the rain,, go into the nice new cake shop with the bakery at the back.. and hoping that city council don't find anything wrong with it and close it down.  And I see the salara just cooled after the oven being cut up. And I say no, no.. don't eat it.. , and the girl smiles at me 'like you not sure'.. and then I say yeah, to hell with it.. go ....
And I walk down the road, rain drizzling, eating the juicy soft red salara which is more coconut than anything else and thinking of the cold water shower and how as I can't do more and more things.. let me just enjoy the things I can.

Like two bowls of the Nicky's soursop icecream instead of one. And the yum yum with guava jam extra. And the limes, fresh.. , drinking the lime water while eating some chocolate and thinking of the lime chocolate which the man in City Mall used to make before he closed down his store.

People keep saying.. 'others have it worse than you' and I try to say.. this is not about other people , this is about me.. and I don't want others to suffer so I could feel better. Two women though tell me that they think of me and they feel better and get through. I can still laugh at that.. that I am now one of the 'worse off' people so that people could compare and feel better.

So the cold shower, the rainy day, the cold water on the skin, is the blessing now because I know that at any time, it can be taken away from me.