Today’s things–

1. I hopped

This morning I got up early to go to physical therapy. Normally I go in the afternoon, but today I had conflicts. (Don’t we all?) When I saw my knee surgeon last week, he said I could start jumping, so today my therapist said, “Let’s get to it.” Oh my gosh, y’all, talk about scary. The task was to jump over a little line of tape on the floor–forward, back, forward, back–but the thought of doing so was terrifying. I simply wasn’t sure my body could do it. But then, just like that, it did. I did. After I did it several more times, my physical therapist gave me a thumbs up. A thumbs up! Maybe in another week or two, I can win a hopscotch contest.

You know, against an eight-year-old.

2. I cried

Later this morning I saw my therapist, and when I told her I’d recently cried while going through some exercises in a self-help book (and cried some more while telling her about me crying), she told me to keep that shit up. “I remember when you never cried,” she said “and since there were plenty of times in your life when you should have, you owe back taxes.” Emotional back taxes. Ugh. This is a thing. Deal with your emotions now, or deal with them later. Not that this is easy to do, to feel your feelings. It’s not. I hate it. I’d much rather eat chocolate and usually do. Still, the benefit I feel every time I have an emotional release far outweighs the fuss I put up about not wanting to have one. So I try to stay open to my emotions. I say “try to stay open” because although I’m great at shoving down my emotions, I’ve never been able to purposefully make them come up. They either do or they don’t.

3. I got irritated

This afternoon I saw someone new at my chiropractor’s office who gave me some exercises to help my right shoulder, which has been bothering me. And whereas the person was helpful and kind, I found myself being annoyed by them. Maybe this is because they felt like chatting (“Where do you go to church? Do you have kids?”), and I didn’t (I’d just left therapy and had been crying). Plus, we’d just met. Some boundaries please.

4. I got un-irritated

Later I had a dental appointment (today I had a lot of appointments), and as much as I was irritated with the person at my chiropractor’s office, I was delighted with my dental hygienist. Granted, she’s cleaned my teeth before and we have a rapport, but she was the perfect mix of professional and friendly. Plus she was funny. Funny always helps. My therapist says humor really can be the most healing thing. She must be right–I left the dentist’s office with not only no cavities, but also with a better mood.

5. I helped pick out colors

This evening I helped my friend Bonnie pick out possible colors to paint her house, which is currently being remodeled in order to sell. It took forever, but we finally came up with several options that would compliment not only each other, but also what’s already there. Several times I thought, We’re getting nowhere, but then it happened. “What about THAT ONE?” one of us said, and we were off to the races.

Healing, I’m finding, is like this. You spend a lot of time thinking that none of your efforts are working. Your emotions are all over the place, like hopscotch. You can’t see how everything, how you, fit together. And yet it does. You do.