I dislike making lists. I pride myself on my memory, and ability to unfold the recent events that might make up the numbered items on the twice-folded piece of paper shoved into the right pocket of a pair of blue jeans and referred to as needed. It goes against my grain, and if I was to peel back the layers, I’m sure I’d find that the act of scribing notes to myself is associated with mental weakness. It’s not, of course, it’s a pride thing. I have amazing short-term recall, but it’s the older memories that blur between fact and fiction.
When Billy started having his minute memory losses, ultimately diagnosed as a malignant brain tumor, I started writing, a way of making lists I think. I didn’t want to remember his march to death, but to remember how I got there, which eventually lead to the unthinkable, ‘where do I want to go’ question. His journey, a fight to his right at life, wasn’t so different from mine, only I didn’t have doctors poisoning my body with chemicals, and cutting me with knives, rather I did that myself with introspection. I clearly had the better end of the deal, and now that Billy is gone having lost his fight, and I am still here, fighting a different battle—acceptance for those things I cannot change.
I didn’t take if lying down because it felt too much like a shrug of the shoulders, and oh well that is life, what could I do about the cards I was dealt sort of feeling. I don’t know if my life is predetermined, and regardless of what I do differently now if it will change the events ahead of me, or if I do alter my course now if I’ll end up at the same place regardless, who knows for sure. Acceptance of loss didn’t mean that I had to surrender or find a rocking chair for the front porch, and wait around for my spirit to leave me. It simply meant I had a choice.
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Before I deemed myself an artist, I was a Stepford Wife. I put everything and everyone before me. In my pre-artist world, I didn’t grant myself privileges of indulgence or excess. It’s odd to admit that to myself because I have always been employed and capable of supporting myself without any help. Referring to myself as a Stepford Wife is my metaphor for assimilating into a catatonic mental state and denying my own self a full existence. (For the record, I have never been tall, blonde, anorexic looking, and although once coveted, physical perfection isn’t me, and is not what my past lovers would say about me if interviewed by Barbara Walters. They’d say, almost dazed and in a whispered voice, ’she slips into your skin’, and then they’d look down at their hands maybe touch a forearm, and then finish by saying, ’she never really leaves’. But they wouldn’t say I was Stepford type material-physically anyway, I’m not a beauty.) 
Hellos scare me, but once that two-syllable word passes through my teeth breaking the silence I breathe a sigh of relief knowing the worst is behind me. Shy isn’t a word the six and no more than ten people I know would use to describe me. In fact, if I told them I was blogging and they read this post they’d ask me—after giving me grief about having a blog and not telling them— if I had hit my head on the bathroom sink and was I suffering from a concussion. They’d say you are not shy, anything but. 
I have a weakness for all three. 
I smiled when I pushed open the doors to my local gym this morning. It was the first time since joining that each one of the treadmills had a passenger. Having no choice I climbed up on the elliptical for my daily pain, popped the ear buds in and turned on my MP3 player. It’s a new year, a new decade, and the perfect opportunity to start afresh. 
