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2018-07-01 / 10:36 p.m.

I have once again let time trickle away despite the fact that I'm not currently allowed to work, and I'm not currently able to do a whole lot of anything.
It's July. It's six months since I had my surgery. Everything is always about my surgery. About my bad back and my bad hips and legs and feet and neck and shoulders and arms and hands. But that's the thing about chronic pain, and something that I could never really get my head around before I experienced chronic pain - it never goes away. It is a voice screaming loudly in my ear every day from when I wake until I sleep. It is a constant distraction. It never ever stops.
I pick up doctor's certs and send them to my workplace. I watch what I eat. I walk. I do Pilates twice a day, every day, and I have not faltered in that since I started back in April. I am stronger but I am still in pain. I see friends when I can. I've laid on the beach for hours on end, gotten a tan where I didn't think it was even possible. I got a new tattoo - a permanent marking in the same tune as the song that I sing when I find myself by the sea. I have this impossible habit of ending up by the sea, especially when it rains. I started therapy, after having made the call when I didn't know what to do. When she asked on the phone what my most pressing issue was, all I could think to say was "I have chronic pain". My therapist's name is Imelda. She's past what would be her retirement age, but she says that she won't quit until she has to. She's incredibly liberal for a woman of her age, and has suggested things to read (The Diving Bell and the Butterly, Feel the Fear and do it Anyway) and has given me a copy of the Serenity Prayer to keep in my purse, despite the fact that I do not pray. I was worried in the beginning about what I would talk about, about the things that I would say. I rehearsed saying them aloud in an effort to teach myself not to cry. But it turns out that we don't talk about much of anything. It differs a lot from the therapy I was forced to endure when I was still a teenager. I remember a golden frame with pictures of his children. I remember his South African accent. His weird name. The fact that when he sat down, I could see his stupid socks. The awkward silences when he asked me stupid questions, and I gave even more stupid answers thinking that I was original or that I was in some way profound. Imelda talks about women's rights and contraception and about how they're more liberal with childhood nudity on the continent. She tells me to keep busy and has given me a copy of an advertisement for hemp patches. "Maybe they'll help". I don't think she knows how to help. We skirt around the issues and I haven't learned any coping mechanisms, but I sure have developed the skill of seeming perfectly chirpy and well adjusted in the company of my therapist.
I reconnected with one of the greater loves of my life back in September. He moved to Canada six years ago when everything was a mess. I fell into a turbulent relationship because he was gone and I didn't know what else to do, and in an effort to not repeat old habits, I cut him out of my life and regretted it every day since. I sometimes got a text from him late into the early hours, telling me that he hated me for ruining his life. Telling me that he missed me every day. That nobody compared to me. Last August, when I was still in my previous relationship, he text and said that he might have been ready to talk to me again. But I told him to call me when he was sober. He never did. But I ended up single again, because chronic pain does not allow for dishonesty or discomfort in a relationship, and I contacted him with a simple text on September 20th. I wondered if he'd reply, and he never stopped. We've spoken every day since. What a relief. What a feeling of coming back home to myself.
We planned that I would move there to be with him, but as things transpired, I don't know now if that's something that I can ever do. My body is broken, and it may be broken beyond repair. He called me every night for months on end. Three, four and five hour long calls and there was never an awkward silence. He can't come home for good. Not yet. But he flies in next week for almost a month. I haven't seen him in six years. I wonder will he still love me the way that he did back then. I wonder will he look different. His personality has changed so much in the time that he's been away. He's dealt with a lot of different hardships on his own terms and grown a lot. I have too in my own way, and I feel as though we are both fundamentally the same people that drove around Dublin at three in the morning while he smoked and I watched the light flicker across the left-hand side of his face, wondering if we could ever eventually be together. So far, as it transpires, we haven't managed that much. But we are back on track.
What he doesn't seem to remember is back then, in 2010 when I was scared and lost in a new city, he often didn't call or text for days and I worried myself sick over the fact that maybe he was quitting on me. We stopped inviting each other into our most fundamental thought processes. We fell apart but wouldn't admit it to each other, or ourselves. He moved thousands of miles away, and without ever once expressing that desire, he expected me to follow. I was two years into a four-year degree, not forgetting the five-year-long relationship I was supposedly already committed to. I loved him in all the wrong ways and thought that now I might finally be able to do it right.
And still, I found myself on a date with a man in a nearby town a little over a week ago. It's the first time I ever allowed somebody to take me out without having seen me in person first and somehow I wasn't nervous, or scared that he'd leave. He's beautiful. We met for coffee, and we walked about and sat by the sea. The hours flew too fast. We spoke about things that are too profound for a first date, and he asked me if I'd like another. I declined and haven't been able to stop thinking about him since. It's too difficult to commit to somebody when my body is so broken.
So in flies the love of my life next week which is wonderful and scary but also sad, because he will leave again and I don't know when I will see him again. I'm so afraid for my heart to break all over again because I don't have the strength either physically or mentally to navigate that eventuality again.
So here I am. One foot in, the other is dragging behind.

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