Concessions

An outrageous sunset from 2010

Talking about concessions to old age here.

I keep running into myself, the old self. The one who thinks she'll wake up in the morning and she'll have been "fixed" overnight into what she used to be. You know, tennis, marathons, hiking. And that's just before breakfast.The acceptance of where I'm actually at physically has taken forever to penetrate. I've gotten glimmers, of course, but not complete acceptance. And I know that acceptance doesn't mean approval.

But I need to deal and stop this magical thinking. And I think I've made headway in the past week.

I had a terrible experience during the week where I did too much in one day, didn't pace myself, and nearly collapsed in a grocery store, felt ill. Completely out of steam. Pain like gawd knows what.

I called my Whine Buddy the following day after first of all brushing off some smaller commitments as I was cranky, upset, overly tired and felt like a blight on humanity.

I always feel like a new woman, freshly invigorated, after talking with her, she is only in her fifties but has challenging physical issues of her own, compounded by an elderly parent now in hospital. She has to use his old walker to visit him, she's the only designated visitor due to Covid. And the interminable trudge through the poorly designed Health Science Centre here has to be seen to be believed. Instead of pushing the design upwards, they went all over the map into a massive sprawl of unmarked corridors and cul-de-sacs. this with an aging demographic. I've had to be pushed though it in a wheelchair just to get from clinic to clinic.

But I digress.

We started coming to terms with "I'll have to ask for help" which is something we hate to do. I just know I can't face another day like Wednesday where I thought I'd be one of those carted off, unconscious, in an ambulance. Afterwards I went to the lake and bawled like a baby. This is an honest blog.

I need to explain myself better to those who care about me. And stop pretending. Say no without fear. Accept the help of a friend recently who said she help with some physical therapy. Accept the help of loved ones who offer to pick up groceries. Have Joanna come once a week to do what's necessary here. Stop complaining about the increased cost of my podiatrist.

And every time I start to feel I can't carry on ask that old question a therapist way back had taught me."Because?" If you've never heard of it I'll post about it the next time. It's enormously helpful and I had forgotten about it until someone in Zoom mentioned it recently.

So I've hauled it out.

And I tumbled across this photo looking for something else. How Ansa, the Wonder Dog, loved to pose. 2009. She makes me smile now, it took me years to stop crying over photos of her.