If you cared to expand a bit on here about what it is you finally got, I’d love to read it. Don’t want to assume I know what you mean…

I finally got that we are powerless over the script the ego keeps writing for us. It keeps pushing us into falseness in order to keep our safe place in society going. It is a primal urge.

In this case, I have been ill for almost a month with a virus that just wouldn’t quit. When it started out, I was fairly respectable in my presentation. But I made 2 trips to the doctor, 1 to Urgent Care and a trip to the ER. I have wretched, shit, sweated, run a fever, etc. When things hit the fan, the persona takes a huge hit.

The ego facade does not hold up when the body is under fire. I made a few deep connections with nurses and the clean-up crew. I was peeing, shitting, calling for more underwear, vaseline, zinc oxide for my posterior. It was total bedlam in my room. Then I got to go home on Thursday night. Today is my birthday. There was no cake; I had no interest in getting one. I am debilitated and hopefully under reconstruction. Interestingly, I can still write rapidly and coherently enough to click “Send.”

Today I know I am being “refitted” for some kind of new experience. It was all a waking dream. The view out my hospital window was of the heating/cooling system. The P.A. drew a picture of my stomach and it looked eerily like a photo I managed to take of the view out the window.

When we got home, the street I live on had lots of trucks with their headlights on. There had been a cut somewhere in the cable or something like that. I have looked out my kitchen window and seen a Ditch Witch in the yard across the street working all day long. The time it will take to complete the project of installing new electrical system on our street is indefinite. They will not be through until January or February. I am told it will take me a while to recover from this. I must keep away from crowds. As a dear friend told me, it is as if I am in the womb right now.

One thing I have never doubted is my ability to write. I have agonized over my books not selling, filled with hope that they would be. That being the case, anyone who reads my words and is open to their meanings will prove it is a God-given ability over which I have no control. The right people will find them and wrong people won’t recognize them.

The next stage of my journey is profound self-love. The more I love myself, the quicker I will heal. True for us all. My sister sent some old photos of me in my birthday card. I put one out on the hutch. I was so adorable. When did I lose that?

Vicki Woodyard