3 months, 6 months, 12 months...

it feels like a year since i have really written anything of note here. actually probably more like 13 months. i couldn't post that last piece without some update so that those of you who might still have my rss feed in your readers would fear that i had my own descent into madness. nothing like that, although these past few months have been more difficult than i'd care to admit.

13 months ago i began journaling every night before bed - one page - and minus one night in the hospital w/ buck when he held onto life by a very thin thread last february i have not broken the chain. it scrapes off the crud and has been the best tool i have ever used in my recovery. i am usually quite incoherent lately when i am scrawling that page, exhaustion at the end of the day depletes any real journalistic beauty - but i sit on the edge of that bed and force myself to write - and it works. i guess it's taken away a lot of the need i had to vent here. or maybe it's gotten me to a deeper place where even an anonymous blog is too open to air my life? i'm not sure - only know that this place rarely feels like home anymore.

buying our home was a true high point this year, but dealing with trades and finances has been brutal. it has only been in the past few weeks that we have had any semblance of normal back. many of the weeks/months were marked by much fear and anxiety as neither liam or i are from financial backgrounds that had any stability or training. this is new ground for us and we are growing up and taking responsibility for ourselves in new ways, but but it can be terrifying at times and we have few crutches left in our lives to lean on.

living without finances, food or alcohol to ease the pain and fear is a very ragged place at times. our margins wear thin quickly and the edges cut and bruise easily. i had fallen into a strange codependence with a couple and was the buffer for their relationship. it got weirder and uglier and i was so enmeshed into their lives very little of my own was being lived. i guess i take my addictions where i can when limiting my regular options. the pain was just too real to bear alone... that is gone now too and the bleakness of the longest day of the year presses in on me.

looking so forward to the days getting longer, even though winter must be weathered in the midst of this personal storm.

but all is not lost. we four laugh and leisure well together. living far from extended family is difficult during the holidays though. community has crumbled as i stepped away from the codependency and while new friendships and interactions are arising to take their place in healthy, whole ways the vacuum is still quite real and present and sitting with it today brings tears and grief.

i have been pouring myself into art and creating these past couple months. it has soothed my soul on the days where nothing else could or would. i am awakening an artist within and finding beauty and long lost confidence amidst the lies and tapes of old. i am ready for the holiday preparations to be over so that i can return to my paints, markers and pencils. i created two gifts for my children and i am so happy with them. they are framed and finished and beautiful. i also made a gift for myself with mixed media - an old forgotten 1/2 painted dollar store canvas, a favorite christmas card saved, rhinestones, vintage letter stickers and acrylics turned into a dark, moody holiday painting that i am truly proud of. it was a gift to myself for st. lucia day.

i never imagined that my word for 2009 would end up being about lack instead of abundance, but thriving even amidst the famine is truly where thriving becomes thriving. i have embraced that word this year in thought and deed, and although friends are few and far between i am finding that thriving in solitude is more possible than i had ever imagined.