Once upon a time, in a land far, far away...

Here's the thing.  I don't want to move.  I don't want to go anywhere.  The air smells good and the water tastes good.  There's family.  And you know, there is security.

My brilliant therapist once told me that security is knowing what to expect.  I haven't had that in a really, really long time.  I've had a taste of it and I'd like to keep it.

A friend reminded me of something I'd told her over a decade ago, maybe in junior high...  I said that what I wanted when I grew up was to live by myself and maybe some dogs, in the middle of nowhere, and just write.

So why does this feel so much like I have to justify my decision to not move to Pocatello, Boise, or Salt Lake?  Maybe I can get another therapist soon.  I'm a big fan of that.

Today I had an appointment with my GP, Dr. B.  He is working on a referral for me to the University of Utah Clinical Neurosciences Center.  I would really love to become a patient there.  They have over ten doctors and five of them are neurosurgeons.  They also work on rather cutting edge treatments.  I watched a YouTube video of a doctor talking about chronic pain.  He said the move is from opiate treatments to neuromodulation - it looks like the spinal cord stimulation kind of treatments.  I'm excited about this.

So it is that bad that all I want in life is to get a little place to rent to share with my stink hounds?  To just sit around a write?  To focus on getting better?  Maybe even psychologically better?

I feel like I'm supposed to be doing more.  You know, more... ambitious, great things.  The over-achiever in me is balking at this idea.  I'm scared.  Scared that I'm not doing enough, being enough, trying enough.

And once again and forever, I am resentful that I have to carve this life out on my own again.  I had a life.  I miss that life all the time.  I know I need to move on, but every single time I walk and get a stabbing pain down my leg or get up from sitting and feel every vertebrae bitching about it, I feel this wash of anger and sadness and longing.

No matter what I do, no matter what I try, I am not getting the past back.  So why do I feel so paralyzed about the future?

Once upon a time, I knew who I was and what I wanted and where I was going.  Or maybe I just thought I did.  Now I am in a land far, far away from there.