list no. 12 :: read between the lines

1. Sometimes, I can be really thick. 
2. And it takes me a long time to finally realize a situation/thing/whatever it is that needs clarity.
3. Especially when it comes to friendships.
4. I tell you that there has been a lot to grieve since we decided to leave New Jersey three years ago, March.
5. Even though our official landing here in L.A., wasn't until the end of June.
6. I think back to that June and how we spent a week in Vancouver with my sister and her kids and I try to recall in my minds eye whether she was showing signs of feeling ill again.
7. Every now and again I look at this one polaroid I took of us that week. 
8. I have to keep in my desk.
9. I can barely bare to look at it because it's the last one I have of us when she was still well(ish).
10. The cancer was definitely back when I made that portrait, and 8 weeks later it would rear its ugly head again and change our lives forever.
11. Because the worst imaginable thing was happening before my eyes, I didn't have time to grieve, (or rejoice), in moving across the country and setting up a new house and life.
12. I didn't think about the fact that I'd closed up my acupuncture practice and wasn't working,
13. and I certainly didn't have a clue that it would be my last time sticking needles into someone professionally.
14. So much of what happened over the next 8 months is a blur.
15. But I tell you there's a life time of scenarios and situations to torture myself with for the rest of my life if I choose.
16. I make a very conscious effort to not let that happen, and sometimes it takes all that I have.
17. In many ways, I don't know who I am anymore because I identified myself so much, (unbeknownst to me), by my career. 
18. I was proud of going to graduate school and I loved being an acupuncturist. 
19. There was no glass ceiling, and every patient that laid upon my table was exciting and new, even if it was something I'd treated before. 
20. I never intended to not practice acupuncture here.
21. Which was a very different scenario to the one 15 years prior when I decided to leave interior design, completely burned out. 
22. I never once looked back or wished I was a designer again.
23. Meanwhile, I mourn not practicing acupuncture a lot, even though I finally can explain to myself why I can't practice again.
24. So even though it would appear all kinds of awesome that I don't work, 
25. and I am incredibly fortunate that I don't have to,
26. I promise you it's not all that it seems.
27. I am a bit lost and also uncertain and I am grateful for our kid, because she has given me a reason to hold my shit together every day since Leslie's cancer came back.