Nox Amicus

At 3:54pm on September 21st the Moon was New. I’m running behind schedule again this cycle, though I am still working through giving myself grace around things. As we said last cycle – “just be glad to be here.”

In the last post I talked about Priority, and how I was finally finding that I am worth being a Priority to myself, and “recognizing that the causes of anxiety that I had placed ahead of my well-being do not deserve the Priority I had unwillingly given them.” Saying this and owning it was huge for me – even more so is living that truth without fear. I had also said that “The people who love and care for you will understand or adapt, or not…”

That fear of abandonment is strong, but does being abandoned by people who can’t accept who you are, or where you are on your path, really count as abandonment?

As I have lived with the concept of being a Priority to myself, I have found that I have had to be stronger than I give myself credit for; or, really, ever had a desire to be. I never want to be forceful. I never want to rankle. I really just want to “be” – but it’s become obvious that is a thing we all still need to fight for.

This is where the focus for this cycle brings us: Fortitude, which can be defined as “courage in pain or adversity”. I think the first time I really started to explore this as a potential theme was in mid-August. I was out of the hospital about two weeks, and not quite back to work yet. I was on the phone with my sister and she was in awe of how I “handled” being in the hospital with all the tests and procedures. She called me brave.

I didn’t see that. I couldn’t. My humanity was on vacation while I was hospitalized – I was just one big science experiment. Keeping me alive was the successful result. I couldn’t attach an emotion to that – there was nothing I could do anyway. I had no control over the gallbladder and no control over the myriad infections my body was fighting. I wasn’t at war, I was simply the battlefield.

But looking back on it now, I didn’t lose it. I could have. I should have. But I held it together – I was involved and invested with my care team. I only got emotional a couple times, and only lost hope one day. So okay – maybe not bravery. But Fortitude? Yes.

Fortitude follows last cycle’s Priority well. It’s one thing to name myself and my needs as a Priority, it’s another to have the Fortitude to stand up for myself and claim it. There have been a number of tests over the past month – not intended as tests, not in any way malicious, but times when the “right choice for me” was not the choice someone else might have preferred. I find it’s tricky for people to get used to this change in me – times I would have caved and let my needs lapse in favor of keeping the peace. But someone else’s peace isn’t my battle to fight – particularly when I’m placed in the position of having to fight myself.

Fortitude was never a quality I would have ascribed to myself before – but I am working to develop it. To borrow a line from the companion song: “Think about direction; wonder why you haven’t before.”