It’s just after midnight, and I’ve been cranky all day. I noticed it earlier while I was reading. The television was on, the kitchen sink was running, the microwave was beeping, and nothing would shut up. I just want it to be quiet. I just want to the world to be quiet. So I took a shower, shaved my face, and that helped a little–but only a little. At some point I realized my bad mood was simply the result of being ill. I really do feel better than I did a week ago, but my energy level is still shot, and I still have drainage. Then when I did a sinus rinse and saw some mucus, I thought, What if I still have an infection? Well, then I started to freak out. You know how one thought leads to another. What if it never goes away? What if this is the rest of my life? Why does the universe hate me?

I know this thinking is dramatic.

Probably the best thing I could do at this point would be go to bed. Like for a month, but at least until the morning. But again, I have this blog to write. I realize this blog is strictly my choice, so I hope it doesn’t appear that I’m nailing myself to a cross or anything. But I don’t mind saying that keeping your commitments and exercising personal willpower are difficult things to do when you’re not feeling your best. This is something I really struggle with whenever I’m under the weather–do I keep pushing, eating good meals, searching the internet for answers, or do I give up, grab a bowl of ice cream, and let nature take its course?

Currently I’m leaning toward the ice cream.

It seems that whenever I’m worried about one thing, I’m worried about everything. Perhaps this is seeing the world through shit-colored glasses. (Where did these come from?) But it seems that the hope I have for feeling better is somehow tied to the hope I have for being more self-sufficient, is somehow tied to the hope I have for having my own family one day. It’s like my body and all my hopes and dreams are tied together in a big knot, and if one thing goes down, we all go down together. Logically I know that my allergies (or whatever) have nothing to do with whether or not I’ll be living with my parents when I’m forty, but in this moment I can’t untie the knot.

Earlier I cried while watching an America’s Got Talent audition in which the comedian Drew Lynch got the Golden Buzzer and went straight to the next round. This is something I think I could do more of, crying. Having stuffed things down for so long, I know there’s a lot that would like to come to the surface. And whereas I’ve made a lot of progress in the area of expressing emotions, I know my tendency is to strengthen my defenses rather than soften them. On days like today, my muscles automatically tighten. I think, I can handle this. But part of me just wants to admit it–I’m tired of being strong, and I don’t have all the answers.

This afternoon I went for a two-hour walk and listened to Joseph Campbell. It really is the strangest thing walking the streets of your hometown. Today I went to the city park, and I remember being there as a child. There’s a spot by the woods where my sister ran into a barbed wire fence. There’s a house on the other side where I used to get my hair cut. That’s when I was blonde (naturally). On the way home I looked to my right and saw the back of the house where my grandmother used to live and thought, Why haven’t I seen that before? I know it’s been fifteen years since she’s been alive, twenty since I mowed her lawn, but I can still remember us standing there in her yard like it was yesterday–just like I can remember the barbed wire fence incident and my blonde hair or–more recently–where I was standing when my first nephew was born. It’s all mixed up together as if time didn’t exist.

My man Joseph Campbell says you can draw a circle around anything–a rock, an animal, a planet–and say, “What is it?” Granted, we have names and labels for everything in our physical world. You could say, “Duh, that’s a rock, and that’s Jupiter (a rock in the sky).” But the point is, when was the last time you looked at something you see every day and let it be what it truly is–a mystery? As I was leaving the park, a flock of geese took off from the water and flew right in front me in their trademark V. For a moment, I was totally stunned. How is it that I’m lucky enough to live in a universe where birds fly?

Tonight was not only the last full moon of the year, but it was also a super moon, which is when the moon is closet to the earth. Earlier I stepped outside and saw it moving behind the clouds, and it was like seeing those geese at the park, this absolute wonder flying through the heavens. But surely our lives are wonders too, these knots of emotions and memories that fall down one day and fly the next. Surely you could draw a circle around us, for we are as complicated and as beautiful as any planet. Better yet, I think, to draw a circle around yourself, to see yourself for the mystery that you are, and know that mysteries aren’t supposed to have all the answers.