Currently it’s two in the morning, and Mom and Dad are in bed. The house is quiet, I’m at the kitchen table, and the most interesting thing I can find to talk about is the plant sitting next to me–the one my therapist told me to buy a couple months ago. Recently a new stem appeared. It’s tiny, but it’s taller than the others. The way its leaves are folded back, it reminds me of a rocket ship. To me it looks full of potential, and I wonder what will become of that new stem, haw far its leaves will spread out one day. And where did it even come from? I swear it wasn’t there five days ago. Honest to god, it’s like I’m sitting next to a miracle.

Today has been all over the place. I’m coughing less than yesterday, but I still feel like crap. There’s just no better way to say it. I know I was pretty pessimistic in yesterday’s blog, and some of that bad attitude leaked into today. Objectively I know that life will improve and everything isn’t all bad, but it certainly hasn’t felt that way. I’ve talked to my therapist about this before, and she says, “When you’re off in the body, you’re off in the mind.” To me this means I simply don’t have access to my best thinking when I’ve been sick for five weeks straight. So for now I’m trying to hang in there, to trust that things will look different after the storm has passed.

Since yesterday I wasn’t even trying, I consider this a big improvement.

I honestly am rather disgusted by the fact that one sinus infection has taken up so much space on this blog. I wish I had something else to talk about. That being said, I told a friend earlier tonight that sinus infections have been my constant teacher over the years, and this one has been no exception. Just when I think I’m trusting, patient, optimistic, and kind, all I need is a good sinus infection to bring me back to reality. But on a deeper level, being sick like this brings up all my emotional shit–all the icky feelings like “not good enough” and “despair” that have been making themselves at home and putting their feet on my table for decades.

You know how feelings can take over, like they own the damn place.

In terms of not feeling good enough, I imagine we all feel this way at times. After all, advertisers don’t exactly entice us to buy their products by suggesting we’re perfect the way we are. But I think the button that gets hit for me is deeper and goes back to having to grow up so fast when my dad went to prison. At the time I didn’t think it was a big deal to take over the house and keep going to school, even to stop going to church and stop eating pork when my family changed our religious beliefs. But I can see now that all of that was a huge deal. I did the best I could, but I really wasn’t up to the task emotionally. Not only was I in over my head, but I was also isolated because we’d made ourselves so different from everybody else.

Twenty years later, it still feels like I’m not up to the task. Well-meaning people make suggestions (Have you tried a Neti Pot?), and it feels like an accusation, something I’m not doing right. But earlier I was thinking about how I’d respond if a fifteen-year-old I knew were going through what I went through at that age–what I might say if he were giving himself a hard time–and my heart absolutely melted. So I’m trying to extend the compassion I’d feel for anybody else to myself, to realize that I’m doing best I can (damn it) and always have been.

In terms of feeling despair, this is something I’m just starting to unpack. It’s something my therapist and I have been talking about lately but that I haven’t discussed here because it feels so raw. But a few weeks ago I was talking about several things that happened–or rather, didn’t happen–when I was a teenager. These were things I got my hopes up about, like Dad being found innocent or, when he wasn’t, being let out of prison early. Anyway, I was telling my therapist that I often feel powerless, like there’s nothing I can do to make a situation better, and all of a sudden she got quiet. (She never gets quiet.) Then she said, “I just realized something that affects and changes everything else we’ve been talking about.”

“What?” I said.

“Hope is scary for you.”

Honestly, I haven’t exactly known what to do with this information, which, by the way, is correct. Brene Brown says that hope is information, and my therapist says I’ve been let down so many times over the years that I simply haven’t had the right data. Consequently, I’ve spent a lot of time reading about people who achieve their dreams or who overcome chronic health problems, but there’s always a part of me that doesn’t quite believe those things are possible. Well, maybe they’re possible for someone else, but not for me. “It’s too bad,” my therapist says, “since life is actually set up for you to succeed.”

Again, if some teenager in my improv class told me he was afraid to hope, I’d melt with compassion. If someone told me they were going through a storm, I’d say, “You’re going to make it. Things will look different when it’s over, but mostly because you’ll be different–stronger than you were before.” So I’m trying to take it easy on myself, to take both this sinus infection and my life one day at a time and not assume the worst. Things can get better–they’re already better than they used to be. Looking at the plant beside me, I’m reminded that I, too, am full of potential, capable of new growth at anytime. For surely if a plant is a miracle, then I am one too, ever ready to let go of that which is behind, turn my face toward the light, and hope again.