I am not sure quite what has happened the last two weeks.
We went on a trip to Louisiana that I was unsure about but willing to try to be with Jay and support his efforts at doing something new in a warm location.
I don't know quite what's happened, but this is my best guess.
I have gone on four trips in four months. Four trips, three of which involved air travel. This last one included a stay in a second-world hotel complete with a regularly abandoned lobby, soapless room, weeds on all the sidewalks, minimal staff.
In addition, things w/ my Mom have heated up and my stress is off the charts with managing that situation.
I think I've kind of had a meltdown. I was feeling that going into this trip and then there was so much newness and strangeness about this trip, I think I tripped some kind of wire.
I got really, really sick when I got home. When we got home, we had our new in-laws visiting which we'd been looking forward to but was another two days of not being relaxed.
We are both feeling it. The weather isn't turning warm. Everyday is a needle-ping between 35 and 50. Rain and cold wind. Months of this, literally. It's April. We're dying here.
Yeah, so I kind of had a meltdown or my body did. I had some lab work done and it showed a low white blood cell count which can be due to stress or illness or a few other things. Stress. It's the killer.
I'm coming around to seeing what's going on, trying to process it, take some healthy steps and get back into the healthier groove I was developing before I left. It won't last forever. I'm healthy now; this was a blip, not reality.
There were some highlights on the trip and all of them. I am grateful for the opportunities. I am definitely however a Highly Sensitive Person and the constant change and stimulation wore my system down. Healing and rebooting.
On the plus side, a friend read my poem Hungry and said it was "awesome" and just what he needed that day. That makes me so happy, that my work and service is helping someone, especially if that someone is a friend.