The thunder woke me this morning. I didn’t see the storm, only heard it, the wind and the rain and the noise of the sky tearing itself apart. For a few minutes, I enjoyed the sound, the coziness of being in bed with the rain outside, thought about how nice it would be to stay there, lie there for a while.

And then I remembered what the day had in store for me.

It lessened to a drizzle and then a mist, the sun appeared and now there’s a golden glow to the air, and the day formed itself and reformed itself and flowed and changed and yet here I am sitting in a chair that’s indistinguishable from the next chair and the only thing that’s different is the corner of the room where I’m sitting.

I was supposed to get more baby therapy today, augmented by eight-year-old-going-on-twenty-seven-year-old therapy, but circumstances here in our special acre of limbo intersected that.

Sometimes I think the room doesn’t like me to leave.

It has an energy of its own, even when it’s empty, it buzzes.

I try to remember what my life was like before this happened, before it became waiting and eating food I don’t really want and waiting some more, and worry like soundtrack playing softly behind everything. What my annoyances were. What it was like to call friends and not talk about this, to write this blog and not write about it.

There was before it happened.

And it’s after it happened.

Now I know the flecks and flickers in the linoleum, the shape of the light as it’s dissected by the blinds, the scars on the walls, the lifted edges of the wallpaper meant to look like paint. I know the smell that I smell even when I’m at home, even when I’ve showered, so I know it’s only the persistence of it, not the smell itself.

I know I will be cold, no matter the temperature outside.

I will drink tea, and more tea, and more tea after that. Eventually something will indicate that it’s time to eat again, though it’s unlikely to be my appetite, but the light blue bleeding to blue bleeding to navy with the yellow lights of the city, in the distance, breaking through.

 And then it will be late and time to go home and time to return to bed, back where I started without seeming to get anywhere at all.