I Cut My Hair

I woke up this morning shortly before 9:00 AM, feeling fresh and ready. I wasn't ready to get up necessarily, but I was ready to begin the process of trying to get up. My Home Care Aide arrived. While he did some initial setup in my room, I slowly went through the stages of laying down to sitting up. Then I cut the bandage off of my foot, a task which will likely end on Monday.

What I noticed this morning was that I wasn't feeling the anger, the bitterness, the sadness which I have felt over the last couple of weeks. For the first time in a while, I feel sort of okay. I'm not perfect. I'm certainly not healthy. Let's just say I feel less bad today than I have felt in a while, bordering on the edge of good.

Cutting my hair is a good example of how this kind of feeling precipitates out. I have been meaning to cut my hair for some weeks now, even before David and I hit the road. I've let myself get all scraggly and unkempt. I just didn't care all that much. A few days ago I was tempted, but in the end I didn't feel like I wanted to make the effort. This morning, however, I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, and in a moment realized I wanted to cut that scraggle off of my head and face. So I did.

Of course I have been struggling with a bit of mini-depression, especially since coming home from the road trip. I love travel, escaping from the prison of ALS in my home here in Calgary. It's not that I am forced to stay in, caged inside my apartment, during the winter. It's that I don't have the energy to fight the weather. So coming back from the road trip, back from the freedom of travel, I was in a slump.

That slump seems to be coming to an end. While I am certainly tired right now, after a nap I will get in my power wheelchair to go do some shopping. The Coop has their 10-for-10 sale on now, a favourite of mine, since many of my staples like beans and tomato sauce go on sale, cheap. Actually, though, I just feel like getting outside. It's about time.