A Moment Through the Copse

 Whew! Finally have a moment to sit and write again. YAY! First, what's my word of the day... hold on...

copse [kops] -noun : a thicket of small trees or bushes; a small wood

I sense a nature theme, dictionary.com. Let's see what Google images can cook up for us. Ooo, pretty!

Another location in Great Britain... huh. And this is the caption that came with it:

Horn's Copse: East of Bucklebury Common and South of Carbin's wood

Taken from the road looking north, this wood is situated north of Midgham Green. Most of this square is woodland, there being three named woodland areas, Carbins Wood, Horns Copse and Channel Wood. They are a mixture of coniferous and non coniferous trees. This copse is predominantly non coniferous.

Thank you, most educational site. If I get one more picture from Britain, however, I'm going to start making plans to go over the summer, 'cause Karen can only take so many hints before she gets smacked upside the head, and that shit hurts!

But, for now, I'd like to turn your attention to the more thoughtful and penetrating subject of the "95 Questions". Originally, I had been musing over #27:

"What’s the number one thing you want to achieve in the next five years?"
This would mean, in my understanding, by Jan. 1st, 2017, at which point I will be 36 yrs old. Ugh.

Seeing as I don't know how the next month will pan out, much less the next year, I'm starting to get a little disgruntled thinking that far ahead. Yes, this next month is going to be interesting, and I can thank Mercury in Retrograde for that (or blame myself, but it all came together beautifully during the one time such mishaps get snagged). Bugger. So, our new roommate just moved in, with a young, hyper dog weighing approximately 45 lbs. As it turns out, the pet policy, that no one bothered to check on, only allows for dogs up to 20 lbs. Being on the second floor, you can imagine that it was near impossible for our neighbors to ignore the new romping sounds, especially when the dog is still hyper at 1am.

So, the next day, we get a complaint from the office, I get the paperwork confirming the dog has to go, and the roommate is deciding to stay with the dog and go, too. December will be an interesting month, for sure. But I have a small job offer to help a past film instructor with a project, and will be doing Student Judging for Vail Film Festival again this year, so it hasn't all been downhill this month.

In fact, my final project for Creative Producing was a huge success. I was the only one who took the time to do a Powerpoint presentation, and came up with a really cool, innovative marketing and promotions plan. Then after class, the instructor tells me that he now knows he'll have to enforce that that project be done with a Powerpoint. YAY! But that also means that my mind can't stretch too far
away from the here and now.

Thus, I prefer to reflect upon the recent past by writing about #25 tonight:

"What was the most defining moment in your life during this past year?"

This just isn't easy for me. Early in the year, I decided to take a Voice Acting class. I wish I had attended more classes, but it reaffirmed for me that this is something I really enjoy and am quite good at (or at least could be with practice). Heck, I may already be infamous. When we do table reads of scripts, I tend to like to read for the narrator, and I've been told recently that at a table read they were looking around for me. HA! But that wasn't really a moment.

I was thinking about the defining moment for Quentin and I in our relationship. I had been having a rough time, and he was feeling it, and come March, he had had enough of it. But I was dedicated. Quentin is the kind of guy not to give up, and for him to give up on me just sent it home that this was the time where I needed to show him that I wouldn't give up on him, either. Quentin once won back my affection, and between March and May, I, too, won back his. We celebrated our 2nd Anniversary this past November, which is the longest relationship I've ever been in. It's also the most loving, grounded, and endearing, but I digress...

Ultimately, I feel like this "defining moment" needs to be symbolic, and impactful, and devastating. The morning I was taken to the Emergency Room, for me, sums up exactly what I've been suffering from... probably all my life.

I had been trying to soothe a dry cough the previous night, so I'd wake up, take a cough drop, go back to sleep, and wake up two hours later. By round three, I got up to go to the bathroom, had a sizable bowel movement, and returned to bed. This must have been around 7am. I lay on front and start turning as if to lay on my side when I hear a POP! from my left psoas area (think lower abdomen, right where it meets the pelvis/leg). Now, I don't think anything of it. I just figured 'good stretch'! I pass out, but about thirty minutes later I wake up from excruciating pain.

For those who don't know me well enough, let me explain - when I say "I am in pain", this likely to be a serious situation. The first time I ever had a UTI (urinary tract infection), I didn't go to the doctor until I saw blood. The doctor warned me that on a scale from 1-10 for how bad my UTI had become, it was at an 11. Thus, I tend to take a lot before I cry wolf.

Once the pain set in, I didn't have a thought of cohesive thoughts other than 'must stop pain'. So, I go to the bathroom. Nothing. I try breathing. No improvement. I try cooling down. At which point, I realize my stomach is unstable, and I throw up. By the by, if ever you're curious, returning Ricola is a disturbing dark yellow color.

By this point, I've been awake with this pain for 30 minutes, trying hard not to wake up Quentin. He needed his sleep. It was early. I could handle it. Right?

I curl up on the bed, trying to convince myself that I don't have to wake him up, but my whimpering turns to pleading. I need someone with a clear head. Quentin is groggy, but snaps to it. He wants me to go to the ER, but I'm thinking 'it'll be expensive and they'll want to give my drugs'. So, I look at my Insurance Card, which has "after hours" listed as well. I say we go there instead.

Then I throw up again. We go to the ER. Turns out, it's the same co-pay. Just $75, and I can handle that. And I'm feeling okay about the notion of drugs.

I dress. We take a trash can, just in case I get sick again. I do.

Poor Quentin is a ball of worried mess as he witnesses me suffer through the hardest thing I've ever had to face - the result of years of not paying attention to myself. Because I don't want to bother other people, because I don't want to pay the money (or I'm afraid I can't afford it), but ultimately, I was suffering because I didn't do what I set out to do.

I came to Colorado to slow my life down enough to be able to live consciously. That is to say, balance my physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs. Do yoga, go on a hike, write, explore... hell, maybe just have a weekend off. It was supposed to be a reprioritization and reprogramming of sorts, but the effort still seemed to throw me back into my old patterns: no time to exercise, no money for doctors, I work hard and deserve what I want (in the most gratuitous yet unsatisfactory way), and I still don't feel free to live as I choose.

I can't say as I've changed, actually. I'm still behind on my doctor's visits. I still don't exercise, though I have started getting more regular massages. I've even been using my cousin's Shakeology supplement every other day to help me keep on the up and up.

But that moment keeps me thinking, every time I do something for someone else that takes time away from what I want to be doing, or any time I convince myself I don't have the time or energy to do something, anything, I get angry. And I think I get angry because my body is tired of paying for my compromises.

Well, this was much longer than I anticipated, but please know that I hope this was just as helpful to you as it was cathartic to me. Don't worry, this lesson won't go completely swept under the rug. I'll be paying off the over $6k in medical bills for the next 2 years. I'm sure those bills will be a HUGE reminder :-P

All right, my readers... I ask you - what's been your definitive moment this past year? Can't wait to hear all about it!

Cheers.
*~K~*