Today I am forty-two. It's funny. I always felt like I was so much older than my age, and now I feel so much younger than it. Perhaps it's only that I've finally got enough years to fit all the events comfortably. I don't know, but I feel joyful today. I feel victorious. My insides still ache some, and I know it's going to take a while for that to calm (assuming it ever does). But I feel like I've regained my optimism, that ridiculous spark of belief that has carried me so far. I want to believe that things will work out, and so, eventually I do. One good thing I can see out of all the tests at the hospital is that apart from the IBS and all my other existing health concerns, I'm absurdly healthy. I'm still epileptic, and I'm still diabetic, but they're both well controlled. The doctor told me that my results were "pristine" and that he wished his were as good. While it wasn't comforting in the middle of my pain, I find it comforting now. Ever since the stroke, and my sister's death a few years after that, I've had this terrible feeling that I was dying. That something was very wrong, and we just didn't know. It has been more than just a feeling, actually, it has been a rock-solid belief that creeps up from time to time, usually when I'm stressed. So while I'm doing as much dying day-to-day as anyone else, I can be sure I'm doing as much living, too. Maybe more. I'm aiming for more, that's for sure.

So thank you, Universe, for another year. Thank you for hope, and for conviction. Thank you for the people I love, the people that love me, and thank you for everyone else. Thank you for my peace, thank you for my healing, and thank you for giving me the lessons you have.

I auditioned for Canada's Got Talent, and I'm waiting to hear whether I made it to the judges audition. E-mails are supposed to be going out by the fifteenth, and I'm starting to worry. Worrying is counter-productive, I know, but I start my whole run of 'what if' questions. What if I make it. What if I don't. What if I'm not as good as I hope I am. Bleah. My monkey-mind is in full gear, and pelting me with rotting bananas. There's no point in trying to answer the questions, it's all theoretical, and there's nothing I can do now to change the outcome in any case. Time to stop. Time to breathe and be grateful for the moment, and to live in it fully.

Okay, so deep breath. Today I'm going to make pumpkin pie, and then I'm going over to my friend Cheryl's place for dinner. I'm grateful for my friends, grateful for my darling Kelly, who will be there too. I'm especially grateful for pumpkin pie. With whipped cream. Oh yes, and other food. I'm sure there will be some other food, too. It's just that pumpkin pie is an especial favourite. I've still got some apples from my Mata's tree, and they need to be used up, so I'll probably make apple pie, too. I might even share.

It's so easy to forget what I know about peace and living in the now. Does everyone have to keep learning the same lessons, or am I just especially special? In some ways I have an advantage. I forget stuff. It's a brain injury thing. I get to see movies for the first time twice or even three times, and even then I may get another first time in six months or a year. I'm never sure what will stick or what will disappear. Maybe that's why I worry about the future so obsessively. I want some control over my moments, some assurance that I will be permitted to keep them. There's a lot of my past that I'm really okay with losing, though it is a strange sort of way to live, here on an island of 'now' attached only tenuously to 'then'. I think it's that illusion of connection that draws me into thinking about the future. A future that hasn't happened yet is something I can remember perfectly well, in my imaginings.

I don't want to lose 'now' in favour of that illusion. I want to make pie and have dinner, and not worry about what's in my e-mail or not. Things will work out as they do, right? They always have before, somehow or another. Whatever's next will be next whether I tie myself in knots over it or not. Deep breath again. Going to make pie.