“You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think.”
–Mortimer Adler (b. 1902), American philosopher, educator, “How to Read a Book”

I’ve lost my voice. No, not physically. I can still utter sounds. I’ve lost my writing voice. I can’t find the words. I can’t make them come out. I’ve tried coaxing them. I’ve tried forcing. Nothing works. The words won’t come. This…this piece…right here, about losing my voice…has taken me weeks to get out. I can’t even write about not writing. That’s how lost I am.

Don’t get me wrong. I have words. I have ideas and thoughts and themes that I could expand upon if I could get them to come out in some semblance of clear communication.

I have words…motherhood, baby, miracles, life…they are oozing from me. I feel like I’m so consumed with love right now that I’m glowing. I don’t think anyone else sees it, though. Maybe Kooper but he’s only a month old. Maybe that’s why he falls asleep every time I hold him. He’s comfortable with me. He knows he’s safe. Willow knows. She’s my three-year-old counterpart.

I have the language…but I’m tired. I’m tired of doctors. A virus struck first, leaving me weak. Cancer followed. I’m tired of hearing that it’s just skin cancer and that everyone knows someone who had it. I know it’s empathy but it doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me sad. We’re treating cancer like it’s nothing. There are so many different kinds of skin cancer and I have the worst kind. Melanoma. Yes, it was caught early but it’s cancer, dammit!!! Cancer. It sucks. I’m tired of hurting. I’m tired of having allergic reactions to every single thing that touches my skin.

I’m worried about smallpox. How silly is that? I don’t usually worry about things that I don’t have any control over. I wonder, though, if I’ll be able to get the shot and do I really want that pockmark on my arm? I missed the inoculations in the 70s but just barely. They ended them a year or two before I would have gotten it. I watched what the vaccine could do to people with compromised immune systems and especially those with eczema. Wouldn’t you know it? I’ve never had eczema but this year it decided to get me, too. Does that mean I have to take my chance with smallpox or with the vaccine? I don’t want to make this kind of decision right now.

I’m whining and I know it. I hate what I’m writing because it’s crap. I’m making no sense and I can’t find my way out of this maze.

I have words. Really, I do. I just need to find a way to get them out.