12 | in words I exist

[verylongfarewell]

Anxious this morning. Extremely body-focused and feeling a lot of health-related anxiety. Nervous about my foot. Flashes of panic about my teeth or getting cancer. Most of it entirely unreasonable. Yes, my ankle is broken and it swells when I use it, but I have a physio therapist who's telling me that's completely normal and will continue for a couple of years, although to a lesser and lesser degree. My teeth is a recurring fear I have, and I think mostly a symptom of my other issues. The cancer thing... same.

Anxiety is a strange thing. It wants me to be afraid, but not to be constructive about my fears. I have to do that work myself and sometimes it cripples me so much, I can't. It's gotten better and I have various coping strategies now, but on mornings like this where I just wake up hit by it... Yeah, it's difficult.



Working on a "new" short story in Danish.

I still need to do a final read-through of the Lilith one, before I can send it to my editor, but I found the first couple of paragraphs for a short story that I'd started many weeks ago and I really liked it, plus it's from the PoV of my character, Marie-Claude, that I'll be writing for our summer writing project, my girfriend and I, so I thought I should dive back in.

And I have!

I'm halfway through now. It's three scenes overlapping each other and I'm starting the final part of the first scene today, hopefully able to finish that and maybe the next one, too. Maybe all three, but we'll see. I also need something to work on tomorrow, when I'm hosting an online event in our Danish writing Discord server.

On that note, I should also make a list over future scenes I want to write as preparation for summer...



My gf has some plans today, besides working on her article, so I will have plenty of time to write. Same about tomorrow, where she is babysitting her brother's four children.

I can't believe it's June tomorrow. Half a year since my fall. 2025 has kinda just disappeared in a rehabilitation fog, to be honest. I've come a long way, but it still feels like there's a long way to go. But as my assisted living person said, if this had happened one or two years ago, I would have handled it a lot differently and no doubt worse than I have now and I should remember that, be proud of how far I've come mentally as well, not just physically.

I can do a lot of the basic "adulting" things now that I couldn't a year ago, checking my e-mail, bank stuff... All of that has changed drastically and for the better. I'm just so focused on my foot that I forget.

It's the anxiety. It gives me tunnel vision.

But it helps writing it down here, then it exists somewhere. It exists.

I exist, with everything that I am.