I'm thinking for the first time in about 2 years I'll have what I consider to be a real "home." Not just a place to stay. Although, right now, i don't feel like that "home" is quite mine yet.

I feel so off-kilter all the time. Like I'm in some sort of bubble. I don''t know who I am, what I like.. and I don't like that feeling because I pride myself on knowing WHO I AM. It's just lately everything I used to be and like.. well it's all different and funny now.

For example, I used to watch the news, almost non-stop. I can't watch it anymore, it gives me too much anxiety. I have to watch it in small doses, and whenever anything about health-care reform comes on, i try to turn it.

I find myself missing so many things, and yet I feel somewhat numbed. I just want to be past all this, I want to be looking back and thinking "wow, that sucked but now it's over." And I don't know how to do it.

And now that I have a real place to go, I'm supposed to get better, the pressure is on. I know it, and I feel like I can get better, that I am getting better... but it's so slow. And I worry what my limit will be. For the most part my obstacles are more mental than physical. I have so much anxiety, and it's hard to fight it.

People always take breathing for granted. Heck, I never used to really think about it. It's just something your body does automatically, a reflex. It's funny when you have to sit and concentrate - and yet at the same time NOT think about breathing. To just let it happen. You get caught up in trying to make sure you're breathing while not focusing on the fact that you're breathing - and it makes it SO nervewracking.

It's also weird how things go in circles.. last year around this time I was just a visitor to this hospital. My dad was admitted and he was here for a few days. I remember my mom and I went to the wrong elevator by accident, the very elevator that takes you to the unit I currently am at. I remembered the painting of irises on the wall when I was wheeled in by the paramedics when I transferred from the other hospital.

I have my whole life ahead of me. I know this is just one mountain I'll climb, that I have climbed other mountains in the past. I know I can do it but taking those steps is so hard. Time is really flying by though. In a couple months I'll have been "sick" for one year. I don't like that at all!