“Fiddler on the Roof” is a much better Passover/Easter movie for me than “Ten Commandments”, “The Robe”, or even “Hop” and we all know how much I love kids movies. The youngest daughter sings a song to her Father when they wait at the train station that is my song of exile.

I wanted to watch Fiddler this week. First excitedly, then more slowly, then finally somewhat resentfully I unpacked the rest of my stored DVD’s to realize that ALL of my classic musicals were missing. Now, I realize that this loss is just one more price exacted from my giving up and me almost giving in this summer. But somehow all this loss make me angry and I add it to $4000 the apartments are trying to collect, the money I still owe friends, and the friendships forever altered by their betrayal and I am too sad to cry.

No more “Man of La Mancha” or “Fiddler on the Roof” or “Mary Poppins” or “Sound of Music” left in my collection to cheer me up on the dark or hard days. And Friday was a very dark day, out of the past came a reminder of the time one of my “friends” copied my journals and shared them around, not to mention suddenly making me homeless. I was sharing his home, paying rent, at his request and he became violent and ordered me to move. I forgave him finally this year and was forgettting, then this a letter from the court about the evidence came to the place I first landed those many years ago, abrading all the healing. The echoes into my current situation became strong voices, and I bled profusely from the keen edge of friendships forever changed.

So instead of meditating, getting perspective, maybe walking or swimming to dissipate the overflow of emotions, or even journal and properly grieve, I felt sorry for myself.

I slipped back off into the “Poor Me” mire and mud. It is easy to justify self pity when one has a chronic life-altering condition. There are a multitude of slights and bad choices one can self flagellate with in any life, but add in disease and making a pit of self pity is a picnic in the park. So I did.

Ate poorly, marathoned old TV shows, drank alcohol, ignored the gym and exercise, thought about how unfair everything was.

OK, so my ate poorly is miles above “ate poorly” before I learned to love myself and nutrition. A typical day started with a cup of coffee, or two with Coffee-Mate Italian Sweet Cream creamer, three bads here for my body – not organic coffee, animal product in the creamer and all kinds of chemical as well. But then I would do a Vega One shake or Greens/Hemp/berry shake. For lunch, because I worked all week, I would have a Svelte Protein Cappuccino and a Luna Protein Bar. Not awesome either, piling on more synthetic processed food, even if it is organic, but I ate lunch and it was what passes in modern life for nutritious.

It was when I got home that the eating monster was its worst. Carbs, carbs and carbs, (popcorn, bread sandwiches, pasta) with a beer or a bottle of wine, the tiny single serving ones by the way and one good serving or microwave bag and only one carb a night but that is not an excuse but a way to see that even on my worst days, this move towards active goals, becoming a SOFT (Slow Old Fat Try-athlete) has changed me for the better.

I am, in all things these days, a light weight. I couldn’t see that positive this week, that at least now I am a light weight. Once upon a time, if I was food binging, I could eat an entire package of pasta cooked, and more, and I have memory of a time when one bottle of wine (the real size) was not enough. Seeing anything good about me or my life was not on the agenda.

Last night was the dark night, the bottom for this not pretty pity episode. I came home with a deep and burning anger at whatever runs the universe because of the patients I see and the parents I support in my job. Hit the front door of the place I live which is NOT my home and found no golden head to rest on my lap and look in my eyes and remind me that I only see the pixels, unshed tears and grief deepened the mire and I sunk into the couch.

I marathoned a respectably funny series (Garfunkle and Oates) that was, of course, cancelled after less than a season. Ate bread and chicken (free ranged organic but still, ME eating ANIMAL anything is always a sign I am NOT Ok), And got drunk on two chardonnays because I wanted to not feel, to disappear into a place where I am “normal” or how I perceive normal. I even pretty much ignored my boyfriend, because the fact a truly kind, handsome and charming geek loves me does not belong at a pity party.

Except for the part where I don’t think he gets me, or reads my blogs, or….. Yup, in the mood I was in last night, alone was the only place to be.

Disconnected.

That is the root of most dark nights, disconnection from the rest of the human race. Sometimes I sincerely want to be able to be normal and just sleepwalk through life, consuming what pleases me without thinking of the long chain of events that make it possible and the infinite set of consequences moving forward if I make that choice. I don’t want to see music or emotions or in any way at all be “special” or “different” or “amazing.” I try to eat it away, to drink it away, this “me” ness that so offends.

Every coin comes with two sides, but to my family, my sons and my DIL and those I will be celebrating my grandsons birthday with today, heads or tails my coinage has no commerce. And that is the full eclipse. My light is dark. I go to bed.

This morning I wake to April in Arizona and a dog, the yellow lab who is still with me, that came as part of the package of the quiet solid Golden I am mourning, needs to pee. Yeager is dorky and clumsy and licks and wiggles relentlessly, has no idea how to cuddle and as his eyes and nose have gone, he barks more and has become somewhat unpredictable around strangers. However, this morning, he is exactly what I need. He depends on me, and loves me unconditionally, and needs me to get up NOW!

Yesterday, I watched the moon grow dark as I traveled to work with a little girl whose very Mitochondria are not her friend. I spent the day cheerfully holding her elbows or moving her arms, singing and talking about when she was “little” and I was her nurse, and her feet still worked. We discussed music and toys as I monitored the machines that do for her what her body no longer can. But the moon stayed dark, the sunlight never again moving from behind the dark muddy ball of “Life is not Fair.”

Today I wake to birdsong and the colors of sunrise only Arizona in spring can provide. Irregardless of me or anyone’s actions, a mockingbird perches in a blossom heavy tree whistles for dogs, imitates a woodpecker hitting metal, and then chortles before flying away again. More birds join the chorus and when I go inside to have my coffee on the couch, a hummingbird hovers by the screen, observing the human in her cage.

Life is not fair, I have done nothing to deserve this beauty, this breeze, this new day.

The eclipse over, I move forward, so I open my computer to write.
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I am the middle daughter in Fiddler, following my bliss to Siberias my family never understands.

But there in my quests, I am home.