I usually come here to talk about homes.
Wallpaper. Shower curtains. Weird little treasures. Things with history. Things that make you smile when you walk into a room.
But the truth is, lately I’ve been thinking about home in a completely different way.
My body hurts everywhere.
My arms hurt. My legs hurt. My feet can hurt so badly that I'll leave the house intending to do completely normal errands and end up turning around and coming home.
And suddenly home isn’t just the place I decorate.
It’s where I retreat.
I spent my entire adult life working on the railroad. I knew how to work. I knew how to provide for my family. I knew how to push through being tired, overwhelmed or having a shitty day.
Then my body changed the rules.
Right now, it will not let me go back to trains.
So I'm trying to figure out what life looks like from here while also fighting an insurance and disability system that somehow requires sick people to spend enormous amounts of energy proving just how sick they are.
There is something particularly cruel about that.
You are already scared because your body is doing things you don't understand. You're trying medications. You're going to appointments. You're trying to take care of your kids. You're wondering when you'll feel normal again.
Then come the forms, phone calls, denials, appeals and financial fear.
And stress makes everything worse.
That may be the strangest part of this whole experience.
Stay calm because stress makes your body hurt more.
Meanwhile, here are 47 reasons to panic.
Cool.
I’ve spent most of my life being a person who figures things out.
Push through it. Keep moving. Take care of everybody. Find another way.
I'm very good at that.
Surrender?
Absolutely terrible at it.
But lately I'm wondering if my body is trying to teach me something I would have never voluntarily learned.
Maybe I don't have to fight every second of every day.
Maybe coming home when my feet hurt isn't failure.
Maybe lying down isn't laziness.
Maybe admitting that I'm scared doesn't make me weak.
Maybe a home doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful, either.
Maybe it just needs to be the place where you are allowed to exhale.
That idea has changed the way I think about Sandy Beach Decor, too.
I don't want to make things simply because they match a couch.
I want homes filled with things that mean something.
Your mother's old jewelry box. The ridiculous drawing your kid made that you'll keep forever. Something you bought on vacation twenty years ago. The weird thrift-store find nobody else understands. The curtain that makes you happy every time the morning sun comes through it.
The things that quietly remind you: this is my life. These are my people. This is my safe place.
Because sometimes the world outside your front door is fucking exhausting.
Sometimes your own body is exhausting.
Sometimes you need somewhere you don't have to perform, explain yourself or prove anything.
You just get to come home.
I'm learning that right now.
I don't know exactly what happens next. I don't know when my body will cooperate again. I don't know how all of the things I'm fighting will turn out.
And I hate not knowing.
But maybe I don't have to solve the rest of my life tonight.
Tonight, I can come home.
I can listen to my body.
I can surround myself with the people and things I love.
And apparently, because there is a full moon and I have completely run out of fucks, I can also howl.
Honestly, that sounds pretty good.