April? How is it April?

And ELEVEN days in, no less.

April has been a very hard month for me for a number of years. Things always seem to get complicated this time of year. On this date in 2005, I was in massive amounts of trouble in my OB/G program and would today get an email from my program director that more or less sealed my fate (I had to leave or they were going to royally fuck me over. You know, even more than they actually did). I left the program on the 14th, headed back to Chicago on Tax Day. I often think of the 14th as Kate's Independence Day, which is, of course, a good thing. But I also imagine that, once the Revolutionary War was over, George Washington did a fair amount of drinking in the dark when in subsequent years the calendar approached July 4. It ended well, but it was an intensely painful time.

And then of course two years ago, I was in Chicago in a hospital making the decision to relocate my parents to NC after my mom's stroke and closely following diagnosis of Stage 4 breast cancer. Which was a wild ride, for all of us, and was, again, really painful for me on a number of levels. Both my parents are doing pretty well at the moment (*knock, knock*) but that doesn't actually make me less anxious.

It's also, as you'll see on the sidebar, National Sexual Abuse and Assault Awareness month. Every year I vow to be more activisty in April, but every year April slides up and taps me on the shoulder and reminds me why I feel so damn uneasy. And the trauma issues have been a very big hot button lately. Again, the result of some very hard work, and it's good progress. But, see above re: George Washington.

Not to mention, there's a number of difficult things going on in my social circle right now, friends who are having rough times, and I ended a brief but complicated and very intense (and metaphorically important) relationship on Monday.

I'm also doing this online class with Barb and Buie. We're in the Uncluttered class, which is less about having too much crap in your house and more about getting unstuck and letting go of more esoteric things. I think it's going to be life changing, honestly. But, again, hard work. And therapy's been intense lately, which I'm hoping these things will kindle each other.

Still. I'm exhausted.

At least I know where today's migraine came from...(oh, wait, no, I think it's actually from the ridiculously labile weather....)

Is it time to go back to bed yet?