Hi friends,

I have visited you today.

I'm sorry to say I haven't been well. I've been ill for a while now but still wrote industriously. Not just the blog of course, but other longer pieces of creative work.
My hand poses have changed.
Now, as I write this at times, I have to press my finger against my lips to keep the pain steady.
At other times when I stop to read something or just to lose myself in thought, my right hand cradles my face and my left one closes protectively over an eye, as if to shield me from the inevitable.
It isn't anything worrying at the moment.
But I do get a really bad gastric if I eat meals erractically. That's what's happened.
I have been told not to eat spice - or if I absolutely must - once in a blue moon or my tummy will start bleeding and surgery may face me anyday. It's gone that far. But how not to eat spice?
And I drink way too much coffee.
Now, the pain lingers like a watching ghost. It doesn't want to go. Naughty pain.
I've had gastric since I was a little girl and it's the kind where you end up rolling on the floor or doubled up in pain that you can't get up.
It flees eventually with careful meals and rest but it gives me a good beating before it does.
Yesterday, in addition to everything, I became dizzy (something new) & tripped over boxes in the apartment where I live because I couldn't walk steadily at the time.
When I was falling, I thought this time, that I was done for. But I was ok. Didn't blackout or anything though I felt light-headed. It happened once before too, a month ago.
When I steadied myself, I started to do a Sylvia Plath. She used to do strange things in private - which she'd record in her journal - to protect herself, to test her signs of normalcy. Was she like everyone else or a top-class misfit.
I started walking carefully in straight lines measuring my footsteps up and down my bedroom to see if I could stay steady or become dizzy again. But thankfully, it didn't happen.
I'm shocked that I was so calm and methodical.
I have to do gregarious things now - to travel and before that to go to Singapore for a few days.
But I'll keep you all updated of course and I'll still be posting stuff.
I think, what a semi-tragic farce if anything happens.
But if it does, I'm happy I didn't waste my days and that, I had the gift of knowing you all.