I am trying....

Two days ago was my birthday.

Last year that was a terrible time for me, being sick and everything, in a really mind altering way, my mind and body being crushed under the weight of an unknown enemy that I have to fight till this day.

I promised myself last year, I said this time I'm going to be well and on my feet and I'm also going to be on call (at work)

It was my way of fighting my daemons. I remember the first time I returned to work after not having fully recovered, how strange the keyboard felt under my fingertips. How strange it felt to log on as root to systems that I knew so well but they felt as strangers to me.

It was at that time that I promised myself that I would get through this, I would come back, and one year after I would be my old self.

I dreaded this time, more out of superstition than anything else, even though I believe in science alone and probability says that these things do not happen twice on the same dates. But then again it has happened to me:)

Life......it has been so strange to me this last year, so difficult in general.

You'd think you get used to relying on yourself and yourself alone but you don't.

You fight and you continue, one step at a time as I have come to do this past year but you don't get used to it.

And I long for the things that give meaning to my life, I long to see the hills of Rome and Tuscany, where the light is so translucent it blinds you in joy.

But I am also afraid.

Of so many things. And I used to be fearless. The journey to my old self is impossible, because that self did not have the knowledge of what it means to lose yourself....and then come back. Alone.

So the journey is transformed into adjusting the old qualities with the new knowledge, as any intelligent system has to do.

'Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light but making the darkness conscious'

I am trying....