by Heather Foster

Created on: August 25, 2008

As I sit at my desk, thinking many different thoughts and trying to gather them together into a cohesive pattern, I imagine each fragment as part of a stained glass window. When the pieces come together they form a pattern of brilliant colors, because no one likes dim, murky, muddy-looking stained glass, and the thoughts become a whole concept. From confusion you get logic, and each fragment plays its part.

Being alone does not coincide with being lonely. I marvel at the quiet in my house after so many years of children making noise, and messes, through the house until I couldn't hear myself think. The quiet didn't depress me or drive me out to find someone to talk to and alleviate being alone. I've loved the silence! Hugged it to me in joy and gratitude for the ability to put pieces of thoughts together, write them down, and put myself back together into a person that I liked for once.

Over time I had lost pieces of myself, and my ideas, and became a fragmented, depressed, and scrambled mess, not wanting to do anything but sit in silence and be left alone. Reclusive is a word that comes to mind. I would stay in the house doing nothing more than reading, working crossword puzzles, and playing games on my computer, withdrawing from the world. With the advent of having the silence surround me in a cocoon of cotton wool, insulating me from the chaos my life had been I started learning who I was and who I wanted to become.

Then, gradually I started picking up the pieces and rebuilding myself, finding who I was again, in spite of relatives efforts to build me into someone they wanted me to be because it suited them. Once I was no longer being pestered and browbeaten to do what others expected and I had peace, lost pieces started to find their place again.

The me that I found shaping up wasn't exactly what my relatives wanted, but it wasn't them that I was becoming. Finding where my get-up-and-go had got up and went was the hardest part. I had to first change my energy levels and figure out what I wanted my space to look like. Then I had to force myself to get up, work on an area of mental or physical that needed changing, and then, even if that part wasn't totally done, move on to another, just to keep moving.

A day might start with getting up and showering, fixing a breakfast, watching a little morning news, and then washing dishes. After that I might sit down and work one crossword puzzle before again getting up and vacuuming or mopping. Doing physical work, interspersed

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