I struggle to be in the now. I was with Courtenay for 47 years and we had the usual trajectory of excitement and its physical passions, moving to a sense of belonging together and then building a life together, but that life feels remote, almost non-existent. At this time, the past is a series of self-lacerations – the things I didn’t do, the attention I didn’t pay, the carelessness of feelings/time/person. I want to connect to the whole arc of our life together, the excitement, the quotidian, the annoyances, but instead those years seem more remote, unreal, than if I’d read a novel about them.
It’s easy to turn from that uncertainty to the future – many of us live there most of the time – the next event, the plan for the next trip/project. But my stomach tells me it’s important to resist the pull of the future. My stomach says to stay in the now if I can.