Protecting What Is Mine

I decided to return to school. At my age, it isn’t easy. I went back to learn a technical skill.

This should make me happy, and in some ways it does. Still, only one person regularly asks how I’m doing or encourages me. My closer friends say kind things, but for the most part, school is treated as a fact about my life. Nobody asks much about it.

When younger people return to school, family and friends often gather around them with encouragement. For an older person, the root memory is different. More than thirty-five years of life has happened since I was last in a classroom. You carry all of that back in with you. The encouragement you quietly hope for does not always come.

Today I cried.

There was nobody to tell that I passed a quiz. Nobody to talk to about a subject that frightened me or a lesson I found difficult. Most people go to school and find some kind of clique, even a small one. There is no clique here.

Nobody shares in my joy.

Sometimes I feel discarded by people.

Still, I am realizing that my memory is sharp. Fear comes and goes. The only things that have ever truly mattered to me are the art and the writing. This new path is partly an attempt to give something back to the healthcare community that supported me for so long. For five years, I was receiving care twice a week, without any treatment that seemed to hold.

Eventually, there was a seizure.

Stress, age, the wear on my body, my inability to lift heavy objects or work in an environment that moves too quickly—all of it made me stop and consider what kind of work I could still do.

What I really miss is being myself.

I guess I really miss being myself. None of it feels like me. It feels like doable, bearable, and helpful. I don’t want to sugar coat it. The worlds changed and it’s not geared toward being a woman, or even human… maybe it never was or will be.

We all have to make our own way.

I am doing this to protect what is mine.

The art.

The writing.

Image | 2026