Yearning to make goals

It felt like I was wandering in the desert for 40 years (or perhaps 9), and had arrived home when I picked up my horn to play for the first time last week. It was so incredible, I almost don't have words for it. Picture two pieces of inert material being connected finally to complete a circuit; electricity being produced from what was inert. My two arms holding the horn, holding the metal, the mouthpiece put to my lips for the fist time in so many years, the circuit was closed, energy flowed. It was like getting a hit of Oxytocin, really. And playing... talk about muscle memory. My hands and my lips knew it all, knew where to find the notes, how to string it all together. My fingers literally knew the music before I thought about it, they just did what they know to do. I was in **heaven**. That first touch of the mouthpiece to my lips came with a palpable feeling of relief, "Baruch Hashem" uttered under my breath.

Then again two days later... played for a long time, with no music in front of me yet. Just tones, scales, stylistic techniques I dusted off, and excerpts from concertos and symphonies. I hit the top of my range, and the bottom, and everything in between. Huge Oxytocin hit- the love hormone. Making me want more.

Last night, Saturday night, with a low-grade fever, I pushed through feeling blah and opened up my horn case again. This time all my kids were home to express their surprise and happiness to see me playing. Ya'akov took a video. He said "in case you die"... thanks, buddy.

I let myself fantasize about playing with an orchestra again, or even just some chamber music. My yearning has been much more awakened, I want it more than ever. That is one of the reasons I have not played for so long, it hurts too much to not play music with other people.

Today I couldn't get up in the morning. Endometriosis could be the culprit, or scar tissue adhesions from the multiple surgeries could cause it, but quite regularly this happens to me (few times a month). Profound exhaustion straight from the morning, bending-over pain in my gut, on the right side. The only way to diagnose either of those conditions is with a laproscopic surgery, which I *don't* intend on doing. A while ago, my spiritual healer's "bio-tensor" machine diagnosed that I had endometriosis. Who knows. Not much to be done about it. Point is, it's been hard to make it through the day today. Which brings me to my point.... disappointment. I never had any of this stuff before I got sick. Only rarely had migraines.

I'm one step away from totally being off Lamictal... one more dose (2.5 mg) to cut, a few weeks of unpleasant withdrawal from that, and I'm done. That'll be a milestone.

What lead me to taking out my horn last week for the first time was meeting with my previous therapist, Lily. She encouraged me that yearning is good. It means we are alive. I also met with my spiritual healer, Miriam Maslin later in the week. I got the internal boost that I needed to surge forward, and to trust in Gd, and be **grateful** (to Gd).

So yes, I am grateful. Grateful that I can still play horn at all. Grateful that there may be a glimmer of hope for me to play in an ensemble again. I just have to keep grabbing onto that glimmer of hope, and keep being grateful.

There is a sentence that's been in my head for many years- "every time I make goals, I get sick, or I need another surgery".
That sentence does not belong in my head anymore. I choose to wipe it out.
I am also, however, not making goals. But I yearn to.