That’s the third stage of therapy for trauma according to my therapist. I’m mostly at the start of that stage although I sometimes I seem to slip back to the second stage, “remembrance and mourning”.

I’ve got all my feelings now, I hope. Today I went to a Waffle House while my car was being worked on. It’s a chain restaurant here in the U.S. with a lot of hustle and bustle – that is, a lot of activity. I felt very alive in there. I had some interaction and exchanged humor with some of the servers. And it reminded me of the time that I lost that sense in another restaurant with my father when I was 5.

Leaving the Waffle House I felt very sad -- mourning, I guess, the 60 years in which I have not felt that I could be a part of the hustle and bustle world – that is, the real world.

Recovery ain’t so easy. It’s the only option – well, the other is stagnation and I’m not taking that. But it’s tough and I still wonder, what’s the point? Writing that just now an answer came to my mind – maybe I won’t know until it’s all over.

Ain’t over yet. Very painful and sad sometimes still. If it’s still like that at the end, then it will still be like that. But maybe it won’t be.