This is what I look like today. 
I have a cold. A cold is such an insignificant virus, and yet it makes life so hard. I want to sleep all the time. I've hardly been on my bicycle in a week. I snuffle and glower and lurch through the day. I save any energy I have for the 2 shows we do daily. 
I am thoroughly grateful that this is happening now, and that I should be getting better by the time we have our gala opening in 5 days. And fully mended by the time my sweetheart arrives in 2 weeks. I am covering myself in oils and ointments from Barkerville's Chinatown, until I smell like a Chinese herbalist's shop; of camphor and mint and eucalyptus. The town cat actually dry-heaved when I petted her today; she hates my smell. I like it, or rather, I would if I could smell it.
There are moments of grace though. We had the day off Sunday and I probably should have slept all day, but instead I went to Barkerville with a co-worker and we did tourist-y things for a few hours. Oh, and I played the church organ for morning service, a ritual I enjoy even if I don't believe in all of it. I bought plants at the town garage sale and went to the place I work even though it was a day off and then we came home and made pasta noodles, from scratch, and ate them- four of us- and there was a lot of laughter and modest amounts of red wine and it was so great to enjoy eating and living with the same people I have to work with all day. It's such a blessing.
I am realizing that I can be a VERY impatient person, and that it can choke me with frustration and rage from time to time, so I am trying to learn to breathe and exercise through this and find some equilibrium. Alone-time helps. Also running and biking (and the occasional glass of red wine).
I am also learning as I get older how much can change in a year and how often I want to say to my year-ago self: Just relax. Focus on all the good things. This too shall pass. One year ago I was newly single and recovering from an operation and I was spinning. Spinning dizzily through change and heartache and freedom and obsession and joy. I don't think I would change too much of that, because it was all useful, but I wish I had been more joyful and less certain that the world would end if someone didn't look at me the right way. 
So one year later, I write a letter to my sweetheart and I say: This is new to me. I'm still learning, but I like it, this romance and writing. I feel like the Victorian miners who 'waited on the mail' and sent letters home to distant lands. Vancouver is my distant land now; we have emails and phone calls to sustain us until this month's end and then we will learn each other all over again. 
And I look at the person who caused me so much heart-searching over the past year and smile politely and try not to plot scenarios where he realizes how wonderful I am and feels like a tool bad person for spurning my advances. Because although exercise and joy and deep breathing all have their place, sometimes there's nothing like making up a good revenge scenario in your head.