June was not an easy month for me. I have a tendency to write haiku of frustration on Twitter when something is annoying me. In June, once again, most of my haiku were about my bad health. I keep struggling, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do to change that.
I’ve always been sick with severe allergies, but 2015 has been the worst year so far. I’m not ready to accept this very limited state of being as my “new normal”, and my haiku reflect it.
The photo at the top of this blog is of the “Dandelion Monster”. It was growing out of a planter that held a rose bush and that was located in the neighbor’s space. Homes sit rather close together in this mobile home park, and what started out as a little dandelion was able to grow into the monster you see in the photo.
I can’t really blame the neighbors for letting the Dandelion Monster edge closer, and closer, to my window. They are in the process of moving in. Shawn was able to slay the Dandelion Monster before it overtook our home, so everything turned out ok.
There are times when my allergies are bothering me, and I don’t mention it (or write about it). There are also times when my severe allergies / chronic illness becomes overwhelming. I’m struggling to cope with the worst allergy season I’ve experienced in years and it is draining the life out of me.
Spring arrived here in sunny California in the middle of February. The pollen count started hitting 7 around then. A pollen count of 7 is considered “medium-high”, but it is enough to make me very sick. Since then, I’ve been dealing with pollen counts of 8, 9, and 10.
Years ago, I started expressing my frustration in the form of haiku. It was a coping mechanism for when I worked in “retail hell”. Later, I discovered that Twitter is an excellent place to post haiku (especially after Twitter added line breaks). If you’re going to complain online, you may as well find a creative way to do it.
February turned out to be an unexpectedly difficult month from a physical health standpoint. Spring has started here in sunny California, and all the little flowers are spewing pollen into the air as hard as they can. The pollen count has been “medium-high” for days in a row, and that is high enough to make me sick.
There was a time when I posted random haiku about my day on my Twitter account. Each month, I gathered up those haiku and stuck them together in a post on my old blog. What you see here is a diary of what my health was like in January of 2015.
There was a time when I filled my Twitter account with haiku poetry. Some of those haiku made it onto my old blog, in monthly installments of random poetry about whatever was on my mind.
In 2014, I wrote a lot of haiku about being sick and struggling to recover from whatever was making me sick. It seemed more than appropriate to move those haiku over here. Consider this a “snapshot” of what that year was like for me.
People use their Twitter accounts for a wide variety of things. I like to use mine to post the haiku that pops into my head as I go through my day. I’ve been rather sick lately (but I’m not dying, don’t worry). The result is I have several haiku that are about being sick. If you are going to complain about something, you might as well do it in a creative way!
Wrath of allergens
Itchy skin covered in hives
Something hates me so
I enjoy sleeping
Especially when I’m sick
Chronic allergies
November of 2007 was full of dust and dirt. Construction work was happening nearby, and it seemed to be endless. It affected my allergies – very negatively – and made me sick. Naturally, I complained about it online (in the form of haiku).
Continue Reading “Construction Dust”