And the theme of March will be grace. Grace upon grace.
grace [ greys ]
verb.
To favor or honor.
I’m tired. So I’m only going to do one thing at a time. This three-day volleyball tournament is my one thing. Man did I buy into the lie that doing a hundred things all at once was the way to go…
*Post 1082
Relentless :: 3/19/18 :: Post 195
It was definitely a Monday. I had to drive all over the city. 🙁 My radiation techs were kinda grumpy and I didn’t breathe very well. 🙁 I haven’t felt well all day… Nausea, heartburn, skin pain, muscle pain, exhaustion…. 🙁 A busy day at work (which normally I enjoy but today was tough since I wasn’t feeling well). 🙁 And I have to pluck eyebrows that are growing in the wrong place! What dumb backwards crap is that!? 🙁
A friend said the word relentless today to describe my battle and what my body is going through. I felt it was a very appropriate descriptor.
It has been relentless.
I am battle worn.
I must endure.
Every Bit :: 3/19/19 :: Post 553
I felt every bit of ‘cancer makes everything harder’ today. My body hurt. My shoulders and neck were sore. My chest muscles, tight. I’m not sure if I was holding tension and stress or if I am simply beaten up and feeling it.
There is so much richness in experiencing hard things but it’s not without its struggle.
Yet my struggle gives such opportunity to deeply empathize with others…and for that, I am grateful.
The Audacity :: 3/19/20 :: Post 854
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to put my finger on why I have been feeling ‘off’… It’s hard to describe exactly what I’ve been feeling, though – it hasn’t been extra weepy, necessarily, nor has it been grumpy or depressed or snippy… but there has been a weighty-ness. I’ve been lost in memories a lot. I’ve dreamt more than normal. And I’ve been super in-tune with how intentional my every day language has been, paying very close attention to the words I choose. Those are all things that are normal for me but in the recent weeks, I have just noticed “more.”
Today I was Marco Polo’ing a dear friend and I said something that helped bring some clarity…I said, “I think I’m experiencing a new grief…a new layer of it.” It hit me at the moment that I think that’s what has been going on. Grief is like that – it’s not a done deal. It’s not a one-time thing. It’s not a been-there-done-that. All of the counseling books on grief will tell you that, so it is really no surprise. I’m just experiencing it in my own way rather than reading about it from a textbook. My heaviness is real. My grief is unique.
The audacity of cancer is quite appalling.
The further I get from treatment and recovering from my last surgery, the more my body ‘feels’… For the last 3 years, a large majority of my body was essentially numb, constantly in recovery-mode. Now that that has quieted a bit, I am starting to notice the deeper pain of cancer. The pain that isn’t covered up (or maybe the better words to use are: ‘distracted by’) by the immediate focus on survival. I feel deeper the dead nerves and the heaviness of my left arm from having lymph nodes removed. I feel deeper the weight of implants posing as body parts. I feel deeper the hollowness and the barrenness and the pain in my abdomen where a uterus once was. I feel deeper the heat that radiates from a body whose estrogen was forcibly taken. I feel deeper the emptiness of holes filled by transplanted tissue from my belly to my chest and the achy-ness of the rerouted circulation of blood to keep this façade of a female body alive. I feel deeper the burning of my dry eyes and sinuses, forever damaged by chemo. I feel deeper the nerve endings on a sensitive scalp from having new hair grow back from complete baldness. And I feel deeper the sense of loss of comfort in my own skin.
It’s interesting reading my own words, seeing ‘survivorship’ in a new light. Better understanding why my eyes will well up randomly throughout the day or why a memory will hit like a 2×4. Or why the feelings in my body are so easily felt, now more than before.
The audacity of cancer, indeed.