You know when you get a new car (or a new-to-you) car and the next time you’re on the road you see your same new car in the same new color w a a a a y more than you ever saw that kind of car before and then you realized that even though it may have been new to you, it wasn’t actually that new? Isn’t that weird?
I sort of feel that way right now. Cancer wasn’t even on my radar…it blipped on my screen as I grieved my grandparents deaths and heard about acquaintances, some close and others distant, who had been diagnosed…but, by and large, I just didn’t think about it. It’s not that it wasn’t important to me or those diagnosed didn’t matter, but rather it was more about a protective layer of denial that I put on…denial that it could ever happen to me. It was a disease that touched someone else. It was a common diagnosis, yes tragic, that I could pray about on behalf of another but remain head-in-the-sand in its proximity to me. It was safer there… And then I was flung into this reality. *I* was the person diagnosed. *I* was the acquaintance. No longer was my head in the sand, instead I became ever-so-aware of the vast, unmapped desert around me…a desert that is now my this-side-of-heaven home. And now that I’m here, it’s actually pretty crowded (devastatingly so).
From the outside, it simply looks to be a crowded place that is easy to keep a distance from, its crowded commonality removing the experience of the individual inhabitant. Yet, from the individual on the inside, it is lonely, none of us walking in the same footprints because yes, while cancer is common, the experience in it is not. So, from this place, from the individual in the crowded desert, let me say this:
1. I acknowledge that this may sound dreadfully hopeless but bear with me…
2. Please don’t offer the suggestion that I don’t have to stay here. Yes I do. I don’t get to dimension-hop. With a body literally changed by my cancer, outside and in, it is now me 100% of the time, it is my reality.
3. That said, I have hope that there is much to learn here, even when it’s hard, so a rescue out would actually cheat me from the lessons it offers.
4. And finally, whether you’re a part of this crowd or on the outside of it, when someone you know, close or distant, finds themselves here, spend time with them in their footprints…don’t miss their individuality by the size of the crowd or by the length of their inhabitance. Do this by asking them how their experience is. What they feel. What they are learning. How it is changing them. Challenge yourself to always listen even when it hurts. And then don’t get tired of asking…ask us these things for the rest of our lives…because we don’t get to leave even if you do.
*Post 893
Be…. :: 9/14/17 :: Post 14
I find myself wanting the quiet. The nothing space. The space where my brain can think and my heart can feel. Where I can listen to whatever is in the space. Where I can drift into sleep if I’m tired or process the new waves that come. I just sit here in my chair and be. I haven’t wanted to fill the time with noise or TV or books or movies or social media… I haven’t wanted to mask what this is. And to me, that is what all of that would be. Maybe not for someone else, but here in this chapter of my story, creating noise in the quiet would mask the difficult, unbelievable, surreal reality that this is. It’s a very odd thing to say that I don’t want to pretend as if this isn’t happening. I want to feel. I want to experience all of what this is. I want this to be everything it is meant to be because if I have to walk it, I want to walk it. I mean, I don’t want this at all and I would do anything to not have the “C” word in my story, but alas, I have no choice so what is this? What is it in its entirety? What is this….in its entirety…for ME? And I won’t know unless I choose to be IN it. What a strange, awful, difficult, horrendous choice to be faced with. To choose to experience all of everything about this…
The darkness. The fear. The anxiety. The loneliness (I have an army of love so please don’t take that personally…but there is some lonely in this). The loss….oh the many many losses. The struggle. The confusion. The astronomical pain. The emptiness. The disgust. The antsy-ness. The discomfort. The literal itchiness (on skin that doesn’t feel…yeah, that’s a weird one). The figurative itchiness. The swelling. The tingling. The pins and needles. The searing pain of a movement not yet allowed. The nerve endings starting to grow back. The spasms. The cramping. The constipation. The diarrhea. The ravenous appetite. The abhorrence of food. The inability to shave my armpits cuz I can’t lift my arms above my head. The inability to put my hair in a friggen ponytail. The fact that I won’t have hair for much longer. The desire to be in real clothes (but the need for specially made clothes to hold drains). The desire to take a walk…outside. The yearning to sit and cry. The anger. The nausea. The elephant on my chest. The indescribable fear of hiccups…or sneezes…or puking. The need to laugh but oh the pain in causes. The difficulty it is to get in and out of a chair. The desire to get up and get ready for a normal day just to realize it’s not a normal day and that washing my own face hurts because I have to bend over. The feeling of being tired just after doing that. The feeling of fluid being sucked into a drain that is threaded just under my skin (it feels like a little caterpillar is walking down my side). The vulnerability. The exhaustion. The present moment with the acknowledgement that the end is really far away. The inevitability of chemo. The baldness. The finding of a wig that looks like me. The option to tattoo eyebrows. The option to wear fake eyelashes. The option to “look” like nothing is happening when actually I’m infusing my body with toxic chemicals to fight for my life. The expectation of radiation when I have no reference for what that will be (“easy” they say…what is “easy” radiation??) The fact that life happens in the midst of cancer. The desire to go back to work but the fear that I’ll feel out of place. The tired eyes. The no-make-up look and the insecurities that go with that. The fact that part of me doesn’t care anymore because, well, in kinda doesn’t matter anymore. Oh and the hundred other things that I know are ahead that I don’t even know because I’m not there yet.
I choose all of this and all of what is to come in order for this to mean anything. For this to have purpose. I want to look back and know that I was mindful, purposeful, intentional, authentic, open…in a posture of receiving whatever there is from this. If I have to walk it….I might as well walk it. I can’t go back to the way it was. And I wonder who the me is to come…
And it can’t be someone else’s prescribed journey…it must be mine. So I sit here. I feel…from my toes to my head and back again. From my insides to my out. From the depths of what lies within to the surface of chest skin that has no more real feeling. I sit in the quiet. And I’m mysteriously grateful that I am practicing “be.” Huh. I guess that will mean something some other time.
CO MTNS :: 9/14/18 :: Post 365
A weekend getaway to the lovely Colorado mountains…… it’s gonna do a soul good.
Thankful for family that so generously give to make these small things feel and be of major significance.
It’s been a hard week. ….no, month……. nope year.
Jesus :: 9/14/19 :: Post 730
The only thing I really feel like writing tonight is Jesus.
My heart remains heavy. This time of year is my favorite and yet is now my most difficult. The memories are intense. The reality is difficult. Yet the gratitude is deep.
I’m reminded of how I was feeling the weeks following mastectomy…and there were days and days where literally the only thing I was able to think or say was Jesus. Breathe in, breathe out. Jesus.
Jesus.