A.C- June
It has been 9 months today... 9 months since my bilateral mastectomy and my journey to a new life, a new body, a new mind, a new normal. I still cannot grasp that the person that looks back at me when I look in the mirror is me... and yet, the person, in pictures when I look back a year ago still feels familiar - but at the same time, that life seems like a million years ago.
I have escaped more cancer... every scare, every worry, every ache and pain, I have expected and feared the worst... and so far, my body is healthy and strong. I have worked on eating healthy and then I have quit. I have worked on taking supplements, and then, there are days when I can't stomach the thought of another pill, so I don't take them. I overloaded myself with Vitamin C during cancer treatment, and then, after treatment, it became too much to manage during real life and I haven't had any since maybe March?
I feel ... well, I am still not entirely sure how I feel. Right now, I am in the throes of feeling frustrated. I get frustrated with my kids. I get frustrated with no time. I get frustrated with my husband. I was so happy to be "done with cancer", but I am still pretty pissed off that I had to do it at all and I am certainly not "over it". I have good days, when I am happy and cheerful... but I have lost the rosy glow of feeling like I was so lucky in life. I know I was lucky before... I feel distinctly unlucky having cancer at 47.
It could be so much worse. I just started reading this incredible book by a woman, a gorgeous poet of a woman, who died at age 40 or something supremely young, of triple negative breast cancer. She was a writer anyway... and I remember a September day last year, maybe a week after my diagnosis, I read a piece that she wrote for the New York Times about when a couch is no longer just a couch. She wanted the perfect couch for her home... but she was well aware that she would order the couch, and most likely, she would never be able to sit in it, or enjoy it... and that the couch would be in her family, encircling her kids after she was gone. I remember just sobbing in my car, on my way in to work, after reading this column... her words were so poignant and haunting and sad. I started her book yesterday and I can't put it down. Something awakes in me as I read, and I feel like I need to write it all down, too. I need my own brain to process that it's ok to have bad days. It's ok to get frustrated. I want my kids to know (and maybe read someday far in the future) that Mom loves them so much, but somedays, I just suck at parenting because I am so consumed with my own fear, life, brain, worry, etc. I don't know why, but I want my moments right now to be perfect... and when things don't go well or when everything isn't "perfect", I kind of have a little meltdown myself... and I get so angry. I stomp around and I huff and puff and for what, really? WHAT am I accomplishing by doing this??? Nothing, it seems.
I wanted to have a garden this year. I was convinced I could do it. I tilled the soil, as well as I could... Russ told me to spray it all, but I thought I had pulled enough weeds that they wouldn't come back. I planted perennial flowers this year, knowing full well that I would fail at harvesting vegetables. Well, he was right. I didn't do enough. I didn't listen and I just barreled through and tried to do it my way, and I didn't even make it through to get the third and fourth beds done... and now, my garden is in shambles and filled and overgrown with weeds... a disaster. And it pisses me off.
I wanted to start getting up in the morning and run. Every day, I shut off my alarm. I can't do it.... or I guess, I just don't want to badly enough. This pisses me off.
I have tried and tried to clean my closet. I can't do it. I even did enough to get all the shit out of there and throw it on my bathroom floor, and still, I haven't finished. I am so pissed at myself about this.
I have enough time to check Facebook. I have enough time to buy all these clothes... but not even enough time to put them away. Pisses me off.
I am sad I got cancer. I am sad that I have short curly hair that I have to mousse and style and put little barrettes in so I don't look like Elvis. I am sad that I no longer have boobs... and I am hugely furious that every time that I have an ache or a pain or a twinge, I have this fear that rolls in like a hurricane about my cancer coming back and me dying an awful death in front of my kids' eyes.... it pisses me the fuck off every time.
I guess I should just "be happy". I made it 9 months. All indications are that I will be ok. I might just be in the lucky 7 out of 10. Maybe, some day, I will stop being so angry. My hair might grow. I might get some gumption and actually START exercising and clean my closet and put those clothes away. Maybe someday, I can have that garden that is beautiful and doesn't get overgrown with weeds by June 28. I just need to find a way to find peace again though. I just need to find a way to take this life and live it with gratitude and enjoy the moments of beauty and laughter and joy... and not be so damn touchy and sensitive and bitter. I know I need to do this... I just don't know how to start... and I am losing days, losing time, wasting precious moments being angry and escaping into my phone.
I don't even know how to end this post... because there is no end to all of this. Time goes on. Life is fluid... even as Nina Riggs states in the first chapter of her book, as her spine breaks while she is running down the street teaching her child to ride a bike, she falls and off he goes, riding away. She sees, in that moment, how life just goes on... whether or not she is present... and it's beautiful and tragic and heart-breaking and perfectly simple, all at once. This passage took my breath away.. and of course, it pissed me off.
I missed my MRI of my spine this afternoon, because I was doing a case. Maybe I should have said no to the case... but it was a good reason not to go. Maybe I just don't want to know.
Life... to be continued...
... at least for the moment.