Patience, Grasshopper

There are days I have more gratitude than others. I’ll admit, strong as I’d like to consider myself, I fall into the trap of wondering why this happened to me, why this was chosen as part of my fate (if you believe in such a thing as fate). Why me and not others? I play a game sometimes, staring down at the people shopping at the Gateway. Usually couples. I hate couples. I imagine what misfortunes might be secretly waiting around the corner for them, what unforeseen struggle will come into their lives. It’s not that I’m malicious by nature, sure a little bitter at times, but mostly just curious, fascinated by how one’s life can be altered so quickly and so drastically. When the days are sunny and my body feels strong, I can acknowledge, I can interpret something almost divine in the dramatic shift my life has taken. I see with clarity a direction that could be possible from this new vantage point. When my body is wracked with pain, I can’t concentrate on anything else. Africa feels very far away. New York feels just as far. I contemplate the person I was before all of this, I imagine myself running or stretching or laughing in a simple, naïve way, and that feels very far away. The ‘me’ before cancer feels very far away tonight. Feeding tubes, sets of medications taken at corresponding points throughout the day, fetanyl patches and morphine injections feel much closer to home. It’s days like this that I want to crawl into my bed and bury myself deep under the sheets, some sort of blanketed protection from this involuntary interruption in my life. I retract, pull away from people and things that remind me of how I used to be and try to imagine how I could still be, once I’m done with chemotherapy. How I might look years from now, if I can imagine that far away. Or I imagine how I am now. It really is just that, imagining, because it hardly feels real. I gain weight. I lose weight. My face gets plump. It turns gaunt. My gut droops. My ribs poke out. My legs feel small, my skin turns sickly pale. Every shift brings a new angle to see, different than before. So the only thing constant in this journey becomes the inconsistency of ‘me.’ I am morphing, evolving constantly. How can I imagine who I might be beyond this experience when I can’t even figure out who I might be in a week?

I take each day as it comes and reevaluate how I’m doing and what I can take on. I’m so grateful to have family right now. I’m so grateful for their company and love. They uplift and support me. But the truth is that I am on a solo journey right now, and as much as I’d love to be able to have each and every person in my life intimately understand what this journey is, it is mine and mine alone. My family is wonderful in the simple way they’ve come to accept and embrace that fact. They are always there, standing by for me when I reach out for them. But they understand that there are times I won’t reach out, because it’s something I need to go through on my own.

I think the key to surviving chemotherapy is having a comfy blanket that you can bury yourself in and lose yourself every once in a while, at least for a minute or two.