Trial by Error

I get so frickin’ tired of square one sometimes. I can feel myself grabbing at straws as of late, trying to find something to place my faith in. For a while now, I’ve felt two opposing forces pulling on me. There’s the one side, determined to rekindle my passion: passion for art, passion for romance, passion for life that seems to have been replaced over the past year with—how do I put this—passion for survival. Then there’s the other side. Rational. “You’re still going through chemotherapy. In fact, you’ve got another couple years of it, bud, so sit down and get comfortable with this state.” I get so frickin’ tired of getting comfortable. For a year now I’ve gone to bed on time. I’ve drunken the proper teas and stayed away from alcohol and found my zen center through transcendental meditation and every other new age ritual you can think of. And I still feel stuck, trapped somewhat in this harsh limbo where I’m unable to pick up the momentum of my life, but frustrated with every second I have to sit back and wait.

I was meeting a guy up in Park City tonight for a concert. I was excited to be going out, but I arrived at the venue (an hour’s drive away) only to discover that I’d forgotten my ID. As I drove back down the canyon, I felt defeated. The whole evening felt like I had tripped, fallen. I feel like I’m doing that a lot lately. I went to apply as a volunteer at Primary Children’s Medical Hospital. I can’t be around the children with a compromised immune system. Oops, another trip. Even my decision not to go back to New York can sometimes feel like a retreat back to the drawing board. If not New York, then what?

I know I’m alive, and that’s something tremendous to celebrate right now, but at the moment I don’t feel the fun of being alive. I promised myself when I learned about the full length of my chemo treatment that I would not wait until the end of this to be happy. I would not just ‘get by.’ I would seek out happiness actively, relentlessly, until I found it. Nobody told me that this journey would come with so many nose dives.

Something will come, something always does. When it comes though, will I have the gumption I used to have to seize the opportunity? The question, like all, will answer itself in time. In the meantime, it’s back to the drawing board. Perhaps it’s time to hire a new creative staff…