Why?

After reading my Yoga post, a friend called me up and asked, “why, on God’s green earth, did you write that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you sending super depressing sick vibes out into the Universe? That’s not going to help get you better.”

Ahhhh…yes. The power of positive thinking.

We all have different ways that we approach sickness and healing. Mine has been to look it straight in the face and stare it down. But I can’t do that unless I’m actually looking at my disease.

Right now, I have no idea if I still have cancer in my cluster of mostly dead cells in my chest. And, right now, I approach my chest cluster as if I don’t. I’m working on getting back into shape. I’m hoping that the PET scans that showed weird activity in bizarre little spots first on December 11 and again on January 8 saw a different kind of inflammation than cancer. I’m living my life knowing that my next step is surgery on January 24. The step after that is recovering from surgery. Then I’m planning on going back to work.

I don’t consider this positive thinking or the flip-side, denial, I consider this living my life. Every day I have to wake up and make a decision about how that day is going to proceed. If I let my mind flood with “HOLY SHIT I MAY STILL HAVE CANCER AHHHHHH!!!!” the day is simply not going to go well. I’ve had those days; they’re miserable for me and everyone I encounter. If I even get out of bed. Instead, if I let my mind flood with “today is Thursday, and I’m healing. So I’ll write for a bit, walk/jog on the treadmill for a bit, go to yoga, nap, text my oncologist about something I need to discuss with her related to surgery, laugh with people I love, and eat delicious food,” then these kinds of days are fabulous. No, I’m not ignoring the cluster of cells in my chest, I’m simply choosing to live. The day that I have surgery will be different, but no less focused on healing.

But part of my healing is also facing the reality of what happened to me. And my problem is that starting around June 20, eight days before I went into the hospital with shortness of breath, life blurred until mid-July. I know that I was a functioning adult with a demanding job before June 28, and that a whole pile of shit happened after June 28, but I don’t remember much of it. And for me, that’s really difficult. In order for me to heal, I need to know and feel what happened when I was sick. This is why I write. It gives me a medium to go back and look at my life from this slightly aged perspective, turn it around to see all sides, ask the people who witnessed some of it about the accuracy of events, and actually experience it. Once I’ve experienced it, I then have the freedom to heal and move on.

This is why.

 

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash