Coulda Woulda Shoulda
Some nights are endless. I try to sleep. Can't. Either the physical or mental pain just swallows me up.
Last night, I allowed myself to play a game that I seldom allow. Let's call it the What Life Would Be Like Without Cancer game.
I remember clearly my life without cancer. It wasn't THAT many years ago. I remember setting my alarm for 6:20 every week day, going to work at a job that I truly loved. Coming home tired, eating dinner with T, watching television or reading and then going to bed.
I miss that life with all of my heart. I miss the plan. The plan was that we would both work until we were 67 and then we'd have enough money to retire to New Orleans. We often talked about sitting out on our porch when we were 80 on a January day when it was blizzarding on the prairie and we were NOT there.
The plan is gone. Now, in its place...there is survival. There are countless doctor appointments, labs and scans. There is Chemo. Puking. Diarrhea. Constipation. Pain that is not just annoying, but breath taking.
There is pretending to be strong when I feel anything but. Having people tell me to hang in there, to keep being strong. I don't mind them so much. It is the ones who say things like, You can beat this! that annoy the shit out of me.
I am not going to beat this. I know...there is someone out there who decided to live on pumpkin seeds and cumin and they beat it and have now been cancer free for seventeen years.
Good for them.
I don't want to hear about your Aunt Dolly who went to Mexico and ate a special diet and sunbathed at 2 p.m. every day and she is now cured.
Nor, do I want to hear about your grandmother who fought cancer like a lioness but died anyway.
I have read all the stories. This one is mine.
I'm just a person. A person who had this life that I liked a lot. And that life is gone and been replaced with something else that I do not much care for. I am not unique. There are so many of us. And we don't get up every day to the sound of an alarm. We wake up to the ache of bones and the sound of our spouses leaving for their jobs.
We are tired, but we are trying. We stay up on the news, on politics. We make jokes in chemo that at least we won't have to be here for the awful climate change that is less than a decade away. We read books. We watch reruns of Friends on TV and think about when we were that young, when life was just sitting there, waiting for us to live it.
Most days, I do okay. I get through the day. Other days, I spend most of the day crying. This is okay because no one sees. The last thing I want is for people to pity me. So, I smile when you tell me how brave that I am, knowing that it is all pretty much a facade. I still fight, I just don't charge into battle. I limp.
And some days, I daydream of a porch in New Orleans that I will never see.
Last night, I allowed myself to play a game that I seldom allow. Let's call it the What Life Would Be Like Without Cancer game.
I remember clearly my life without cancer. It wasn't THAT many years ago. I remember setting my alarm for 6:20 every week day, going to work at a job that I truly loved. Coming home tired, eating dinner with T, watching television or reading and then going to bed.
I miss that life with all of my heart. I miss the plan. The plan was that we would both work until we were 67 and then we'd have enough money to retire to New Orleans. We often talked about sitting out on our porch when we were 80 on a January day when it was blizzarding on the prairie and we were NOT there.
The plan is gone. Now, in its place...there is survival. There are countless doctor appointments, labs and scans. There is Chemo. Puking. Diarrhea. Constipation. Pain that is not just annoying, but breath taking.
There is pretending to be strong when I feel anything but. Having people tell me to hang in there, to keep being strong. I don't mind them so much. It is the ones who say things like, You can beat this! that annoy the shit out of me.
I am not going to beat this. I know...there is someone out there who decided to live on pumpkin seeds and cumin and they beat it and have now been cancer free for seventeen years.
Good for them.
I don't want to hear about your Aunt Dolly who went to Mexico and ate a special diet and sunbathed at 2 p.m. every day and she is now cured.
Nor, do I want to hear about your grandmother who fought cancer like a lioness but died anyway.
I have read all the stories. This one is mine.
I'm just a person. A person who had this life that I liked a lot. And that life is gone and been replaced with something else that I do not much care for. I am not unique. There are so many of us. And we don't get up every day to the sound of an alarm. We wake up to the ache of bones and the sound of our spouses leaving for their jobs.
We are tired, but we are trying. We stay up on the news, on politics. We make jokes in chemo that at least we won't have to be here for the awful climate change that is less than a decade away. We read books. We watch reruns of Friends on TV and think about when we were that young, when life was just sitting there, waiting for us to live it.
Most days, I do okay. I get through the day. Other days, I spend most of the day crying. This is okay because no one sees. The last thing I want is for people to pity me. So, I smile when you tell me how brave that I am, knowing that it is all pretty much a facade. I still fight, I just don't charge into battle. I limp.
And some days, I daydream of a porch in New Orleans that I will never see.
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