Starting Over (Again).
Portrait of a 40-year-old cancer survivor who has very little (if any) fucks left to give.
It has been 1,697 days since I was diagnosed with cancer.
1,707 days since I left the hospital after nearly three days hospitalized in a hallway.
1,710 days since it was confirmed that yes, there is an orange sized tumour smack in the middle of your chest. That’s why you’re swelling. That’s why you can’t breathe. That’s why you can’t walk up the stairs. That’s why you can’t play with your kids.
It has been 1,582 days since I rang that last stupid chemo bell.
In the years and days that have followed I have had to start over again, again and again. First, you’re so grateful to just be alive. First, you hear the birds. You feel the wind. You know what it’s like to not put expectations on yourself. The joy of getting out of bed without pain. The tears that come just from watching your kids run on the beach. You might not have any eyebrows, but you get to watch them grow. You get to see it all.
And slowly, so slowly you can barely see it, it starts to disappear. The clarity of what a joy it is to be on this spinning rock at all dissipates, until you only remember fragments of what that felt like.
Slowly, slowly, your family forgets, your friends forget, your acquaintances forget, you meet new people that don’t even know who you are and where you came from. You stop feeling like the first thing you have to say when you meet someone is “yes, I had cancer, no I’m fine now” because you see the curiosity in their eyes about your buzz cut. And if you’re someone who wears a lot of leopard print jumpsuits, they assume it’s a style choice (it wasn’t). And then your hair comes back. And you cut it. Of your own volition. Not because some terrible chemicals decided to take it from you. And you don’t look sick anymore, so people stop asking “how are you feeling?” And you stop taking stock of how you’re feeling, too.
Slowly, you take on more. And then more. And then you’re back in. And one day you look up, take a breath, turn around and gasp — “where have the last 1,697 days gone? How did you get here again?” How did I get here again?
In the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic I got cancer. I was building a business. I was looking forward to working more full-time when the kids went to school. They did six-months. Then it was kindergarten on iPads for two years. Most of the second year was kindergarten in-between chemo treatments. Full-time work wasn’t possible anymore. The light at the end of my tunnel closed. Closed sharply and quickly. But then, we were all just trying to survive. 2020. 2021. 2022. Surviving was all we could do. All we could hope for.
The first 40 years of my life have been rife with surviving. I say this with zero self pity. It is just plain, actual fact. There are things I’ve been through in my first 40 years that many don’t encounter in a lifetime. To say there is grief a mountain and a half high walking behind me would be an understatement.
This year, it’s come to knock.
It’s come to knock over and over and over and over again. It’s surfaced to remind me I’m not built for this. I’m meant to wander around and find beauty to share. I’m meant to sing loudly and dance like there isn’t a person around. Actually, no, I’m meant to dance regardless, to show you it doesn’t matter if there are people around, you can still just dance. Fuck ‘em. No one is looking at us as intensely as we’re looking at ourselves.
After cancer, I started seeing a new therapist. I needed someone who was an expert in the particular grief cancer survivorship foisted upon me. And I think she might just be my angel. Each time I step away I’m brought a new nugget of clarity. Each time I listen, really listen, I see that I’m doing it. I’m here. On my own two feet.
I’ve always berated myself. I’m not doing enough. I’m not worthy enough. I don’t see anything through. I leave piles of good intentions. I have the best ideas but no follow through. I’m lazy. I’m tired. I’m negative. I’m miserable. And she looks at me and says “you have been doing this for 20 years, you’ve been following this through for 20 years.” You knew you couldn’t do it alone, so you didn’t. You looking so deeply at you, you doing the hard work of meeting your darkness and the darkness of your ancestors has carved an easier path for your kids, their kids, for anyone who meets your orbit. It took me a while to realize, she was right. I can follow through. I do follow through. I have been all along.
There are circumstances I have been thrown into. Each time I rose. It might not have looked like it at the time. To me, or those around me. But I didn’t sit down. I didn’t waste away. I thought I might. Instead, I became a fucking fire. There are times when the embers are sitting there. Waiting to ignite. I get lost. I get spun. We all do. But as with all things emotional, if we face them, if we sit with them, if we invite those fuckers in, the answer is always waiting.
As the years pass we get stuck. Stuck in the day after day after day after day monotony of breakfast, lunch, dishes, work, dinner, dishes, of the childcare of it all of the emotional and mental labour we put in as parents. As partners. As friends. As wives. As daughters. As co-workers. As beings of light stuck in this never-ending rat race that very few of us are actually interested in.
I’ve been at the edge. I’ve seen what beauty comes from life when you expect nothing of yourself. When the people who love you expect nothing of you. When getting out of bed is a win. When white knuckling it through a bad day gives way to sunshine in the morning. The prickly thing about being on the edge, is you know when you’re on the way back.
I would never truly believe something like “I gave myself cancer” but there is a tiny part of my body that recognizes the incredible amount of stress I was under (we all were) during the pandemic. Without our outlets to feel alive. With only our partner and our work to keep us company. Trying to raise decent people in an impossible time. My grief is knocking because it knows. My body has kept so many scores. My own. My ancestors. The women who came before us who had to carry the weight of their families. Their feelings. Their emotions. Their everything. My body is knocking. It knows I’ve taken a wrong turn, just as it knew before.
As I started to feel physically well — not ever like before, I am reminded daily that my hands don’t quite work the way they used to — I took on more. But more and more came furiously. I remember pumping the brakes in October 2021 (just shy of three months post-chemo) and saying “I’m not ready to take all this back on” aloud and internally. But somehow, somewhere in the last 1,582 days I took too much on. And now I’m here again. Starting over. Again.
Preteen hormones of all varieties in our house, a moderate-to-severe combined ADHD diagnosis (mine — in retrospect… duh), impossible schedules and busy work days have led to a crack. The tears have been coming all year and I think I’m ready to put them away. Not because I’m turning away from them, but because they’re almost all gone.
I’m ready to start over. To carve a life of joy. To dance. And write. And dream. And make. And continue. The first 40 years of my life were survival. As many of our lives are. And I’m ready to put that down. I’m not okay with just surviving. I want to live. Actually live. I don’t want to leave my house in a box before I have to. I’m sensitive. I have big feelings. I’ve had those worlds hurled at me like they’re a bad thing more times than I can count.
But I would much prefer to look up and exclaim that the stars are amazing, particularly if the alternative is bland, monotonous silence. Can I get a fuck that? Because fuck that. I’m done caring if I’m too much. I’m ready to let go of what doesn’t serve me. To put down the narrative that I’m broken. That there’s something about me that is innately defective. That I need to be smaller. Or quieter. Or to take it down a notch. No thanks. I’m turning the dial way the fuck up. Expect yell singing. Finding the stage again. Figuring out a way to make this whole cancer blog thing into a book and the self-portraits into an exhibit. To look into my own half-dead eyes and say you made it. You made it and you’re thriving. You made it and you’re dragging people into the light whether they want to be there or not.
And while I live, I will continue to contest with the aches and pains in my joints. And the subtle sadness that comes over me every time I tie a skate lace (which is many, many, many times). The neuropathy might not improve. And I’ll never know if this would’ve happened when my estrogen tanked anyway. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t improve.
I sit on a global council for the kind of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma I had (DLBCL) and we all talk about this a lot. Chemo saved our lives. And we would choose that choice over and over and over again. But as we live, we can’t help but be faced with the real possibility that our bodies are 10 to 20 years older than our actual age. So as spry of a 40-year-old as I am, sometimes it hurts to stand up and I’ll never know if that was a natural trajectory or one imposed upon me.
We only get one life (at least in this form), I don’t claim to have a clue what happens after this, but I’m inclined to believe we’re all made of the same star dust. We return to where we came. We become a tree. Or the earth. Or who knows. But, In this life, it is never too late to start over. After cancer, I had to learn how to live again. How to do the boring stuff that we all have to do (breakfast, lunch, dinner, dishes). How to have small talk when small talk is very much dead after cancer. I don’t want to talk about the weather. It doesn’t feel real, even if it is tangible. I’ve had to learn to live again with this late ADHD diagnosis. I never really learned how to be a proper person because I had barriers I didn’t realize were there. My family can tell you, it hasn’t been an easy road this year. Not for them, not for me. The anxiety meds I started in COVID to manage the fact that the sky probably was falling, were counteracting with my new ADHD meds and oooooh boy, I don’t recommend having too much serotonin. 12/10 do not recommend. Definitely thought I was losing what was left of my mind. Thankfully, that particular rollercoaster feels like it’s ended.
In the end, I’m really just here to say the price of living means we hit rock bottom over and over and over again. It’s necessity. As angry as I am when I hit it, I’m always glad to meet it, because up is the only place to go. So tomorrow, I’ll rise. After days and months and maybe the last year of tumbling down, tomorrow, I’ll rise. I’ll start over. As I have after every heart break. After every set back. After every bump. I’ll start over, again. And for a while, it’s going to be beautiful. And sparkling. And joyful. And hopefully this time I can hold onto the things that my body, my brain and my soul needs to keep it beautiful and sparkling and joyful. And if this time, it still can’t, I guess I’ll just have to start over. Again.
***
The algorithm fed me this song and it is just what I needed, and she says it better than I ever could. Because the trick is what it’s always been, what it always will be, to surrender.
Letting Go
by Angie McMahon
I might've spent six months lying on my living room floor
I might've been sick, then well, then sick some more
I might be prouder of me
Than I ever have been
I've been learning 'bout letting go
How to do it without my claws
Scratching the surfaces
I've been learning 'bout wasting time
And closing some doors
Hoping to open more, down the line
I knew from miles away that I would detonate
I tried some magic tricks to skip my fate
And then gave up the ball as a defender
The trick was simply to surrender
I've been learning 'bout letting go
How to do it without my claws
Scratching the surfaces
I've been learning 'bout wasting time
And closing some doors
Hoping to open more, down the line
It's okay, it's okay
Make mistakes, make mistakes
It's okay, it's okay
Make mistakes, make mistakes
It's okay, it's okay
Make mistakes, make mistakes
It's okay, it's okay
Make mistakes, make mistakes
It's okay, it's okay
Make mistakes, make mistakes
It's okay, it's okay
Make mistakes, make mistakes
It's okay, it's okay
Make mistakes, make mistakes
Make mistakes, make mistakes