Books: The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly (Fear of Death)

In this story, David gets pulled into a world not quite like ours, and while traveling this world, he meets various people and creatures, some good, some evil.

One of those people is Roland, a soldier. David is traveling to find the king of this land not quite like ours, and Roland is traveling to find Raphael, his friend and "the blood in [Roland's] veins, the sweat on [his] brow." Without him, Roland says that he is less than he once was, and he fears Raphael may be dead (Connolly 207). David asks Roland if he is afraid of dying in his quest to find Raphael (Connolly 207). Roland responds:

"'I am afraid of the pain of dying . . . I have been wounded before, once so badly that it was feared I would not survive. I can recall the agony of it, and I don't wish to endure it again. But I feared more the death of others. I did not want to lose them, and I worried about them while they were alive. Sometimes, I think that I concerned myself so much with the possibility of their loss that I never truly took pleasure in the fact of their existence'" (Connolly 207).

I have had to think about the so-called bus that could hit me tomorrow, but through this, I have been far more worried about the bus that could hit The Husband next week, that could hit my sisters next month, that could take away those whom I love and cherish. This terrible diagnosis has forced me to contemplate death with far more depth and detail than I would prefer.

The interesting part of this is that the more I think about death, the less afraid I am, for myself. Death is a universal truth. While, hopefully, it is obvious that I am in no rush to meet him, and I would be so pleased if he could pass me by, that is childish fantasy. I don't want to say that I am not afraid, but less afraid as a result of this choice to contemplate him.

Even now, I am far more terrified of losing those whom I love. I am a master worrier, and yes, I can and will worry myself to pieces if I haven't heard from Baby Sister in several days, or if The Husband takes an unusually long time to get home. So I can fully understand Roland's take on death. We are all dying (hopefully slowly). This story speaks to what I think may be a common experience for many of us. The fear of losing someone else hurts far more than the fear of losing myself. At this point, I've come as close as I can to accepting my diagnosis. I don't like it, but it is what it is.

Today is the 6-month cancerversary of my diagnosis. This diagnosis changed my life. I felt so much loss. Like I could no longer keep a grasp on the life most extraordinary I used to have with The Husband. The thing is, after six months, I've figured some stuff out. Yes, we still worry. Those bills won't pay for themselves. The GoFundMe has stalled out and we aren't sure how to get it rolling again. 

I don't remember the last time I cried for myself. I don't know if I need to worry about that. It seems like I am reminded of my condition in different ways. The tremor in my hand. The trouble sleeping. The weird cold flashes (anti-menopause?). The unpredictable appetite. The handful of pills I have to take every day. The constant and never-ending fatigue. The constant and never-ending co-pays.


I worry constantly. But The Husband is there to hold my hand and comfort me. I am lucky to have the opportunity to take pleasure in the fact of his existence, for I know that I could not have made it this far without him.

Dying fast vs. dying slow

Presumably, most of the people reading this are dying slow, in the sense that this is the way time passes: it is a reality of life.

There are some readers who think that I am dying fast, in the sense that they think I am actively in the process of wasting away in a sickly and frail bag of skin and bones.

I am not dying fast.

Yet.

Of course, at some point and for everyone, that changes, but I want people to know that for the time being, I am just like most of you. I am dying slow.

Because I'm still in the position that I am dying slow, life is actually pretty ordinary. I take my morning medications, I write, I eat breakfast, I play with my goofy dog and have extensive conversations with my cats.

I nap. I eat lunch. I write or read for a while. I hang out with The Husband when he gets home from work.

We have a remarkably ordinary routine going. Often, I miss the extraordinary that we were able to experience, but for now, uneventful is objectively a good thing.

I know that with a diagnosis like mine, my family and friends worry that I am dying fast.

Here is my Christmas gift for you: For the time being, you don't have to worry so much!

Van Gogh-ing to the Museum!

The Husband is awesome. My friend K is awesome. My friend Z is awesome.

K mentioned on Facebook that there was going to be a Van Gogh exhibit nearby, about two hours away. I mentioned it to The Husband, who immediately said, "Book a hotel. We're going."

He knows how I feel about Van Gogh.

My friend Z joined us, which as always, I enjoyed hanging out with one of my oldest and closest friends.

This exhibit had 12 of Van Gogh's works, along with many other works by other artists to demonstrate those who influenced Van Gogh, or were influenced by him.

I love Van Gogh. This will sound ridiculous and I don't care, I always liked Van Gogh, but it wasn't until the Van Gogh episode of Doctor Who that I discovered that I loved Van Gogh.

By no means am I some kind of art critic or art historian. I know what I like. Sometimes, I even know why I like it. I also know what I don't like, and sometimes I can verbalize why I don't like it. As The Husband and Z and I discussed at length, not all art is art just because someone called it art, and some works, while skillfully created, should not be considered art.

How do you decide what is art?

For me, not everything that Van Gogh painted, drew, and sketched was art, but so much of it is. For me, I call it art because it makes me feel something. Because I feel like I can relate to it. Because I feel like I can understand what the artist was feeling.

Van Gogh was well-known to be a troubled man. He suffered from depression, and did not find success as an artist until after his death.

The thing that I like about so many of his works is that they make me sad. It may sound strange to say it like that, but it's true. He was a sad man, and that sadness radiates off of the canvas. Sure, I like Starry Night, everyone likes Starry Night, but he had so many masterpieces. Starry Night looks like he was looking at the sky through tears.

The exhibit we went to did not have Starry Night, but it did have Self-Portrait. I love this one. He looks so angry. Almost hateful. Somewhere beneath the rage in his eyes, I see a sense of self-loathing.

To look into his eyes in this painting is to feel his pain. He is so serious. You can't smile for this picture. You can only try to understand an artist who seems to have been caught by surprise, who did not have time to paste a fake smile on his face, who showed a vulnerability that he didn't necessarily want to show.

How did he paint this? Did he spend his winter of 1886-7 looking at himself in a mirror? Examining every detail of his face, the darkness behind his eyes? Did he struggle to look at himself?

When I have been in the deepest depressions, I have had trouble even looking myself in the eyes in the mirror. There have been times when weeks or months have passed and I haven't seen my own eyes because I couldn't bear to look at myself.

Did he feel some catharsis in painting himself? Did it hurt him to have to look at himself just to get this painting done?

I, too, have suffered from depression at various points in my life. I look into his eyes, and I feel a certain, almost, kinship, and then I saw this:

This is Man with Spade. The write-up next to it said that this was a worker taking a lunch break from digging ditches, but what I saw was a soldier, exhausted, after digging graves. Yes, I know that it's dark, but it is Van Gogh, and again, it felt like grief radiating from the charcoal in the sketch.

A Trunk of a Tree. Not a painting, but a pen and sepia on paper. I love the details in this work. I love that the top of the tree appears very intentionally detailed, with strong lines. I love that the trunk of the tree is remarkably understated, as if added detail would be unnecessary. I just love this.

 Finally, here is Constantin Meunier's Ophelie. It is not a Van Gogh, but I saw this painting out of the corner of my eye and I was drawn to it. The paleness of the figure. The darkness of her gown. The storm clouds to the right, and what looks like a clearing in the sky on the left, as if her troubles are past now that she has taken this final action.

I so enjoyed our visit to the museum, and The Husband was kind enough to buy me goodies from the gift shop. I was very tired, as this was the longest I had been on my feet. What this means is that my impulse control was all but gone, and I wanted ALL the Van Gogh souvenirs from the gift shop. I didn't get ALL of them, but I got two beautiful packs of notecards (who wants to be a pen pal?), stickers, a print, some postcards to put in my journal, and a magnet (that I made Z buy for me).

So there you have it: proof that I can do more than read books and have cancer! Ha!

Books: The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers (Part 2)

I am almost finished with The Power of Myth, and there is an interesting part of this interview that I wanted to share. Before I get to that, remember that last time, I talked about learning from our imperfections and shared experiences.

I've always had a fascination with the cycle of life, death, and life again. When I turned 18 years old, my mother took me to get a tattoo, so I could "get it out of my system." I was still mourning a significant loss in my life, and the tattoo I chose for myself that day was symbolic of that cycle of life, death, and life again. Unfortunately for my mother, I did not "get it out of my system," and I now have double-digit tattoos.

The thing is, there seems to be an over-arching theme to my tattoos. I currently have five tattoos that represent that cycle of life, death, and life again. Although I am not mourning that loss the way I was when I was 18, that loss changed me fundamentally to my core, for I am different person than I was before that loss.

It could be argued that in the time before that loss, I had a life that I lost. I died inside, and was eventually reborn as the person that I am today.

Coping with loss has empowered me to wear my fear on my skin. To display my vulnerabilities while simultaneously wearing my hope like a shield to protect me from that which I fear the most.

Campbell discusses this life and death cycle. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it is a cycle of death, life, and death again:

"The serpent sheds its skin to be born again, as the moon its shadow to be born again. They are equivalent symbols. Sometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. That's an image of life" (Campbell and Moyers 53).

Ouroboros

I wear that image of life, as well as other images of life that I wear on my skin. These images of life are also images of death. There is no contradiction here; as with the Ouroboros, that which nourishes the snake also destroys it, and in destroying itself, the snake is gathering nourishment.

Campbell continues,

"Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. The serpent represents immortal energy and consciousness engaged in the field of time, constantly throwing off death and being born again. There is something tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in itself the sense of both the fascination and the terror of life" (Campbell and Moyers 53).

When I first got my diagnosis, I realized that there was something I'd never taken the time to think about as a possible future for myself. I am not yet 40 years old, and although I've lived a life most extraordinary, I had never really thought about death. I wear death on my body, but it has always been far too easy to focus on the life part of the cycle.

The death part of the cycle was suddenly brought into sharp relief. I lost that life most extraordinary and had to learn how to live again. Once again, I needed time to mourn the loss that changed me fundamentally to my core. I am a different person, once again.

And so the cycle goes.

Books: The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly (Intro)

I recently finished this book that I had been simul-reading with The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, and I need each and every one of you to get your hands on a copy and read it immediately: The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly.

Amazon describes it as such:

"High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother. He is angry and alone, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, and as he takes refuge in his imagination, he finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a land that is a strange reflection of his own world, populated by heroes and monsters, and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book... The Book of Lost Things."

When I started reading this book, I was immediately devastated and immediately hooked.

"Once upon a time—for that is how all stories should begin—there was a boy who lost his mother. He had, in truth, been losing her for a very long time" (Connolly 1).

If this isn't a gut punch of an opening, I don't know what is. It grabbed me by the heart and squeezed, refusing to let me go. This is a story that could not be ignored or set aside.

—

From https://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html
© 2019 thepunctuationguide.com

—

From https://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html
© 2019 thepunctuationguide.com

The protagonist is 12-year-old David, and his mother is dying of some unnamed illness.

"Before she became ill, David's mother would often tell him that stories were alive. They weren't alive in the way that people were alive, or even dogs or cats. People were alive whether you chose to notice them or not, while dogs tended to make you notice them if they decided that you weren't paying them enough attention. Cats, meanwhile, were very good at pretending people didn't exist at all when it suited them" (Connolly 3).

Okay. Excellent description of people, dogs, and cats. But stories... I am intrigued.

"Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling.[. . .] Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination, and transform the reader. Stories wanted to be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life" (Connolly 3).

Three pages in, and already I feel that this book isn't just a book. It is already coming to life in my hands, in my mind. It is grasping at my soul, and I am simultaneously losing myself in the ink on the pages while finding my secret truth buried in between the lines.

This was recommended to me by one of my favorite people, and I swear that she recommended it because she knew I needed this book. It fits perfectly into the types of fiction that I prefer, bordering somewhere between science fiction and fantasy, straddling the line of a dark fairy tale that brings adults back to their days of reading YA fiction. There are stories that we read that keep reality crystal clear right in front of us. Personally, I prefer to read stories that pull reality just beyond the reach of my fingertips, tugging at the veil of my imagination. It is in these stories that I am able to escape, and what is the point of reading fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, if you can't escape into worlds unknown and unexplored?

I have a few more things to say about this, but right now, I want you to order this book, request it from the library, download it to your Kindle, whatever. Get your hands on this book!

Books: The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers (Part 1)

I'm currently simul-reading a couple of different books, but I want to talk about one that I am in the middle of right now.

Amazon has this to say:

The Power of Myth launched an extraordinary resurgence of interest in Joseph Campbell and his work. [ . . . ] With Bill Moyers, one of America’s most prominent journalists, as his thoughtful and engaging interviewer, The Power of Myth touches on subjects from modern marriage to virgin births, from Jesus to John Lennon, offering a brilliant combination of intelligence and wit.

This extraordinary book reveals how the themes and symbols of ancient narratives continue to bring meaning to birth, death, love, and war. 

This is a book that has sat on my bookshelves for years, and for some reason, when I finished When Things Fall Apart by the Venerable Pema Chodron, The Power of Myth reached out and grabbed me. I've been reading a fair number of philosophical or faith-based books, and at this point, I felt like it was time to change it up a little. This book touches on so many different topics, and I felt like I needed a book that took a different approach. This book is written in a bit of an unusual format compared to the other books I've discussed in the last six months.

In this one, Bill Moyers is interviewing Joseph Campbell. This long-form interview covers much of Campbell's works, but is particularly interesting because Moyers does not always agree with Campbell; in fact, they hash out some points of dissent over the course of the interview, further developing their own and each other's ideas.

As I have been on this journey of illness and self-discovery, weakness and epiphanies that have surprised me over and over again, I've realized many things about myself.

I am not always kind to myself. I have flaws that I'd prefer not to admit to, although I am sure that many of you have been witness to one or many of them. I have reserves of strength that reach deeper than I ever expected. I am even more stubborn than I ever thought I could be. People are complex. I am complex.

In an early part of the interview, Campbell says,

"the only way you can describe a human being truly is by describing his imperfections. The perfect human being is uninteresting—the Buddha who leaves the world, you know. It is the imperfections of life that are lovable. And when the writer sends a dart of the true word, it hurts. But it goes with love. This is what [Thomas] Mann called 'erotic irony,' the love for that which you are killing with your cruel, analytical word" (Campbell and Moyers 3).

The flaws in life are what make life interesting, right? It is too common for people to try to gloss over the faults in our friends, our family, ourselves. Think of the last funeral you went to: I have been blessed; for me, it was 23 years ago. People spoke so kindly of the dead. You know, and I know, that we should not speak ill of the dead, right? I felt so uncomfortable speaking so kindly of the dead and erasing the essence of who this person was. Of course, that is not to say that this person had no positive qualities, but ignoring those flaws swept away that which made this person so important, so loved, so missed. Ignoring those flaws distorted my memories, even as I knew that people were merely trying to be kind. 

But what did it mean that we, collectively, could not be honest with ourselves and each other about the true essence of this person? Why did we work so hard to pretend to ourselves and each other that there were only and exclusively good things to say about this person?


Moyers posits that

"what human beings have in common is revealed in myths. Myths are stories of our search through the ages for truth, for meaning, for significance. We all need to tell our story and to understand our story. We all need to understand death and to cope with death, and we all need help in our passages from birth to life and then to death. We need for life to signify, to touch the eternal, to understand the mysterious, to find out who we are" (Campbell and Moyers 4).

Anyone who knows me at all knows that my favorite book is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I love it so much that I have a tattoo inspired from the book. In this book, among other things, they are trying to find the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything. The search for meaning appears to be a universal truth, contained within the pages of a British comedy trilogy and the pages within this more academic book about myth.

Something that I've always known about myself is that I love stories. I don't think that this makes me unique; stories tie us together, keep us together, bind us to each other. I love books, movies, tv shows, any medium that tells a story. This is part of what brought me to teaching at the community college. There is so much tucked away within the stories we read, the stories we tell each other, and it is far too easy to feel separated from each other when we are allowed to forget the universality of these stories.

I miss teaching. One of the best parts of teaching, for me, is getting to see the look of recognition on a student's face as they realize that this or that experience is not unique to their own life. I have interacted with so many students who feel alone in their experiences, singled out, on their own. Outcast, out of place, rejected. Having the opportunity to build connections and community with my students through shared stories has been the single most fulfilling part of my life. Finding shared meaning is so rewarding.

Goldfishing

So The Husband and I came up with a term that more people should be familiar with: goldfishing.

We all know that goldfish have a memory that lasts 3 seconds, right? Wrong. Goldfish have memories that can last months. For the purposes of this post, we are going to stick to the idea that goldfish don't remember so well, though, because I have a point to make here.

Chemo-brain (similar to mommy brain or pregnancy brain) has made me quite similar to those goldfish. Maybe having 30 doses of radiation aimed at my brain shortly after having not one but two brain surgeries did have some effect on my short term memory.

I want you to know, I keep on getting distracted as I'm trying to write this d*mn blog post.

A scenario:

Me: ... blah blah blah stuff that happened blah blah... [I trail off into silence...]
The Husband (TH): Are you okay?
Me: I forgot where I was going with that story. I don't know.
TH: [very kindly does NOT laugh at me]

My attention span is shot, and my short term memory is a joke right now. I'll set down my phone and immediately forget where I put it. I'll pick up a pen to write something down and suddenly be unsure what that something was.

I'm not stupid. I promise I'm not stupid.

But the effects of what I've been through are no joke. All in all, I have had very minor cognitive defects. Sometimes I have trouble finding the right word. Sometimes I lose track of time. Sometimes I get distracted and forget that I was in the middle of something else.

[I just got distracted by my cat.]

What was I saying?

Oh yeah! For all intents and purposes, I have healed remarkably well from all of the stuff that has happened in the last six months. I didn't need occupational therapy. I didn't need to re-learn how to walk, talk, or read.

However, because of where my tumor was located, the issues with attention span and short-term memory are unsurprising.

Some days, I have full attention span and no memory issues. Some days the opposite is true. I let The Husband know when it's a bad goldfish day, and he is always so understanding when I get stuck on a word or forget that I already told him this or that thing.

Goldfishing is frustrating, though. I wasn't like this, and I don't know how long it will take to get back to how I was before. In the meantime, I make notes to myself, I set reminders, and I do the best I can. But I can't help but feel a sense of loss of who I used to be.

Books: When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron (part 9)

We are finally reaching the end of When Things Fall Apart. As a reminder, I've talked about embracing fear, being vulnerable, embracing hope, letting go of control, beautiful fleeting moments, suffering and hope, the impermanence of pleasure and pain, and the compelling urge to procrastinate when it matters most.

This book has been enlightening in a way I never expected. I mean, when my dear friend recommended it, I knew it would be something good, but I didn't expect to be so introspective as I read these teachings. We may have our diverse belief systems, but I feel like any and all of us can find some wisdom in Pema Chodron's teachings.

It would be so easy to continue being the cynic that I have always been. Past hurts have led me to expect only more hurts in the future. My diagnosis was the ultimate hurt that proved that my cynicism was warranted. I simply don't have enough words to describe the devastation and shock of Diagnosis Day.


The Venerable Pema Chodron says that:

"Every act counts. Every thought and emotion counts too. This is all the path we have [. . . ] We are only going to be here for a short while. Even if we live to be 108, our life will be too short for witnessing all its wonders. " (Chodron 141).

This was perhaps the most difficult part for me to come to terms with; I say that life is too short, but how much do I really believe that? The words "cancer," "aggressive," and "incurable" hover around my head in a way I can never escape.


Life is too short.

Life is too short.

Life is too short. 

Like a mantra, over and over again until I believe it. And still, I don't always believe it. Only when I learn to believe it will I be able to truly appreciate this life I have in front of me. Remember, we all have said that we might get hit by a bus tomorrow. I am staring down the grille of that bus. I need to make it all count. There are no worthless moments.

Sometimes, I get down on myself, because I talk a big game about appreciating life and taking in the wisdom of this Buddhist nun, but it is so often difficult to follow through when it is so easy to fall back into complacency.
 
The Venerable Pema Chodron says,

"Some of us can accept others right where they are a lot more easily than we can accept ourselves. We feel that compassion is reserved for someone else, and it never occurs to us to feel it for ourselves" (Chodron 140).

I want to be more accepting of my situation, but if I am not intentionally thinking about it, I slip right back into that rage that burns inside of me because this is not fair. I have to really be consciously thinking about her teachings, because any moment in which I stop actively thinking about my extraordinary life is a moment when I am deluded into thinking that life is merely ordinary. I need to remind myself that this life is a gift, even if it is merely ordinary.

Things may fall apart, but learning to accept and embrace the chaos has been a transformative experience.

Read this book.

Flu season quarantine and the travel dilemma

Over the course of the last several months, I have had multiple invitations to visit friends and family, as well as multiple offers to have friends and family to visit me. While I love to travel, I don't know yet if I am allowed to fly; remember, I have a piece of skull cut out of my head (the so-called brainhole) which may affect my ability to fly. In addition, because I am on chemotherapy, I am immunocompromised. So even if I were allowed to fly to visit my friends, I'd be worried about catching some germ or the other, because I have gotten sick EVERY time I have gotten on a plane, including catching the flu in Florida and a horrible sinus infection on the way to Italy.

According to the CDC, flu activity in South Carolina is high.

CDC flu data

The absolute last thing that I want to do is have cancer AND the flu. What this means is that, with the exception of one event I might attend in a couple of days, I am putting myself in voluntary quarantine. The only person allowed in my house is The Husband because he is cute and I love him. Anybody else is barred from visiting. I will not be hugging or even shaking hands with people.

While I would love to travel to see my friends all over the country, the Gofundme would have to be much more successful for that to be a possibility, and to be honest, I probably shouldn't be getting anywhere near any red or orange states in the image above for the time being.

At least for now, I have to settle for being a homebody. If you want to visit with me, download Skype. Text me. Email me. Just no hugs!

Intentional ignorance

Throughout my journey through this diagnosis, I have taken certain steps to set boundaries to protect my own mental, physical, and spiritual health. I have been adamant about avoiding Dr. Google. I have been very strict with my friends and family about not looking for comfort from me if they feel bad about my diagnosis. I've worked really hard to maintain a level of comfort for myself where I can.

When I shared the news of my diagnosis, I chose my words carefully because I did not want to be misunderstood as I explained what was happening to me.

Through all of this, it has been incredibly important for me to avoid certain pieces of information.

Picture this:

Interior: Doctor's office. Patient and caregiver, and doctor.

Doctor: You have cancer.

Patient: How much time do I have?

Doctor: Six months. Maybe. It depends.

Patient: Spends the next six months with an expiration date hovering over her head.

This is not what happened to me. Instead, it went kind of like this:

Interior: Doctor's office. Patient and caregiver, and doctor.

Doctor: You have cancer.

Patient: *Stunned silence*

Doctor: Now, I don't want you looking up information about your diagnosis, because yours is a very unusual case. Any data you find on google will be outdated, and wouldn't apply to you anyway because of your age, the symptoms with which you presented, and your general level of healthfulness. You are going to want to look this up, but I strongly recommend that you don't, because it will not help you.

Patient: Ok.

And I have not googled this condition, not even once. I'll be perfectly honest, there are many times that I was tempted to look it up, just for a minute, just for a tidbit of information.

Here's where The Husband swoops in to be my hero, as usual.

It is hard to be intentionally ignorant of my diagnosis and my potential prognosis. From the beginning, I have tried to be open about mental health, and as my sister has told me multiple times, outcomes in the treatment of any cancer are so dependent on mental health, and it is incredibly important to stay as positive as possible, even when all I want to do is crawl under my bed and cry for a few days.

The Husband has taken one for the team. He's my research guy. He has looked up the things that need to be looked up, and he has been kind and careful enough to not tell me about any of it. I understand that there is some truly frightening information out there. I have none of that information.

Some may feel that it is wrong for The Husband to keep this information a secret, but the simple fact is that I know myself well enough to know that if he gave me some of the information that he has, my mental health would suffer tremendously. I am on anti-depressants. I asked for them about 30 seconds after I got my diagnosis. If I remember correctly, my exact words were, "Yeah... I'm gonna need some Prozac."

Let's go ahead and address the stigma surrounding mental health.

We don't talk about how we take our "happy pills" to function. We don't talk about going to therapy. We don't tell people when we are feeling depressed, hopeless, suicidal.

I have been depressed several times in my life. I have been in and out of therapy for years. I am on those "happy pills" as we speak.

Working through mental health issues is as normal as going to physical therapy for whiplash.

The Husband has been my rock. My angel. My everything. And the simple fact is that my mental health would not be where it is right now if he had not taken the role of research guy. He has protected me from so much that is out there. He has been so understanding of my need for intentional ignorance, and he has built that protective wall around me to keep me safe.

We are realistic. At some point, I'm going to need to end this phase of intentional ignorance. But in the meantime, I am taking care of my mental health the best way I know how, and The Husband is playing the critical role of enforcing that intentional ignorance, exactly as I asked him to all those months ago.

I know that this arrangement would not work for everyone, but for now, it is working for me.

Books: When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron (part 8)

Let's keep thinking about When Things Fall Apart. I've talked about embracing fear, being vulnerable, embracing hope, letting go of control, beautiful fleeting moments, suffering and hope, and the impermanence of pleasure and pain.

Life is too short. It actually doesn't matter how long it lasts. It is too short. However easy it might be to feel invincible, to feel like your daily routine will continue for endless days, weeks, months, the reality is that life is too short.

The Venerable Pema Chodron says that:

"The teachings of Buddhism are directed at people who don't have a lot of time to waste. The includes all of us, whether we're aware of it or not. From the point of view of the teachings, thinking that we have ample time to do things later is the greatest myth, the greatest hang-up and the greatest poison" (Chodron 127).

I felt this in my core. I am a master procrastinator.

As I am sure many others have, I've thought to myself: I can get to X later, I'll start Y tomorrow, maybe over the weekend I'll finally get around to doing Z.

I don't want to tell you how long I procrastinated by looking for a meme about procrastinating. It's a real problem.

The thing is, and I've said this so many times, life is too short. Yet I wasted (ahem) a certain unacceptable number of minutes procrastinating even though I know that life is too short. Why am I like this?

I am so easily lulled in by the myth that there will be more time later, even though I know for a fact that I should be doing something more productive than playing around on Facebook, scrolling mindlessly through Buzzfeed, or just staring off into space.

With all of this, the passage of time inevitably courses forward even as I try to slow myself down, for no other reason other than because I can.

Remember, that Rockstar Neurosurgeon said,

"Cancer."

"Aggressive."

"Incurable."

How am I supposed to look forward to a future like that?

Can't I just hit the pause button for a minute?

If I'm being really honest, I know that my tendency to procrastinate is bad for me. When the man says incurable, I have to admit that I am in absolutely no rush to face a future like that. Can you blame me for being afraid?

That Rockstar Neurosurgeon relieved me of the poisonous belief that I'm invincible, with plenty of time in my future. I should thank him for this kindness.

Yet somehow, I still have these complicated feelings about this man that saved my life. He took out my tumor. He gave me this terrible diagnosis. He released me from the grasp of this childish belief that in the end, everything would be fine. I should be grateful to him, and I am. But I also feel such an aversion to him, because in the same way that he saved my life, I feel like he ruined my life.

I may be a master procrastinator, but I had plans for my summer. Those plans were replaced with over a hundred appointments across six months and three hospital stays. Very few of those appointments were pleasant. I've only really felt truly healthy for maybe two or three days in the last six months. That is a really long time to feel unwell.

And here I am, six months after my first brain surgery, doing my thing. I managed to get through all of this with very little in the way of cognitive deficits. I am still me, even if this Me is not who I had planned to be.

But I'm here. I'm still me.

Rome: Colosseum

Cancer Update: Scan results and Boundaries

Well, today we are taking a break from When Things Fall Apart, but don't worry, there are still a few posts ready to finish analyzing this book.

In the meantime, here's an update.

I had my brains scanned a week or so ago, right? I got the results just a couple of days later, but I needed some time to process the information before I put it out there. As a reminder, I am very open about the horrors of this diagnosis most of the time, but that does not mean that I am obligated to share with you every medical detail of my life.

Anyway, there is good news: There no significant change to the size of my teeny-tiny tumor, so my doctor wants to stick with the current plan and re-check my brains in a few months. Right now, they are not worried about me, and from what I can tell, the lack of urgency on their part means that there is nothing to worry about doing.

I am doing maintenance chemo, and I am going to continue that for at least the next six months, I think, unless something significant changes in the scans of my brains. That part, I am not looking forward to. Chemo SUCKS,  and even though they say that oral chemo is supposed to be more easily tolerated than IV chemo, it still SUCKS.

For a little while, I was feeling really good, and now, I'm not. It happens. Nothing out of the ordinary for a patient with my diagnosis to feel good, then feel bad, then feel good again, and so forth and so on and what have you. It's a cycle.

Remember that bus that could hit me tomorrow? I feel like it just revved its engine to remind me that it's there, but luckily, for now, it's not going anywhere.

I am still frustrated by many parts of my diagnosis. I feel like there is so much waiting involved, and I am not a naturally patient person. Right now, I am at the point in the cycle where I am cranky, and tired, and generally grumpy. I know that I will feel better, because it is a cycle of ups and downs, but right now, I just want off this ride.

Books: When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron (part 7)

Let's keep thinking about When Things Fall Apart. As a reminder, so far I've talked about embracing fear, being vulnerable, embracing hope, letting go of control, and beautiful fleeting moments, and suffering and hope.

If we stop thinking that we have earned the good things that happen to us, and realize that even the bad things that happen will happen even if we don't deserve it, maybe we can change our perspective. I've spent so much of my life thinking that I have some semblance of control. I've spent so much of my life feeling like it would all work out because things work out, and that's just the way the world works. I trusted that the world worked the way I thought it did; I depended wholly on everything making sense. It can be such a shock when it all falls to pieces.

The Venerable Pema Chodron says that:

"Our suffering is based so much on our fear of impermanence. Our pain is so rooted in our one-sided, lopsided view of reality. Who ever got the idea that we could have pleasure without pain? It's promoted rather widely in this world, and we buy it. But pain and pleasure go together; they are inseparable. They can be celebrated. They are ordinary. Birth is painful and delightful. Death is painful and delightful. Everything that ends is also the beginning of something else. Pain is not a punishment; pleasure is not a reward" (Chodron 60).

In American consumerist society, we are constantly told that we can increase our pleasure, decrease our pain, if only we buy this car, that anti-wrinkle cream, the other pair of shoes. We can distract ourselves from the pain by taking advantage of this Black Friday Sale, by triggering our dopamine receptors swiping left or right in finding a partner. We can increase our pleasure with that overpriced (and delicious) coffee, that cheap candy bar, that newest phone, that fancy pair of earrings. We can forget our pain with that dry white wine, that semi-authentic Cuban cuisine, that not-authentic-at-all but eminently satisfying Chinese buffet.

We buy or rent pleasure in food, in objects, in experiences, but in the end, none of it lasts. We pay a premium to delude ourselves into believing that we can find happiness. The unfortunate truth is that, even when that pleasure is merely temporary, it calls to us, a siren song.

We reach out, grasping for those moments that bring us pleasure, even as we know that they can never last. We can't help it; we are pleasure-seeking creatures. How painful is it to know that every pleasure we find will fade in the mist of time?

Nothing lasts.

Everything is temporary. Life fades. Happiness turns to something less than.

We should celebrate those momentary pleasures while we can.

I have always said that life is too short for bad books, but throughout this diagnosis, I've come to realize that life is too short. Full stop.

Celebrating the fleeting nature of pleasure is just as important as understanding that pain is temporary.

Nothing lasts, and that is okay.