Selling my soul to cancer

More than once I've compared the slow and painful spread of depression through my life to a cancer. I did so blindly, not knowing first hand the similarities one had to the other. How fortunate for me I've now had the gift of cancer metaphorically and literally. Not only had I compared the two and acted as if the pain of depression was the same but I welcomed actual cancer. Too unsure to walk out of this life I would day dream of how glorious an end it would be to slowly wither away. Friends and family loving you, devoted to you, standing by your side and telling you how strong you are as you get weaker and ultimately leave them. Never once did I consider survival. These dark thoughts were always in a place in my mind where cancer equated to death. What we don't realize is the moment we are faced with the possibility of death is the moment we realize how unready we are to truly face it. I became more confused and frustrated with every test and procedure. Filled with emotions so mixed I didn't know what I was even fighting for. Counting down the days to have my traitorous body parts amputated became my obsession. Researching every possible outcome was my new hobby. with each piece of information (bad or good) and each procedure and surgery I had hoped for a bit more peace. A gradual climb back to my life as I knew it, perhaps even improved. But every step robbed me of something else. My dignity was the first to go, displaying myself to countless nurses, doctors and technicians. Unveiling myself in the least comfortable ways possible in the name of survival. Next went my time, overburdened with appointments to the point I could barely keep track of where I was to be each day and what they would be doing to me when I got there. Then it came for my freedom. Bound to a bed that would literally set off an alarm if I even turned to stand up. Sent home to a chair I would be stuck in for weeks. Everything I enjoyed was off limits. No rock climbing, no running, no tennis, no fun. Once the medications began sleep was even off the menu. Then it came for my heart, my everything, my reason to fight through it all. Cancer came for my family. It didn't infect them with it's cell dividing fury in the same way it did me. It tore them apart. It separated them from me, it scared them, it shook them so hard we didn't recognize each other.
            Six months later it's "gone". They cut it out of me, labeled it bio-hazard, poked around at it, named it with numbers and stages and phases and graded it on it's ability to return. They drugged me, rebuilt my body and pushed me out of the medical nest. Fly little bird, we fixed you up. Everything is fine now. Go. Live. So here I am, living. Not living the life I lived before and not living some new and improved life. Living in the wreckage. Navigating what cancer has done to my personal relationships, my body, my finances, my body......Yes, twice I know. I can't look myself in the eye in a mirror anymore. I can scan my body up and down at full length. Inspecting each roll that has returned despite all of the work I had done before all of this to tone them. Analyzing the silicone, nippleless breasts that sit too high and don't actual resemble breasts to me. I can strip the fluids from the drains that hang out of the sides of my body and confidently dress myself to cover it all...but afterwards, to look myself in the eye and face that this body I am caring for is MINE. It's overwhelming, all consuming and so far still an every day nightmare.
             I am sorry I ever day dreamed of a graceful, sickly fade out of this life. I apologize for taking for granted the love I already had from my friends and family. I am filled with so many regrets and no way to take any of them back. For all of it all I can say is....I didn't know. I didn't know pain, I didn't know suffering and I didn't know how bad it could be. At this point all I want to know is when it gets better, if it gets better and how it gets better. It's such a slow crawl to the end of this hell and the scariest part of it all is I have no idea what that end is. There is no return to how it was. That life is gone and this whole ordeal has remolded me more than just physically.

I Hope its Okay That I'm Still Not Okay

Not ready to forgive and unable to heal, yet with no desire to quit or hold such resentment. I find myself in the exact same place of being unable to trust but wanting to, so badly. Your promises this time, so far, have stayed solid yet I live in fear that one bad day, one disagreement, one bitchy comment will make you remember when I just wasn't worth the effort. The effort itself makes me feel simultaneously worthwhile yet shitty. Someone is trying to make a change for me, trying to show me that I deserve love. But why would anyone have to try, why was I not deserving of effortless love in the first place? What made me first deserving of being disregarded and belittled? I can't tell if my reaction to the enormous pile of festering pain that has built was enough, perhaps too much or just right. If gut feelings are worth anything mine says not enough but I'm too afraid of letting out anymore. I've said all the words I thought I had until I felt I had drained it all out of my system. I cried until I couldn't cry anymore, rested alone and sad, then cried more. I reached out for support, I was held and have been treated with care. But it still hurts. It's not the pain itself, but the inability to make it stop no matter what I try. First powerless in my relationship and now powerless over my own state of mind I start to fill with rage. I bargain with a faceless higher power, "Why?! What could I possibly have done to feel so low?". Recounting every effort I've made on the grandest and smallest scales just to be good enough for everyone. It only makes me angrier. I want to yell it all at you. I want to tell you everything I've done right and how I deserved appreciation for it all. I want to hurtfully scream and break down, fighting my case that I am a necessary person. That I matter and life would not just go on without me. The problem is, I don't fully believe it and you seem to be in a place where you do now. This is the wreckage. While all the efforts to make the pain stop are needed and welcomed I still feel alone walking through my own mind. Ashamed that I can't just smile, that I'm still so on edge. Ashamed that I'm still crying inside and putting on a show on the outside because I don't want you to quit me. I can't let go of the idea that I'm holding it all up, but I know I have to stop.  I have to give this one sided love story a chance at being more rather than writing a lie in my head for your side of it like I have for so long. So many questions remain and swarm. How do I stop holding it up? How do I trust you to fix this? Where do I put all this anger that can't possibly be useful in saving us? I feel grateful in the moment for the changes I already see, and selfish to ask for more yet still I crave answers. I just keep digging at the wound and wondering why it won't heal. 

"We're just toxic together"

"I just think it's stupid" multiple times....

"Of course it was my idea, it's not like you'd suggest anything"

"Where is your ring?"

"Figure it out"

"It's not my fucking problem"

"I know you have a secret" 

......silence...so much painful silence...

"Why have you never worn that for me"

"Ask your boyfriend"

.....inappropriately laughing while I cry.....

"I just don't like anything about you anymore"

"You need to have more confidence"

"Get a hobby, or a job, you need to leave more" 

"Well yeah I love you, but only because you gave birth to our kids"

"I appreciate everything you do but it's not like I couldn't just do it myself"

"I'm going to make it better, I promise" (month ago, not now)

 

None of it healed because up until now it never stopped. 

Final Thoughts on a Wound I Cannot Heal

I want so badly to feel better and my body just won't let go. My mind has been molded into a servant of pain and can't seem to stop trying to compromise it's well being for the contentment of others. Food is the enemy and toxic behaviors are my solace. Smiles are forced while tears are unstoppable. You spend so long thinking if you could just bring to light what is really happening, if you just received a shred of validation then things would heal and quickly. But they don't. If anything the flood of reality pours in. Suddenly you no longer have any culpability in the situation and you know it doesn't fall on you to fix it. Not just feel it but know it. For a moment it's a relief and the painful existence you've been living makes sense, only for a moment. After the initial relief comes the knowledge that you now have to trust the person that brought you down so far to find a way to pick you and their self back up and start over. You find yourself in the midst of a thousand questions. How will they do this? What is their plan? What if they can't and the cycle repeats again? Can I live through it even one more time? Uncovering truths that needed to be seen opens new suspicions showing you a side of yourself you don't want to experience. A less trusting side that can't imagine ever feeling safe or comfortable with the person you adored. All the while holding on to the intense love that no longer seems to make sense. No one has hit me, because I would never allow it. No one has called me degrading names or forced things upon me, because I am on guard and protect myself. But the pain I've encountered I couldn't see coming. It happened slowly and somehow with calculated manipulation that even the person doing it couldn't see. Because sometimes people hurt you and they don't even notice. Sometimes they hurt you and they don't even want to, seemingly with no control. Because of this it goes on for so long....so long that you get lost in the place you let yourself get put. I no longer know who I am and I've been wandering through this place, lost and scared, completely by myself for what seems like an eternity. I don't choose to dwell, I don't want to cry or get angry. I don't even want to have to assign blame. I just no longer have a choice. As if my mind and my body had a private meeting, perhaps while I slept, and they decided it's time to crumble because there's no where else to go. My hands tremble, everything tastes like shit, I smoke cigarette after cigarette watching each puff of smoke come out as if it were my last breath. I don't have much faith that it gets better from here only because I find it impossible to trust that anyone other than myself can fix it. And I finally accept that I cannot. It sounds like the rantings of a person in pain on the cusp of making better choices. It isn't. It's a person who will wait a life time for the love she chose. A sad and broken person who knows what she has hasn't been good for a while, but that the alternative isn't any better. Loneliness will consume me no matter what I do so I hold on to a tiny shred of hope that I am enough. That you will see me some day for what I am, not just what I am but what I am TO YOU. That I can finally reveal all the pain without fear that it will scare you away. Hope that instead of quitting or running you see that all I ever needed was loved, held, protected from the loneliness even if you are literally protecting me from yourself. It's the last hope I have and I can only wait in pain to see if it's worth holding.

My thoughts on periods.....yes....periods

Life seems to be run in a multitude of intertwined cycles. Patterns we are blessed or cursed to repeat  that overlap each other as if to distract you from getting ahead of the other. The bills come at a certain point while perhaps not the same timing as your paycheck, school starts and pools close while the pattern of the weather hasn't made its full seasonal shift. It can either be overwhelming or perhaps embraced. I personally seldom find moments to embrace something that causes me such chaos.
       Some of these cycles we've stigmatized in a way to write off their importance. The full moon theory where everyone acts a bit different is treated almost as if it were some sort of myth. While I'm no educated scholar on sociology, psychology or astronomy I have to disagree. I seem to have a strong connection to the idea that this could have scientific evidence to back up the theory.
            Certainly more typically written off is the female cycle. I'm willing to bet I even lost 2 of the 4 people that may read this by even mentioning it. Regardless of your discomfort, I choose to continue for the sake of every crazy bitch out there who deserves not to feel crazy. The average woman holds a multitude of roles in life. Creating an endless maze of these different overlapping cycles and responsibilities. The emotional expectation alone is a weight few of us have the strength to bare every day of the month. It builds and festers each time we compromise our happiness. It gets heavier the more feelings we choose to suppress. It boils and burns inside while we stay in the level headed state of mind we are forced to maintain in order to succeed at all of our many jobs/roles/responsibilities. And then a dramatic bloody overflow of all the emotional burden comes and washes it all away. We're told we're irrational, we're disregarded as if our minds and bodies truly don't exist while we spend 3-7 days in this enlightened state of experiencing everything we've held in for the last 28 days. Everything has a tipping point. Women seem to be amazingly programmed with a distinct time to unload the overburden of life on a regular cycle.
            I don't pretend to fully understand the emotional state of the opposite sex. Men have been regarded for quite some time, if not forever, as the strong and steady gender. The stoic and hardened rock of the home. They are thought to rarely feel the urge to cry, to not overthink or act in emotion. Over time I think some of them have their own sort of programming flaw, not designed by nature but by skewed social standards. To feel is to be shamed. This isn't sustainable and nature doesn't seem to have built in way to fight such densely compressed emotions. There is no designated time to let out the overflow, no hormonal switch that opens that dam briefly. It's truly baffling to me and I feel such pain for those who are so emotionally blocked they can't shed a tear. I would rather bleed for a week and be told everything I feel is bullshit than never be allowed to feel at all.
              So in life's many cycles I will kick and scream. I will fight and flail, and some days i will conform. But at least in the cycle of being a female I will take pride. I will feel truly equipped with a power some aren't lucky enough to have. An electric surge of emotions I am allowed to have. A view into what happens when you're forced to tear down that wall of emotional rules.
         

No, I'm not okay, it's not okay, nothing is okay.....but that's okay

The pain is rooting into me, spreading like a cancer. Every part of me tied into it and being dragged down. It's hard to keep pretending I'm not falling apart or poetically spinning it to make it sound okay. Sadness is killing me. Be it literal or metaphoric, the destruction of my existence is in full progression and there's nobody left to turn to. Having tried multiple versions of myself, submissive, confident, big, small, an abundance of hair colors and clothing styles, social, antisocial, loving and withdrawn. I hate them all. There is no work to be done here, there is no exercise or therapeutic activity that can save me from this place I've fallen. And its so fucking lonely. I can't decipher reality anymore. Am I sad because you've shut me out, grown bored with me, and shoved me to the side? Is it the constant swing of being handed ALL of the love in overwhelming and illuminating abundance to being just another face in the room, invoking nothing inside of you. Or has my sadness, my pain, my loss of light to shine caused all of the love to give up on me. Searching over and over, cycling in and out only finding myself deeper and darker and sadder than i was the time before. Contemplating things we dare not speak aloud. Not for fear of being taken seriously but for fear of being laughed at. I want to reach out. I want to say "I'm not okay this time, this is not a drill", but the more I reach the further you pull away. The tighter I need held the looser your grip becomes. concerned and loving words from friends feel empty and forced, therapists aren't there when the cloud really moves in. Answers do not exist and my mind is on repeat SCREAMING over and over, "I'm so fucking sad it hurts, I'm so fucking sad it hurts!". Crying inside and spilling over to the outside at any moment I'm afforded the luxury of falling apart without inconveniencing anyone else. I just want to be held, like an inconsolable crying baby, but I can't ask to be held...because I would in fact feel like a needy, whiny, inconsolable, crying baby. Depression is lonely and anxiety is debilitating. But they're just words, diagnoses, categories to classify your pain. Naming it doesn't take it away, treating it doesn't leave you whole. Maybe some of us weren't meant to be "okay".

I wouldn't love me either

Redundant phrases and familiar fears fill me as i slip into a vortex of sadness and rage. Searching for an unrecognized scapegoat for the pain only to find myself alone in the room. my body vibrates with the electric frustration of life itself. Cold and uncomfortable I find no solace in anything that typically fills the void. I poured the wine but can't bring myself to drink, sat by the keyboard but struggled over the pointlessness of each word. Satiated only by flashes of something i repeatedly snuff out. I lash out like a child, helpless to express it all at once any other way. Frustrated and exhausted with the same old shit but still waiting longingly for the spark of perfection. There seems to be a solid reason why love is so frequently compared to a drug. What is often overlooked is the pain and withdraw when it's not available to you. The "off days" aren't just dull, they stab through every beautiful moment, tarnishing what previously shined. So tired and weak, I can barely see the point anymore. Scrutinizing over every tiny thing I do just knowing it's always wrong.  Maybe this is the end of my road. I've done all that I can do. every step I take from here on out will only lead the rest of them to the same disappointment. Where do you go when you've worn out every path. When you tried to be more fun, care about less, love better, look nicer....and in the end still feel like you've failed at them all. There is no road for me. Nobody left to turn to, nothing left to say. So tired but unable to sleep. It's these moments that seem to never end where i wish I could close my eyes and go back to a perfect moment that I just couldn't hold onto and stay. A place where i wouldn't disappoint anyone, not even myself. A place where that love isn't tarnished or bruised. Somewhere I feel alive, seen and needed. But my eyes always open and the truth is right there like a film coating them. As if filtering the whole world with a caption that says "why bother". 

Waiting to be Taken

Misery is a muse and an easy way out of averting stagnation and boredom. I call upon it to give me depth and purpose leaving all the in between moments empty and meaningless. What am I if not on the brink of destruction? Just another face in the crowd dying to be seen but blending in with the sea of beige. Even upon careful removal of the crowd itself I can't pique the interest of a solitary person who chose my company in the first place. I sit in this inbetween place bubbling up on the inside with no knowledge of when i will overflow or what it is that boils inside. When the lid blows off will euphoric joy spill from the top? Filling the air with intellect, perspective, love and realizations. Or will the pain be what's waiting to escape, not like the manic steam previously mentioned but a thick, bubbling, tar like, depression that will slowly seep out staining everything in its path. A substance unable to rise and float away. I welcome either as I feel empty and unseen otherwise, though if I'm being honest I'm in constant search of that steam. That perfect moment, that long care free night. The sensation of no consequences and absolute perfection. It is a distinct feeling of "This is right, this is meant to be. This is who we really are. I am seen". Mourning it's loss before it's even evaporated, I painfully accept each time that it can never last as long as the tar like depression that will always engulf it. Bringing me back down to reality and then slowly sinking below that to a darker place just as unrealistic as the mania that preceded. However dark that place may be, I'd sit in it for a lifetime before living in this unseen limbo. A place where I am a forgotten nothing, parading myself about only to realize there is no audience. Desperately seeking a deeper meaning, a purpose, a place I belong. I reject this limbo and revert to the only safe place i know. My muse, my pain, my pit of tar.  It may not be ideal but at least I know the road there and I can see that I'm welcome to a solitary cell at any time i should need to stay. Because I can't find a way to anywhere else, and misery, unlike my joy, is a place I can find alone.