I went to Kaiser yesterday before work to have labs drawn, a normal
procedure, checking to see what my blood cell count levels are, if my white
counts are up yet, since they’re really an indicator of my post-chemo health. Afterward, I
drove to work (thankfully, and gratefully, using my co-worker’s car for the
month) and got to the tasks I do, and then I got an email from my doctor that
said, “Call me.”

Please, for any of you who will ever be, are, or have been a
doctor, PLEASE do not ever write to a patient, “Call me,” with no further
explanations, ever. You know what happens? Fear. Panic. Terror.

My stress level only got perhaps as far as fear, not panic,
as I didn’t expect to hear anything other than what I knew from looking at my
labs online: my white count dipped back down from earlier this week. So I
called my doctor from my work phone, which was perhaps not the best idea on my
part either. And she said that likely the low counts are due to the antibiotics
I’ve been taking, and that my oncologist interprets, that as the rest of my
blood cell counts (red blood cells, platelets) have recovered well, there’s no
reason this result should indicate anything. Anything like cancer, are the
unspoken words.

And so, I spoke them. I asked her, in a straight voice,
sitting in a non-ergonomic chair, in an office with people walking by, and
other phone lines ringing: Could my low white counts be an indication that there are leukemic cells? 

She said no, and repeated what she said earlier about the
other cell lines recovering, and the antibiotics having a tendency to reduce
white cells. And so, she took me off the antibiotics, told me to come back in a week for follow-up lab tests.

And I got off the phone. And I tried to do my work,
updating calendars, making copies, and I couldn’t hold it. I couldn’t hold
that line, that dissociation, that compartmentalizing, that managing. I couldn’t manage. And so I went
to lunch, which meant I walked to a nearby park, sat down in the grass and bawled.

I  don’t  know  how  to  do  this.

I don’t know how to be on the phone with my oncologist one
minute, asking if I’m fucking dying, using the words “Leukemic cells,!!!” and then answer a question about an item
in our gift shop the next. I don’t know how to hold that. That inevitable
reality of life and death at the same time. The “normalcy” of “real life” and
the abnormality of what’s happening in my own real life.

When I was leaving the lab yesterday morning, my nurse, whom
I’ve now known pretty regularly for 6 months, who’s seen my hair fall out, my
weight drop 15 pounds, my color fade and return, she asked if I was heading to
work. And I said yes, “back to real life.” Then I asked her if that was really
more real life than this. More of a “real” world than the room where people
sat getting infusions and machines beeped to keep others alive.

She said she didn’t know how to answer that. And I
responded, maybe it’s all the real world.

There is nothing that makes answering phones and creating
pamphlets more “real” than cancer. It’s just that it’s the more “normal” world,
the more accustomed world. For others. For me, right now, the “normal” world is
like an alien planet, where I’m aping the motions and actions of those around
me, those actions I know to be interpreted as normal. As average. If I act like
one of you, I’ll be one of you.

But I’m not.

No, I’m not special, different, have more or less pain than
anyone, but at the moment, I’m not plain, average, or managing.

When, after work (which I left early, following another
mid-afternoon meltdown, unable to stem the flow of confused, angry, exhausted
tears) I went to a nearby friend’s house, and sat on her couch crying, and I
sobbed that I don’t know how to do this – to integrate these worlds, to manage
this situation, to walk from what was into what is – she replied kindly, You
are doing it.

So, this is it. Messy. Uncomfortable. Jarring.

This is how you walk out of acute trauma: slowly, inexpertly,
and by being honest when too much is too much. 

poem written August 2012

every inch closer you come toward me

is every inch farther from myself that I am

so by the time your cock is pressing against

the putty of my cervix,

i have found a home inside your walls

like the twilight zone where the little girl

gets lost in the walls

and drifts bemused

around cubist boulders.

i push my palm flat against your wall

– ragged pockmarks, cool satin paint –

as if this physical sensation

will pull me back through

and hearing the suck and slap, forward and back

i note that, somewhere, i must be enjoying this.

* * *

Sometime in my mid to late teens, I began to keep a list of
my hook-ups. I color coded them with markers, each color of the rainbow
representing an act, beginning with red for kissing, and going around the
bases.

Sometime in my early twenties, I went to this list with a
pink highlighter and marked those on this now extensive list that had involved alcohol, including the one when I lost my virginity. Nearly all wound up pink.

A habit evolved early: I am rarely present in my
body during events like this. Whether that’s alcohol related, or as with
the above poem, which took place in sobriety, simply a self-protection habit.

Several of the acts on that list were not entirely consensual,
and most would not have happened if alcohol hadn’t been involved — but some
surely would have, because that’s what you wanted from me, wasn’t it?

This was the story I told myself for a very, very long time.
Sometimes I still think it. You’re interested in what you see, so I’ll give you
what you see and nothing more – the “real” me will be hidden, withdrawn,
somewhere else. It’s not safe for me to be present during these acts because
of the many times before when my answer was no but I was too drunk to argue, so it happened anyway.

How. Do. You. Integrate?

I still hold my breath most times I hug people, a way to
retract and not be vulnerable. Do I simply become more aware of these patterns,
and they fall away? Do I trust that these parts can heal if I allow them into
the light, after so long of protecting them, protecting me?

If I’m fully present during sex, then I’m vulnerable.
Vulnerable to the overstepping of boundaries, vulnerable to my inability to own
my No or my Not now. Also, I’m vulnerable to the disappointment of not getting
what I need or want when I do ask – better to just sort of be checked in, and fake it.

A friend asked me last week what my “story” was with guys
right now. That I must be beating them away with a stick. That he was truly
shocked to hear that I’m not, and never really have. I have intimacy
issues, I told him.

Which will only get me so far. I don’t want to have intimacy issues. I don’t want to hold my breath, check out, or pretend that things
are okay when they’re not. I don’t want to hide behind the armor of “I have
issues” or continue to babysit my wounds in a way that prevents them from being
healed.

In the end, I have to grieve what was lost. The moments of
powerlessness, terror, self-abandonment, betrayal. In order to do that, I have
to acknowledge them, which is a way to
bring them to light. I don’t have to share them here with you, but I can share
with you my process of moving (and wanting to move) from constriction, protection, and hiding to
care, openness, and trust.

As I’ve been reading, being vulnerable, yes, lays us open to
pain, but it is also the only tool for true connection we have. By protecting
my sore places, I also prevent closeness … intimacy.

What would it be like to be present in my body? To accept
and care for the body I have myself, and pony up to ensure that it’s/I’m safe
when I’m with others in a vulnerable way? Can I trust myself?

As it turned out, when she was here, my mom and I did talk about “where” she
was during my childhood as my dad dealt out some pretty nasty physical, then later verbal blows. I didn’t bring it up; it actually came up by her as part
of a conversation about my brother, and, basically, how he’d asked her
recently where she’d been during that time. I guess he and I are doing similar work.

When she brought it up, I told her, as I’d written here, that
really, it’s water under the bridge. That she’s owned up to her shortcomings as a
mother before, and more importantly, she’s changed and is continuing to change from that avoidant woman.
But, since it was there, she answered anyway. And basically her answer was that
she didn’t know it was happening. She was either away working, or, she admitted, she was in
denial and didn’t want to see it.

There’s not much to do with this information. It doesn’t
change the past, it doesn’t change that I do still feel more forgiving of her
than him, because she has the capacity to see what pain she caused by
commission or omission, and to make changes in herself to course-correct the
blindspots that made her unavailable to my brother and me.

So, this leaves my dad. And what do I do with him.

Yesterday, I went to the batting cages. I’d actually been
wanting to go for several years since I’ve lived in the Bay Area, but as there
weren’t any in SF (which I find abominable), and once in the East Bay my car
was stolen, I haven’t been able to go. And so, finally, yesterday, I did.

It was glorious. I had so much fun. I hit the majority of the
(admittedly soft) pitches, and some of my shots were actually quite good. My
body remembered how to do this. I remembered how to do this. I used to go to
the batting cages all the time – with my dad.

It’s the both/and again. If my father (or mother for
that matter) hadn’t given my brother and me some genuine goodness, we’d both be sociopaths. If all was neglect, abuse,
and secrecy, we’d be something other than we are: generally well adjusted and generously kind people.

As a former boy scout and army captain, my dad was capable of the “outdoorsy” stuff that society
says dads do: take us sledding in the winter, teach us how to bat, take us
hiking and camping and sailing. He was able to be there in the ways
that didn’t require him to step out of his comfort zone. (Unfortunately, my
brother has tales from “throwing around the ball” with our dad that don’t have
such fond memories; apparently demanding perfection from a 9 year old doesn’t
instill confidence or trust.) But, my dad did teach us these things.

And as I consider what my relationship with him is, and what
I want it to be, I know that there is this part. A part of me that wouldn’t be
if it weren’t for him and shaped by his… –I can’t believe I’ll use this word–nurturing, I wouldn’t have the urge to go to the batting
cages, or the part of me that enjoys and indeed demands that I get out into
nature and stoke a fire.

Like anyone, my father is multifaceted. He isn’t an ogre,
though he was in part. He isn’t a swell dad, though he was in part. He isn’t
entirely absent, though he was in part.

My mom and I talked some last weekend about the things she
“got” from her parents, the good things she got. She has her own multifaceted
parents too, but it was nice to hear, for maybe the first time, the positive
qualities of them, and what they’d passed on to her.

Because no matter what, no matter how I feel, what kind of
relationship, if any, I choose to have with my dad, he still did raise me, for
better or worse.

And as to the better, yesterday, I left the batting cages
with a smile that lasted for hours, today my arm muscles are sore, and next
week, I know I’ll be back. 

My mom was in town from New York last weekend, and I took her to this cute
row of stores called Temescal Alley, that if you didn’t know was there,
you wouldn’t know was there.

In this alley is an apothecary, which I didn’t exactly know what that meant, but apparently, here, it means lots of loose tea ingredients
and medicinal, herbal items. Including … a Hot Sex jar of honey for my mom
(hey, she ain’t dead! And I’m sure her boyfriend will appreciate it!) and a
vial of liquidized, immune-boosting mushrooms for me. … Not quite as “hot” as the Hot Sex honey.

The whole fact of all this is funny to me. The owner talked
with us for a while on the benefits of bone marrow stock, how to
make it, by slow cooking a bone for 72 hours, and I listened raptly… I have become more Californiafied
than I ever thought I would.

Though certainly some of my bending my ear to these whispers
of magic mushrooms of a very different stripe than I’m used to is the cancer
stuff.

Things change after cancer.

Particularly, I’m noticing, my threshold for my own
bullshit. Or, to put it a wee bit more compassionately, my tolerance for my own
reticence, fear, and stagnation has decreased rapidly.

It’s my first week back to work. I haven’t sat in a chair in
front of a computer screen for entire days in 6 months. (Perhaps I’ve lain on a
couch in front of a computer playing DVDs for entire days, but I digress.) I
did not face and fight death to be a secretary. I just didn’t. It’s where I am
right now, but it’s up to me and only me to change that.

I was telling a friend this week about some of my (same old,
same old) frustrations about working this (or any) secretary job, and she gave
me the same shtick most people do: see it as an opportunity for service, see it
as a chance to do good, what can I give rather than what can I get. Yes. But that’s not the whole story, not by a lot, for
me.

My friend has a mission statement for herself that goes
something like this: “To use my gifts and talents to be of maximum service to
those around me.” The only gift or talent I get to use at this job is my
personality. Which is fine. But it’s not nearly enough. Data entry, running
reports, updating computer filing systems … a monkey could do my job.

This is not a use of my gifts and talents.

So, it’s up to me to use them, eh? It’s up to me to find
ways to use them, perhaps for now, extra-curricularly. I finally emailed back
the photographer who offered me headshots when I put out the wish in December,
and my hair has grown back long enough to be pixie-ish cute, and so it’s time
to move forward with that. I emailed my friend whose husband is a pilot, and
who’d offered to give me flying lessons. I reached out to my defunct writing group, and we’re back on the books for this month.

I ‘ m s t i l l d r a g g i n g my feet a little about the
singing with the band stuff. But, I’m coming up to it.  I must. 

I did not fight death to be a secretary. I am not eating marrow soup, taking a supplement
called Liverplex, eschewing sugar, or flossing in order to be a
secretary.

It is a noble place to work at least, and yes, work is work; there is always something
that brightens my day about it – be that the kids coming in all nervous for
their first pre-Bar Mitzvah meeting with the rabbi, or the Nursery school kids
hiding shyly in their mothers’ pant-legs as I wave goodbye to them, or sneaking
into the sanctuary for 5 minutes to play the piano in warm peace. I’m not a
line cook, I’m not a prostitute, I’m not a field hand. My job is not bad.

It’s just not me.

Therefore, it’s up to me to change, not my job. 

A writerly friend came by yesterday for a chat/visit. It
was, like last weekend, lovely to talk about things of that world, to remind ourselves who
we are, what we have to offer, to exchange thoughts on the same wavelength.

Also, she asked me an interesting question, the exact
wording of which, I forget, but went something like: Do you now feel like a
badass?

She described her vision of how I’ve faced cancer as someone
who simply saw what was, rolled up her sleeves, and walked through. This is
what’s happening, Okay, here we go.

It touched on the thing people have often said to me during
this time: You’re so brave. But, as I told my friend yesterday, it doesn’t feel like that. It doesn’t and hasn’t felt like I’ve
saddled up, holstered up, and said, Okay Cancer, Let’s Dance with the Devil. I
told her, it’s simply felt like the only road available to me. Following down
the only path you see isn’t exactly brave, it just is. I told her it would be like people saying, You’re
so brave to have brown hair, when that’s not any of my doing – it just is.

I can accept that my seeing this one and only option,
to walk through this, can be construed as brave. But it’s hard for me to take
on that mantle. It reminds me of how I see myself, and some of my friends, as
people who climb to the top of a mountain, and then, instead of turning around,
and acknowledging the climb and the feat it took to get there, simply look
forward and attack the next mountain – that self-congratulations, or
acknowledgement isn’t quite part of my make-up. But, perhaps it should be.
That’s a component of self-esteem, isn’t it? Acknowledging what is worthy about
ourselves; acknowledging our strengths.

So, I suppose, Yes. I suppose it was pretty badass of me.
Even though, as I told her and as I’ve written here, it hasn’t been perfect;
there have been breakdowns, tears, complaints, despair, anger, numbing. But,
even so, like a person with a leg in a bear trap, I’ve kept limping forward.

I mentioned to her that, as I was prepping for the literary agent meeting last week, it was strange to read this blog closely from where it began to be about cancer in October. That as I went back to read it through, the thing that struck me
the most was how I was asking the same exact questions at the beginning as I am now “at the end.” Who am I,
What am I doing with my life, How do I engage more in it, What are the
qualities of responsibility and perseverance, Will I/Do I have more of them?

She said something novel: That it was a relief that, in my
coming through this event, I still asked the same questions. ??! I pushed
further. She said that perhaps these questions could be held as comforts, as
old friends, instead of as desperate, aching mindfucks. That perhaps I could see them not as points of self-derision and failure, but simply as questions
that accompany me – not follow, hunt, or stalk me. Can I see this
cacophony of questions as comforts?

Hmm.

Well! I’d never ever thought of that before, so let’s sit
with it for a minute. Maybe. It certainly would be relieving!! Instead of beating
myself with the existential questions of my life, perhaps I could greet them,
sit with them. Maybe even invite them.

Maybe I can turn the volume down, if they’re not attacking
me anymore. Maybe they retreat and resolve into the ether, and I become aware
of them, but only vaguely and serenely.

Maybe.

“Who am I?” “What am I doing or to do with my life?” are
questions which have haunted me. And maybe I don’t need to answer them. At
least, not in the way I’ve been desperate to. 

See, here’s the thing about not taking responsibility for
myself: I end up the fat, smelly kid. If I allow myself free reign to buy
lunch out when I have plenty at home; if I allow myself to watch 5 hours of
Netflix deep into the night when I have to be up early; if I allow myself to
eat 2 trays of frozen mac and cheese in a row, because at least I’m not eating
sugar; if I leave dishes in the sink and garbage to be taken out when it’s long
past due – then I end up the fat, smelly, broke kid.

And that sucks. I mean, I remember being called Smolly in 6^th
grade, so perhaps we can leave out a repeat performance twenty years later.

As you know, I’ve been thinking about (and wrestling with) responsibility,
adulthood, the idea that, Hey! Guess what! No one is going to grow up for you.
I am seeing places where my resistance and fear to taking on responsibility
doesn’t just keep me stuck, it keeps me separate. What happens in relationships
with others when I don’t take responsibility for myself? Well, I ask you to do
it for me. I heap it all on you, and say, there, you take care of it, you fix
it. Most people aren’t willing to do that! (Unless they’re codependent, which…
well, most of us are.) But in general, if that person/relationship isn’t available to me, which it
usually isn’t (even though I keep wishing it will be, and therefore just
flail around waiting for that person to show up and “rescue” me from myself), if
that person isn’t around, then I hide away all the mess and dysfunction out of
shame that I’m such a mess, and you never get to see the whole of me, because I end up hiding the good parts too. So either I’m looking to depend on you or retreat
from you, neither of which is a formula for a balanced relationship.

What am I scared of? Why have I run from taking
responsibility for my life and myself for so long? I’m scared that I’ll lose my
freedom. It’s freeing to buy shit you
can’t afford, isn’t it? It’s freeing
to stay in administrative jobs when you’re overqualified for them, isn’t it?

Uh. No.

It is momentarily satisfying, however. If I buy something I don’t
need or can’t afford, I have a moment’s relief of, Whew, I’m worthy, I can be a
member of society, purchasing things in the world like other “normal” people
do. If I accept and continue in jobs that are below my skill and pay level,
well, I don’t have to use all my mental faculties, so surely that’s a relief,
isn’t it?

So, I’m giving myself an assignment. Some structure, so
that the internal kid who’s mashing paste into her hair and hopped up on way
too much sugar and TV can be washed up, straightened up, and perhaps cared for
in a way that is consistent, accountable, and in the end, appropriate.

I’m going to do at least one responsible thing a day for 90 days. Whether that’s doing the dishes,
writing down and tallying my expenditures each day (as I’d done for over a year), filing my taxes, doing my laundry, changing the cat
litter. Whatever the item of the day is, I’m going to do one responsible thing for 90 days,
and see how and if things shift.

I don’t want to be the fat kid anymore, I don’t want to be
flailing in my life any more, I don’t want to be dependent on or hiding from
you any more. I think these things all add up to growing up, being a grown up –
and in 90 days, we’ll see if that isn’t more freeing after all. 

I was with a friend yesterday, and we began to talk about
money, and for me, it’s relation to safety. Why is it so important to me that I
get my head around my finances, and have savings in the bank, and spend money
that I don’t have? Because I believe that it makes me safe. If I know how to do
this, I can be independent. I don’t have to depend on others’ (read: My dad) to
rescue me from my financial disasters, or feel like a child when I end up in
financially precarious times.

The money stuff is a place of shame, basically. And somehow,
by keeping on the surface of all of it, instead of diving in, examining, and
exorcising it, I remain skating in circles above the problem, as I have for
years.

I don’t want to look at not feeling safe. I don’t want to acknowledge
that I’ve bought into the “American Ideal” that a 401(k), a savings account, a
house, a 4-star blender make me safe; but I have.

Last year, friend told me when I began to look more intently at my
money “stuff” (aka ending up broke every year or so, living paycheck to
paycheck constantly) that I am like a sieve, and until I close the holes, I’ll
never be able to hold abundance, or even stasis around my finances. I believe
her. I believe that being asked questions that make me uncomfortable about this
compulsion will help me to close those holes, as it’s not just about money, is
it?

Feeling safe, isn’t about money. It doesn’t just show up
there; it shows up in other areas of my life. Like the sex/relationship “stuff”
(aka being serially single) that I’ve been looking at again recently. I’ve
always said that I think romance and finance are related, and I’m beginning to
see a bit why.

If I’m single, I don’t have to be intimately vulnerable. If
I continue to perpetuate patterns of financial chaos, I don’t
have to be vulnerable. It certainly gives me something else to focus on,
besides what might bring me joy or peace. I don’t know that it’s an exact
apples-to-apples comparison that I’ve got here yet, but there’s something to
it.

I have a friend who recently started drinking after a period of
sobriety, a conscious choice she made, feeling that perhaps she wasn’t an
alcoholic, having gotten sober so young, maybe she just wasn’t one. So, I’ve
heard about her latest experiences, which have included the phrase, I was so
drunk, and reports of near-rape. Great. Talk about not feeling or being safe.

My friend asked me yesterday if I felt safe, and I told him,
No. Honestly. When I thought about it, I have the superficial feelings of it,
sure – I know that sitting in that café, I was clothed, fed, unattacked, I was
safe on a physical level, but, actually when he asked, and I really searched
myself about it, the answer was No.

That’s an interesting response!

But, the truth is just that. I feel precarious. I feel
cautious. On guard, most of the time. And it’s these feelings that keep me trapped behind putting myself
and my writing and my art and my “valuable at work”ness out there. I have a
list of qualities that I want to bring to my work which I wrote in response to
some one of those “What color is your parachute”-type book exercises. I realize
that each of them requires that I be more visible. That I put myself out into
the world more.

Who would do that if they don’t feel safe? No wonder I haven’t done it, and no wonder when I do float a test balloon into the world of
myself, that I pull it back nearly immediately.

I’m doing work around this, therapies; and I think it would
be worth my while to write some of this fear out, and see if I can’t get more
clarity. What does safety mean to me? What would I need to do or change in my
life to feel safe? Can I let go of the thought-habit that I’m not?

Certainly cancer is one of those massive fuckers that says,
HEY GUESS WHAT? YOU’RE NOT SAFE AFTER
ALL!!! But it’s not all there is. It’s not the whole truth or picture. Yes, as
a human, I am vulnerable to the failings of my body. I am vulnerable to the
texting-while-driving person who doesn’t see me in the cross-walk. I’m vulnerable to
any number of things in this world – but – so what? Am I going to become an
agoraphobic, and hide away? I’ve been hiding away for years, and it still
hasn’t kept me “safe.” So, perhaps it’s time to test the theory that occurred to me recently: I am not in
control, and I am safe.