I have heard it said that the only reasonable person to
compare ourselves to, is ourselves.

I was questioning what really had changed for me during this
time of illness and convalescence. What had I learned. Had I become more
anything, tenacious, responsible, accountable? And I thought about where I was
7 years ago.

7 years ago, I was living in a studio apartment in Seoul,
South Korea, nearing the end of my year-long English teaching contract, which
was to end in February, and send me out again into the world. To give an idea
of who and how I was at this time, I had, a few weeks earlier, made a bet with
myself, to sleep in those 10 weekends with ten different men. I nearly made the
bet. I was a stumbling, loud drunk. I was heartbroken over a guy who eventually
told me that he “liked me a lot,” when I admitted that I’d been in love with
him. I was a mess.

Why choose 7 years ago specifically? Well, it was three
months, two continents, and one cross-country road trip later when I landed in
San Francisco, and got sober. I always get a little reflect-y around this time
of the year, thinking of how simply awful things were, and how I had no idea,
well, not really much of one, of how much in a loop of misery I was.

My eye is healing. There’s a wonderfully gross looking scab
on it, but it will heal. My friend yesterday was marveling at how our bodies
have the miraculous capacity to rebuild, and reform. To normalize, heal, and
recover, without much work on our part. It just happens. Our bodies heal.

Without much work on my part (well, I’ll take a little
credit, and acknowledge the acres of people around and before me) my life has
normalized to something. Something much
different than it was 7 years ago.

I was informed yesterday that my landlord has not been waiving my rent, but, rather, I now owe about
$3000 in back rent. And, you know what. So what. It will heal. It’ll take time,
and planning and responsibility, but it will heal. It’s just money.

This whole, what am I supposed to do with my life,
mind-trip, you know what? Either I’ll get it this life, or I won’t, and I’ll
get the chance to try again next round. It will heal, or it won’t. I will still
continue to do what I can and what is indicated to help me “fulfill my
potential,” but you know what? In the end, it will be what it will be. I am not the force that pushes flower. I am just the
green fuse.

Knowing that if I simply continue to do what has kept me
safe and sober for almost 7 years, that I will be given the opportunity to heal
and grow, that’s the only certainty. (And with the big ole cancer thing, time
itself isn’t certain.) But the only thing I can do is put one letter in front
of the other, cry when I need to cry, make a phone call when I need to take
action. And just be. I am not the force. I am just the fuse. 

So, I left the hospital “Against Medical Advice” on Friday.
Don’t worry, they still legally have to take good care of me, and gave me three antibiotics to take home with me, two which are IV
through the plug in my chest that they trained me to self-administer.

The eye is getting better, and I’ll see an eye doctor tomorrow.
It’s not great, but it’s getting better. I still have some signs of infection,
but, time will heal.

I’m a bit emotionally tapped out, folks, so I don’t have
much to say about what’s going on or how I am.

I’ve asked a few people to simply come and sit with me as a
sort of “study hall” this week, meaning I need to get some logistical things
done, like reply to some emails, open my taxes documents, and I know other
people have stuff they usually need to do and push off too, so we can sit here
and do it together.

I don’t really need entertainment right now, I just need
companionship. People to hold the space for me while I do what it is I know how
to do, and can do.

That said, I called a woman yesterday who sort of speaks my
spiritual language, and has also been in Cancer World for a long time. A friend
put us in touch back at the end of the year, and I knew I needed to speak with
someone who got it from all angles. She was really helpful, and said something
interesting: Sometimes you need to let people do the things you can do, so that you have the energy to do the things
others can’t do for you, like heal.

So, yes, I can take my garbage out, but if there’s a friend
here, ask them if they can. What she said was that we feel like it’s a big deal
to ask someone to do something like that, because to us, it is a big deal to take the garbage out, but to them,
it’s not.

I had a good friend come by yesterday, and simply sit with
me while I called my chemo case manager and leave a message, knowing she’d get
it first thing this morning. I was feeling so disconnected from help from the
hospital, and so overwhelmed by the bureaucracy, that I needed a mediator. So
my friend sat, as I went down my list on this woman’s voicemail, a woman who
has always been very attentive and responsive to me. And, lo, today I now have
appointments with an eye dr tomorrow, and another doctor on Thursday.

I’d say, “It’s not okay,” how all the Kaiser rigamarole is, but it’s just more like, I’m too
tired to deal anymore. I am at the end of this, in the darkest before dawn
phase, in the last mile of the marathon when the runner’s feet are bleeding and
their lungs are burning. I’m having to ask for help differently now, but I honestly feel too tired to ask. I’m worn out, and I don’t know how to not be worn out anymore. I’m tired, I
feel isolated in facing the behemoth that is Kaiser (the case manager just
called me and told me I have to go through the online email system to ask a
doctor a question about my medication that’s causing me splitting headaches, and at this point, it just feels like too much), I feel
alone in having to treat my eye, my fever, the headaches, the self-administering of IV drugs. I feel tired.

And I don’t really know what to do. What will help. What I
need.

I’m glad I’m alive and all. This morning, I wrote a gratitude list, and a forward-looking “Now that I’m healthy, I’m so glad I get to …” But it’s still hard. And
I’m so damn tired of it being hard. 

When I begin to feel trapped, I begin to feel stabby.

So, when I had a run-in with a doctor earlier today, it is
not surprising that thoughts of stabbing her in the neck with a penknife came
to mind.

However, seeing as we were disagreeing, me with a weapon of
non-emotiveness, she with a weapon of self-righteousness, on whether or not I
could be released from the hospital tomorrow, I “played the tape,” followed the thought through to the end like video tape. I realized
that, huh, stabbing a doctor, or anyone for that matter, would likely inter me
for much longer than the length of treatment for an eye infection.

So, I decided against it.

Not that I have a penknife.

I have been in the hospital since Monday morning. But, I
also spent much of Sunday afternoon in the ER. I have a stye in my eye, and
because of the compromised nature of my immune system as a result of this
month’s chemo, it became nuclear. I look as though I met Rocky Balboa’s right
hook in a dark alley. Or maybe it was a light alley, since this one really met
its target.

Alternatively, it looks as though someone has inflated a
balloon underneath the right half of my face, even down to my neck. It’s
unpleasant to look upon, and worse to endure.

That said, it has begun to get better; the swelling
decreasing, the fatigue from the rancorous fever it brought on abating.

And I want to go home.

I am not “supposed” to be here for another two weeks. I am,
and have been, emotionally prepared to spend one week in the hospital per month for as long as these rounds of consolidated chemo have been going on, following the
near month-long initial round/internment.

There is only so much juice I have. And it has all been
drunk.

Last night, I hit a wall. I was getting angry at a tissue
box whose perforated opening I couldn’t find, and therefore whose box I ripped.
I paused, acknowledging the irrational reaction to an inanimate object, asked
myself why I was so angry, and in that pause, I began to cry.

Alone.

In a hospital bed.

There are few things more pathetic. (And I don’t mean that
in a judgmental way, just the simple, plain, sad way.)

I sobbed for a few minutes by myself, and then called a few
friends, finally reaching one. And I sobbed on the phone to her, my isolation
began to abate, but the feeling of frustration, powerlessness, being OVER this whole “being a patient” thing did not.

The hardest thing about it, is that I have no, none, nada,
not one iota of control over this situation. The eye infection, the alarming
beeping from the IV machine as it repeatedly announces itself for attention,
the doctor who opens the door and then says “Knock knock,” the necessity to
ring for water, for a towel, for a meal that has been nuked into oblivion, the impossibility of fresh air or sunshine, the tethering to a chaotic and
unpredictable schedule of lab draws, medication times, the measuring of my
heart rate, my temperature, even the volume of my pee.

The cancer.

I have no control.

And so, forgive me,
oh snarky doctor, if I’d like a modicum of freedom, self-sufficiency, dignity.

Even at the bloody expense of your over-eager, raised
eye-brows as you lean in with prodding and painful fingers to my face, and pose
as a question the statement, “I hear you want to go home, against doctor’s
advice?”

“Not all of them,” I don’t give her the pleasure of
flinching at her unreasonably forceful hands.

“Oh?,” she leans back, eyebrows still forehead bound, “Which
doctors have said otherwise?”

Today, I have been seen by 5 doctors, including Ms. de Sade.
Two have said they don’t see a problem in me being released tomorrow, that I
can, indeed, do much of this at home. It was, in point of fact, a doctor who saw
me first thing in the morning who suggested that I could do all this at home in
the first place. He then told me not to mention he was the one who mentioned
it. He is a doctor I trust. He is in fact the doctor who gave me my diagnosis
of Leukemia when I was in ER at midnight just over four months ago. He’s been compassionate and an thoughtful listener and explainer. Plus, he’s
cute. For a married guy.

Looking flatly at her through my good eye, and with disdain through my swollen one, “I just said, ‘Not all of them.’” 

Purses lips, “We’ll continue discussing your case.” Exits.

Is this a prison? And please, please, I beg you, please do not give the rational rationale: they
just want to ensure your health. They just want to make sure you are healthy.

I concur, and concede that my medical health is of optimal
import in their assessment. I am sorely sure that my emotional and spiritual
health is not.

***

Well, two hours have passed since I wrote those last words,
as a friend came by with food and fellowship, and now those two “f”s have counterbalanced the
one in “f*ck you,” so, I’ve run out of resentment steam. 

Luckily, my friends do have my emotional and spiritual health in mind. 

Thank god for that. 

I imagine a lot of tears have been shed over the years that
people have attempted to assemble IKEA furniture. Luckily, now they have
completely eliminated all language, so
you get a Ziggy-looking dude
smiling at you, and lots of pictures with “x”s through them as they indicate
the proper size widget you need to use.

However, I wonder how many people are brought to tears
because of a full-blown emotional breakdown while assembling IKEA furniture.

Yesterday, that was me. Sitting in the open center of the
assembled “Brown-Black” bedframe, I began, suddenly to cry. That cry became a sob,
and that sobbing became wailing. WTF.

To accompany me on my single-handed, self-sufficiency
journey of furniture assemblage, I listened in a row to three albums of artists
I love and rarely listen to. I rarely listen to albums all the way through,
what with the advent of the shuffle setting on my iPod, and the theft of all my
actual albums a few years ago. But, I knew I wanted a theme to guide my work,
to get into a groove, into a mood, and so I listened to Jack Johnson’s Brushfire
Fairytales, Ari Hest’s Twelve
Mondays, and lastly, cue breakdown,
Dave Hause’s Resolutions.

While listening to the Dave Hause, I began to sing along. I
began to sing along in a way that I don’t really do that much. In a
whole-hearted, but not like overly dramatic, just a full way. Full, is the word
for it. I was full with the words I mimicked, and the words were these, over
and over: Pray for Tuscon, Pray
for me; Yeah, Pray for Tuscon, Pray for me.
And I sang, in my gut, in my belly, in my heart, as I screwed the
eight-thousandth manual screw into the frame. And I started to cry.

There is something you should know about me that very few
people know, because I keep it private, and a secret: I love to sing. I more
than love to sing, it is a source of joy for me, a source of filling up from
the inside that nothing, nothing,
NOTHING else in the world offers me. Nothing.

Not painting or drawing, not writing or playing the piano (which often leads to singing, but not always), not performance or
acting. No one knows this, because I am ashamed. I am ashamed of how much it
means to me, and the fear that I’m “not good enough.” I am ashamed because I
don’t want to “sing pretty,” but because I want to sing passionately, and those
don’t always intersect. I am ashamed because I want to sing in a rock and roll
band, and I feel too square, and too removed from any of those characters. I am
ashamed of my visceral, incredible desire and passion for singing because I give
it so little credence, I’m embarrassed to mention it.

It’s like saying you have a life passion for cooking, but
you always make microwave dinners.

If you only let yourself pick up a vegetable and a knife,
your heart would soar, but you don’t.

Partly, I feel ashamed of my passion and desire to sing
because I feel that I am such a magpie of creative endeavors, I feel that singing becomes just another item in a long List of things Molly would Love to
do. But not something actually worth paying much attention to, because the
subtitle of that list is, But she Doesn’t.

I grabbed onto the railing of the bedframe, and I ached. I
called for mercy, for help, for guidance. I cried at the stark reality that LIFE
IS SHORT, unpredictable, and I almost lost
mine. I almost lost my whole and entire life, without doing that which
ultimately brings me the most joy in the world. I almost stepped out of all
experiences ever, without allowing myself to do the thing that makes me alive.

I cried that I couldn’t be taken away from this yet. That I must, that I have to be allowed the time to try, to do this, to allow myself to pursue
this.

I was almost taken away. I was almost ended. And my fear,
and my procrastination, and my dismissal of myself almost allowed for it.

I recently read Bel Canto, a novel by Ann Patchett. In the book, a character, a guerilla, jungle
insurgent begins to sing during the several-month hostage situation with a
world-famous soprano. When he begins to sing, the whole audience is flattened.
This voice, Ann writes, almost died in the jungle. No one would have ever known
about it, nor would he himself; it would have just died.

I’ve been talking with others lately about “the burden of
potential,” and the soul-cry to engage in the things we feel drawn to, and I’ve been reading about the strength of vulnerability.

Over the years, I have taken
private voice lessons with a jazz singer. And then stopped. I have trolled
craigslist ads for bands looking for a singer, and even recorded a sample of
myself trying too hard and sent it to two bands who weren’t interested. For a
period of time, I was looking back at these ads every few months, but too
ashamed to try, feeling musically uneducated, and vocally untrained. Because,
the truth is, I don’t really know how to sing in a rock and roll band. I know
how to sing like me, and even that is so rusty, the pipes are red with
oxidation.

So, who can help me with this? Who I don’t feel ashamed to
be myself with, because, obviously, I really really cannot do this on my own.

I texted a friend of mine that I was having an existential
crisis, and wondered if I could come sing with her jazz band in practice.

I got back to screwing the 8,000 and one’th screw … Surrounding myself with new stuff, updating my image, as if these are numbing agents, as if they work, as if a new bed could be a balm or a substitute for actually living my life … I bawled
again.

I texted another friend of mine, one who is actually in a
rock and roll band, and asked him if I could practice singing with him, not
with his band. Because, I’m not really brave enough for that yet.

Both answered, Yes, of course.

I have to take action around this. The whole “Life is short”
thing is so aching right now. That I could let another decade go when I don’t
engage this desire –, well, it’s more than criminal. It’s disastrous. And it is neglectful and abhorrent of the fact of Life itself, that not everyone gets.

These two people I’ve asked are people I trust, and who I
don’t mind not being perfect around. Because, as I’m reading, the key to being
vulnerable, the key to being brave, to making change, is to allow ourselves to
be imperfect. To embrace that we are exactly who we are, and that is enough.

I don’t know anything beyond the fact that I will call these
friends today and “set something up.” I don’t know what that means, what it
will look like. But I know that the passion I felt as I shook the wooden slats,
like bars on a prison … – it is not that I am “unwilling” to be silent anymore,
it is that I have become unable. 

I wish I’d sat down yesterday and written the blog I’d
composed in my head. It was about feeling very differently lately, looking up
and realizing something is different, that there is a filter forming around
everything in the world, and that filter is called Optimism.

I remember several years ago, upon entering therapy, I sat on my therapist’s couch and identified an emotion that
was not depression, and was not elation. I was not sure what it was, but it was
something different than I’d ever really experienced: I began to gain a range
of emotion.

That is how this feels, this identification of “optimism,” a
new feeling, a color new to the palette that I haven’t had access to before.
“Optimism,” What’s that?

I have begun to feel that everything is going to be okay.
However trite that sounds. But more it’s like I’ve begun to feel that I am okay. I began to recognize yesterday that I was
beginning to hold myself and my judgment of myself looser. That somehow, I’m
beginning to feel that, actually, I’m doing pretty damn well. That, in reality,
I always have been.

Somehow it began to feel okay if I go back to my job as a
receptionist. That I don’t feel the aching judgment or condemnation of myself
for “wasting potential.” Because, somehow I feel that I’m actually doing enough
other work, that I am made of enough substance that that is okay right now.

I began to see that I am facing cancer. That I have faced
cancer.

I have begun to see that I have lived through one of the
hardest and most emotional and devastating things that I ever have, and I have
come out, more than alright.

I have begun to see that, in fact, I have faced this with
more courage and love of myself than I ever have; that I have lived. And I have
lived well.

(In fact, as I write this now, I am crying with
acknowledgment of that truth; the truth that, goddamned, I have done good.)

The change of angle, the change of position of my
perspective as I look at myself. When a mountain moves a millimeter, sure, it’s
only a millimeter, but for Christ’s sake, you’ve just moved a mountain.

To look back and acknowledge that I have done something
well, that even I can take pride and courage and contentment in my
accomplishment(s), well, that’s moving a mountain.

So often the measure of myself is in the void and the
absences. What I don’t have, haven’t done, didn’t do today, who I haven’t
called, the leads I haven’t followed.

And somehow, I’m finding compassion for myself around all of
this. A degree of leniency that I’ve never had for myself. I have never been
lenient with myself. (Unless you call all out hedonism leniency, which is
really just perfectionism in reverse.)

Somehow.

“Somehow,” that’s the word that keeps occurring to me. I don’t
know how this shift has happened, and part of me wanted to write all this down
so badly yesterday, because I was worried that, like all emotions, it would shift.
That my optimism, my pride, my acceptance of myself exactly as I am would vanish by morning.

I’m glad to report that it hasn’t. But, like all new
emotions, it’s new. I’m acquainting myself with feeling okay – no, not “okay,” happy with myself.

I’m beginning to see what the fuss is about.

This is partly on the heels of the revelation that people
are offering all that they have to me because they value me, and if that is so,
then there must be something to value. And beginning to believe that from
the inside.

Somehow, the barrier between how you see my and how I see
myself is beginning to fade, drop, disappear. Like a lie that is finally
exposed to the truth.

When the reality continues to display itself as people
valuing and cherishing you, supporting you, and finding you worthy. When the
reality continues to prove itself as evidence of a loving world, a world that
loves me, eventually, it’s time to believe that theory. The hypothesis becomes
proven. How many case studies do you need?

I heard someone say once that once he stopped acting like an
asshole, the world stopped treating him like one – “I was the only one I
had to convince.”

I am the only one I’ve had to convince of my worth. Everyone
else (or the people that matter) has been plenty happy to tell me about it.

But, as with most things, it’s an inside job. And, suddenly,
the inside is changing. The curtains being rearranged, walls renovated, the
internal landscape reflecting and holding
a space for me that mirrors and purports value.

It is because of this new arrangement that all the
self-flagellation around “What am I doing with my life? What is my job, career,
purpose?” is beginning to fade in importance. I don’t anticipate giving up on
who I am or what my passions are; in fact, I think with the new landscape, I
will be better set to support myself and my endeavors than ever before.

Something called Optimism. A belief that things are well.
That I am well. A belief that what everyone has been saying, what the world has
been showing me, is true:

Saggy tushed, dirty dished, socially awkward, voraciously
ambitious with “little to show for it,” debt-laden, emotionally luggaged,
occasional laugh-snorter, enthusiastic bad dancer, sporadic crafter,
swiss-cheese resumed, kitchen crooner, entirely and fully human with every
dent, scratch, and lovable imperfect foible – I, Molly Daniels, am worthy.

And my life is being well lived.

Yesterday, I took down all my magnetic poetry from my
refrigerator.

I was sitting at my typical post at my breakfast table,
looking across to the wall where collages, and bits of ephemera have been
collecting over the time I’ve lived here.

The collages are still generically appropriate, the messaging and
messages still appropo, but somehow, it felt like time for change.

After breakfast, I took the collages down. And so, it began.

I spent chunks of time yesterday clearing things out.
Kitchen and bathroom cupboards, that junk drawer we all keep, going up and down
the dozen steps to the curb, leaving outside all manner of things, from vases I
don’t use, to that enormous gold picture frame that some day in some way I
thought I’d use.

I put out, finally, that bench, that wonderful blonde wood,
woven wicker seated bench which has been resting in my closet for over a year, since there’s no good place for it
in my apartment, but I couldn’t bear to part with such a pretty piece of
well-made furniture.

But. It’s not doing me any good.

And, the phrase I kept on thinking of as I purged and sorted
through my cornucopia of crap was, Freely ye have received, Freely give.

Almost everything I own, furniture-wise, came free, from the
sidewalk gods, or friends. I don’t have to believe that I won’t be taken care
of in the manner of stuff. There will always be stuff. And I can believe that
as I give away that which I really don’t need (I mean, really, a bench in a closet??), I will be given that which I do.

But, moreover, I’ll have the availability to see what it is
I really need. To see what I have. To take stock, and inventory of what I have.
For the love of god, I do not need 200 paper plates from the parties I used to
throw in SF over 3 years ago. I do not need to keep the empty glass jars of
peanut butter, because they could be
useful for storage or a project.

They’re not. Useful. They’re clutter. And if there’s
anything this time in my life is teaching me, it’s that I can be pruned back to
the quick, and still be alright.

I don’t need these distractions, clutters, or intrusions.
It’s time to get clean.

Part of this surge of energy to do this is I think a paving
of the way for the internal work I’m getting set to do, and part of it is in
anticipation of a semi-returning to the real world that seems to be getting
closer.

I finished my fourth round of chemo on Sunday, and will have
my fifth, and god willing final round of chemo next month.

Then. Something else entirely is apt to occur. Something
new, something different. Maybe even something the same. Whatever it is, I have no idea, but having all this
crap around me doesn’t make me available to it.

I’m beginning to see a new iteration of myself. If it’s not
simply wishful thinking. But things like, oh, I think I want to wear clothing
that more indicates x, instead of y. Ways that I want to portray myself in the
world, that I want my world reflected back to me in my home. I think the
clearing out is a way to clear the decks, because there is work to be done, and
there is a necessity of space to do it. Just to hold the absence of stuff, to
be in the vacuum, like we’re supposed to do in meditation, just be in the
emptiness, in what is. Just be in my space without filling it up.

It’s not like I’m a clutterer at all, I just know I have
more than I need (honestly, how many half-filled bottles of hand moisturizer
does a woman need??), and I know that right now, it feels like I’ve gotten to a
place where I’m ready to give away, so that I can be ready to receive.

So much of this time has taught me that there are resources
available. That people, supplies, friends, laundry, rides, food, rent are all available to me, if I look and ask and receive them.
I don’t need to hold onto the old, things that aren’t quite right because I
don’t believe there are things to replace them. Old faded collages are not what
I want reflected back to me every morning.

As much as I love the little poems I’d written in magnets, I don’t want the
look of clutter it gives right now.

It’s time for a smoothing out of things. For a measure and
reassessment. For me to look at who it is I now am, I now am becoming, and
allow that to emerge.

I’m getting the chance to know myself and define myself, and
I’m pretty interested to see who occurs. 

From this position of retrospect, the best thing about
Hawaii has been how it has allowed me to face this week of chemotherapy
differently from all the other rounds.

Prior to the trip, and the option of the trip, I felt in a
holding cell, being shuttled between getting better enough to get sick enough
to get better. A constant revolving door of timing to be let in and out of a
hospital room.

What going to Hawaii did was to remove me entirely from that
zone, that waiting, holding, grey, colorless, lifeless zone. I took a vacation
from cancer.

Part of how this is showing up currently, and making my life
easier, is that I have very real, and very current memories of incredible
moments and times. Colorful, impulsive, whimsical moments to reach into my
recent memory and hold for a moment of comfort and joy. It seems like even my dreams have been re-infused.

Having to slather sunblock only on my left arm, my driving
arm, so that I didn’t end up with a severe trucker’s tan. The curve of a pair
of whales backs as they breached up for air, spouting mist.

A stream with a water hole, and two dudes swimming in it, waving at me. The view from the top (or bottom) of
anywhere. Mosquito bites! The cognitive
dissonance of standing in an Oakland chill and scratching mosquito bites
acquired in Hawaii! Physical proof that I was there, that I experienced, that I
was in my body.

I feel recharged from that trip. No matter what my exact
experience of it was.

When people have asked me how it was, I’ve said that the
most important thing, I think, is that I let myself go at all – it’s not the
details of the trip, which ranged emotionally from cranky to sobbing grief to
awestruck to serene. (perhaps in that order.)

That I let myself go at all was a win for me. For someone
who never lets herself do much of anything that sounds like or is fun.

The trip did range
all those emotions. The following story I tell most is exemplary of much of my mind
state:

It was about the 4^th day on the island, and I
still hadn’t simply sat on a beach. I’d been shuttled around to see a lot of
things, and I drove down a tortourous, sodden drive out to the far end of the
island, but as far as sitting and lavishing in the sunshine? Not yet.

So, I finally went to the beach. I was heading back to the
house from that drive, the sun was heading down toward the ocean, and I
couldn’t decide if I should go home, or go to the beach. I passed off-ramp
after off-ramp, telling myself I should go home, rest, change, shower. And
every off-ramp, I found myself disappointed I didn’t just take it. Who cares I’m not changed in a bathing suit – DO
SOMETHING.

So, I did. I pulled off, finally, at a strip-mall, and
changed into a bathing suit in the car, and turned around, and drove back to
the beach.

I packed my little sack, and made my way to the sand, the
long flesh-colored sand, the long dark-blue water. I opened my towel, and I
laid down.

I wonder if I should get a book.

I think I should get a book. It’s boring just sitting
here doing nothing.

How long have I had my back exposed to the sun? Is it
time to flip over yet? Am I tan yet?

How much sunscreen should I put on? I want a tan, but
duh, I don’t want cancer.

Do you think there’s time to drive to Barnes&Noble
and back and still get some sun?

Can’t you just sit here and appreciate the weather? Can’t
I just be where I’m at? Listening to the waves, soaking in the healing rays?

Sure, okay, breathe in, listen, be still, be where I am,
don’t think I need the moment to be different. Be where I’m at. Be present …

I think I should get a book.

😀 AND THAT’S HOW MY BRAIN WORKS! Thank you very much, ladies
and gentleman, for attending today’s round of, How can Molly fuck herself up!
Well done to all, let’s do it again tomorrow.

So, needless to say, it took me a long time to simply settle
into being there. My brain was active for a lot of the trip, and that was
alright; I tried to be as patient with it as I could.

I took little notes of my impressions, ones that are
“poetic” and descriptive. I occasionally let myself pull off the highway to
look at things, or stop in a store just because. I let it be okay to not buy
jewelry that I really didn’t need, even though it was pretty, and I bought a
lot of little art pieces for myself and friends to whom I’m truly indebted.

I wandered in a SUN DRESS and flip-flops around town, and even spent a few
minutes hat-less, letting my chemo-hair get some fresh air.

I ate a passion-fruit right off a tree in the yard, having asked my
hosts how to eat one.

I cooked my daily breakfast of eggs, and had absolutely nasty
caffeine-withdrawal mornings.

I ordered a “POG,” which is a passion, orange, guava juice.
And I loved it.

I just leaned right over the steering wheel to watch a rainbow for a while, and learned from a
slightly drunken Torontan, who’d wandered down the beach with a Hilton
wrist-band, that the French word for rainbow translates as Arc in the Sky.

I saw bananas growing upsidedown, like cheeky, “how do you know how things are supposed to grow” teachers.

  

I breathed. I stood on the outcroppings of things, in the
woods of things, on the streets of things, and I breathed.

As I breathe now, the recycled air that pushes continually
into this cheerless room, I remember exactly what it was like to lie naked on a guest
bed in Maui, watching jungle-like plants dance exultant in a gathering
tropical storm.

An idea that was presented this weekend at my meditation
retreat is that Joy is just like any other form of sustenance. As we need food
to maintain our body, we need Joy to maintain our soul.

Joy isn’t a bi-product, a dessert, a reward; it is (or can
be) the mode from which we live first. Like breakfast as the most important
meal of the day, so can Joy be as important.

A friend recently wrote to me that most people don’t get to
see the kind of love that people have for them, the kind of support and
outpouring that I’ve had during this time of illness. Someone else told me
yesterday, after visiting through a few hours of revolving door visitors that I
am “pop-U-lar!”

I began to say to him that I simply have good people in my life,
that they’re just doing their jobs as good people, good, service-oriented folk.
But, I stopped myself.

It is true. Not everyone has this kind of support, the kind
of support that I’ve gotten from the beginning of this ordeal, and I have to
take a step back and acknowledge that this is for me. That it isn’t everyone
receiving this (although, they could, potentially), but that perhaps I have a
role in what I am being given and am receiving.

I say all this in processing one of the meditations we did this
weekend. I’ve talked about this one here before; it’s called The Jewel Tree of
Tibet meditation, and the guided meditation basically leads you to a tree where
all the folks and teachers and ancestors and wise people sit in a tree and
focus all their love and light and support toward you, filling you up with
their joy that you exist, that you are here.

I’ve had trouble with this meditation before.

There is a point after this infusion of light from those
folks during which we turn and recognize all these other folks around us, from
friends, to strangers, to people we have difficult relationships with, and we
become a channel from the light on the tree outward and into these folks.

Before, in the past, I’ve completely rejected the light that
comes toward me. F’ you, take your light elsewhere, I don’t trust it, don’t know
what to do with it, you can have it.

But, I will certainly
turn around and help to feed those behind me from my limited, finite bucket of
power and love, etc. Sure, I have
no problem giving to you, but you cannot give to me.

So, this weekend, I told the facilitator that I had problems
with this meditation, and she invited me to just push into the discomfort, but
not to push too hard, like holding a yoga pose far enough to stretch, but not
so far as to pull something.

So, okay. Fine. I’ll try. And I did. I let all that muck
that I seen as love and support come toward me. I sat in its path and light as
someone being force-fed pureed vegetables. Yech, but okay, fine. It was emotional. It
was too much. I still don’t know what to do with it. I’m overwhelmed by it, how much love there is.

But. I sat with it, And now I have to turn around and give
it to someone else? What if there isn’t enough? I’m just getting used to
holding it, and you want me to give it away? I don’t think I can do that.

After the meditation, I shared about my experience, and the
facilitator asked me which she felt was the most wise place for me to focus
right now – on the receiving, or on the giving. I said the receiving (and then
questioned if that was the “right” thing to say!). But I think it is, for me, for right now. I have
the most awful time in recognizing the things that are coming to me.

I was reflecting this morning about how singularly focused I
have been in my life about making things happen my way, or how I think they
should be. Focused so much on work-a-day, paycheck-to-paycheck, that I have had
ZERO room for abundance, for joy, for relaxation.

I have been absolutely, without a doubt, plucked from my
normal life. I have been allowed for the first time to let the blinders fall
away, and what I see is glorious and new. New, as a little frightening, and
yet, new as plain and simple WOW.

Wow, someone brought me a fuzzy blanket on my first day in the
hospital.

Wow, my landlord is waiving my rent while I get better.

Wow, someone gifted me a flight to Hawaii.

Wow, a friend brought me healthy food to eat.

Wow, a friend is paying my cell phone bill while I’m not
working.

Wow, someone connected me with a professional possibility.

Wow, someone is lending me a real piano keyboard.

Wow, all the outpouring of cards, gifts, love, support.

Where has all of this been??

It’s been right here. ALL A-FUCKING-LONG.

It’s all been here, all along. But I have been so centered
on what I think, on what I need to do, on doing it by myself, that I’ve missed the whole thing.

Does one have to have cancer to recognize all this support
that may have been present the whole time? I hope not – otherwise things’ll get
pretty back-to-the-old when this is all over.

Can I hold the space for the possibility that all this was
available all along, and that means that it will be available going forward? It
may not look the same way; my needs with be different, but it will be there, if
I let it.

Allowing help, allowing love, allowing the reception of the
goodness of the universe was as alien to my family growing up as escargot is to
… a community that doesn’t eat escargot.

I learned that vulnerability was hidden away, or masked by
rage. I learned that you had to figure things out on your own, no one was
available to help, and there was no one to ask. There weren’t things coming
toward you that were good; you worked and made it happen, and if it didn’t
happen, tough shit. That’s life, you be happy with what you wrench out of the
world.

Many of us are modeled this way of living and thinking in
the world. A way which tells us we are separate, and must exist by what we make
happen.

I am learning how far off base that lesson was. (Not to
criticize, just to acknowledge.) I am acknowledging and learning something much, much different lately.

Help is always
available. Beyond the bounds of what I think is possible.

I would never have imagined the love that people are
offering me. I would never have let myself be vulnerable enough to see or need
it.

Cancer, as teacher. Cancer, as humbler. Cancer, as changing
my fucking life. 

For someone relatively confined to a 10×10 foot space, I’ve
been remarkably accomplishy today.

For one, a friend of mine from school came by to chat and
catch up, but, deliciously, we also began to talk about and exchange writing.
She’s submitting an essay to a contest, and had sent it to me and to the third
person in our unofficial writing group the three of us formed after graduation,
while each in the, How do you balance life and writing? phase of post-grad.

The phase each of us are still in. Today, she and I got the chance to talk
like writers again; it was noticeable to me how we each perked up while talking about it, talking about how our “real” life becomes the focus, and the
writerly mantle and life becomes an afterthought, or simply a memory.

Her coming by today helped me to remember how much I love
talking about this; reading others’ work, commenting, helping one another to
make it better, to pull the best out of it, push it further, where it wants to
be. There’s a collaboration that makes two minds greater than one, even though
writing can be such a solitary endeavor.

I told her that she reminded me that in December, I’d begun
finally writing this essay I’ve been carrying around in the wheeley cart that
is my mind for years. I told her that I
stalled out on it, wasn’t sure how to hold it and move forward with it. She
said she’d love to read it; we talked about how with our little group, we know
that we’re not sending polished work, but simply what we’ve got, and the honesty,
bravery, and humility that takes to allow each other – the trust, really – to
let one another read our unvarnished work.

So, I sent it, and she read it. Already. Commented, already,
and sent her comments back to me, … already. It seems that there really is
something there, and she gave me a wonderful idea for how to frame this story/essay I want to tell. It seems so
obvious sometimes, we’d said to each other, that we’d never thought to change
or frame or add what the other suggested – but, if we’d thought of it
ourselves, we wouldn’t need each other.

It just reinforced for me, the idea of community, the need
for one another, to help and support each other, just by saying yes. Yes, I’d
love to read it; Yes, I’m available for feedback. Yes, I support you in your
endeavor of sending your work into the world.

Above all that I got out of my schooling, was the notion
that a writing community is imperative. Writing for me had been such a silent,
isolated, solitary work, and sure, sometimes in school, you’re presented with a
classroom of folks who don’t “get it,” or whose work you don’t “get,” but
you’re willing to talk about it – to be
opened by it.

In the brief visit with a friend of mine, I was reopened to
those conversations, that angle of my brain, that way of tilting my head to
look at the world.

Another event of today was my calling to follow up with a
woman who I’d been referred to professionally. In my period of disability (aka, not working),
I’ve found that I’d like to actually DO stuff; do something that makes me feel
I can contribute to the world. And, ultimately, I realized that because I don’t
have the pressure of worrying about rent and paycheck-to-paycheck right now, I
can really look to do anything I want with my time.

Mainly, I mean to say that I have the chance to be the
intern, or part-time, or virtual worker that I haven’t had the financial space
to be in the past.

When I was unemployed over this summer after graduation,
looking for word in Arts Marketing and/or arts education, I found that my
resume really didn’t reflect the skills that people were looking for. I
certainly have the verve and the enthusiasm for this work – I think there is
little more important than helping people to access their creative center,
whatever that looks like to them, and personally, I think I’m a pretty good
schmoozer.

So, when I was contacted by an old instructor of mine from school
after she’d found out I had cancer, I replied with my thanks for her
kindness, and inquired if she needed any help with her literary magazine, a
virtual assistant perhaps (since obviously, I’m not commute-able). An intern,
sort of, a part-time helper, what can I do, how can I keep my feet in the
waters of creative community; how can I put something creative on my resume,
use the skills I have, gain the ones I need.

She thought on it, and put me in touch, just last week with
a friend of hers, who is a private practitioner of expressive arts therapy, an
artist herself, and a member of the spiritual community. Basically, our values
and beliefs align entirely.

I called her today for the first time (can I admit, that out
of my fear, I ate half the bag of dark-chocolate-covered pomegranate seeds
first?). We spoke for nearly an hour. She told me how she was looking to
launch, expand, enlarge, and I was honest with her that many of the practical
things she was looking for (specific programs, etc.) I don’t have experience in, but want the experience in. That it is precisely what has
kept me from the jobs (I think) I want in the past.

I was honest and started to say maybe she wants someone
who’s a little more up to speed, able to jump on the ball immediately. But she stopped me. She said, actually, as
she’s just formulating this all herself, maybe we can work something out while
I come up to speed. That we can use each other to build it out, fill it out, steer as we sail. Basically … paying
me to learn skills I want to learn… which, isn’t that what “work” is supposed
to be anyway????

So, I’m going to send her my resume and a reference, and
we’re both going to sit on it for a week and “see what blossoms,” but this
could be a really great thing for me – and for her. And if nothing else, I
reached out, put myself and my skills and my honesty out there, and I met a
woman who seems to be a light in this world.

Not. Bad.

Lastly, I heard back from both depth hypnosis practitioners I contacted last
night, and will be making an appointment with one when she returns
at the end of the month. Accomplishy, indeed.

If a tan falls in the forest, and there’s no one around to see it…

I swear, I’m tan. But in the bundled-up hoodies, hats, and
gloves, you may never know it. I change so quickly from pajamas into outfits,
that even I have a hard time noticing! So I have occasionally
flashed my belly at myself in the mirror just to confirm it 😉

I’m getting mentally and physically prepared to go back into
the hospital tonight for Chemo Round 4 out of 5. This means a week of inpatient
hospital stay, a week of very interrupted sleep. As the
saying goes, The hospital is no place for a sick person.

That said, how grateful am I to have the health care and
coverage that I do. Infinitely. The care that I’ve gotten has been stellar,
even when they wake me at 1am to take my blood pressure.

As to the retreat. Well, unsurprisingly, I’ve been asked to
work on what I was asked to work on last year — and didn’t. Asked to work on that which I
don’t really want to, haven’t really wanted to, and which has enabled and allowed me
to stay stuck. Cancer, the disease of stuckness, perhaps.

Last year, it was indicated that in order to move forward in
my life, I need to address my sexual trauma. Now, who will willingly walk into that miasma?

Unless they have to.

Unless they have cancer, the ticking clock that says, Lady,
deal with this now, because life is
short.

Some of what keeps me so quiet and averse to working on or
through this particular slice of experience is that I quantify my trauma as not
that severe, not that bad, not as bad as plenty I’ve heard, so why talk about
it, address it, voice it, validate it? 
There are plenty of women (and men) who have far worse stuff to parse
through, so why should I take any time to address my own?

It’s like saying, I don’t need to eat because there are
people who are hungrier than me. – That doesn’t really compute, does it.

I need to eat, regardless. And I need to work through this regardless,
even though I feel ashamed that it’s “not big enough” trauma. It’s so
ridiculous, how my brain concocts ways to keep me stuck.

I had some intense meditation experiences this weekend at
the retreat. I won’t recount them, but I will say that I was presented very
visually and viscerally with what my aversion to this work has done to me emotionally; what the part of me looks like that has been cut off, that I have cut off. It’s
scary, honestly. How deprived and deranged that part of me, my sexuality, my
femininity has become. How unreachable she has become.

When we think about sexuality, we can think about
creativity. About that same center as bringing forth Life in all its
manifestations. It’s not just about sex, about procreation –
it’s about creation in all its forms.
It’s about, to me, confidence, competence, adventure, expression.
Manifestation.

With this part of me so disconnected, so alienated, it isn’t
a wonder that I find my life stuck, myself stuck. To consider the “false
start at life,” the “failure to launch” in which I seem to find myself.

I don’t want to look at this, this accumulation of years of negative experiences around sex and sexuality. It’s frightening. It feels like it’s bigger than I even know, and so I’m terrified to even lift the lid. So,
some of what I did this weekend was to seek and find help, an internal guide that can and will help
me to navigate these waters. Also — back on earth! — a friend at the retreat suggested some human resources that I will follow up on. So, I’m gathering the internal and the
external support.

I do have the experience of feeling frightened of something,
of something I think is so big, and it turns out, on investigation, on finally
walking into it, that it is not so scary at all. That it is just the shadow
cast by a mouse. Perhaps this will end up like that, but I won’t know unless I
begin.

I don’t feel the desire to begin. And I may never. But, I must. There is an imperative now that there was not last year,
and so, I will begin anyway. Because mouse or monster, I don’t need to be
living like this.