Not everyone gets a "do over"

There are a lot of things that I think I know, that I think I've learned, by surviving breast cancer - and by being in AA while doing it (and the AA piece matters because if it weren't for this program, I would have killed myself instead). I have learned important things about life in this program. These things that I've learned are hard to quantify, hard to articulate. They are hard to put into practice - these ideas I have about the way I want to live my life and the standards that I want to hold myself to. It is one thing to say that I will live without regret, it is something else entirely to live that way. Maybe these things that I've learned are things that most people know, though I suspect that more often than not, a true appreciation of what these things are comes only when it is too late. Unfortunately, I think it takes a real life and death moment sometimes to make you appreciate the little things, to make you truly grasp what matters in life, to place you squarely in the present moment. In fact, I am not sure that it's even really possible to get it, and I mean really get it, if you don't have such a moment.

I thought when I came into AA that I learned what life was about - I thought I had changed so much and I thought I really got the point. I thought I had gained a real appreciation for life and for what matters in life. Yet there I was struggling just the same with the very things that I have always struggled with and the very same things continued to make me unhappy. It was almost as if my higher power knew I wasn't getting it, so it was yanked from beneath me, never to be the same or look the same again. That's the thing about these life lessons, I think that we repeat mistakes until we get it right and situations will keep happening to us until we get the point. Sometimes, for some of us, it takes great pain to get it. When I get something - when I finally get it - it is never in a moment of subtlety. If I had never been diagnosed with breast cancer, I wouldn't have learned what I've learned, at least not by this age.

When I was diagnosed, I experienced a sudden and dramatic shift in perspective that slowly over time shifted back. Over time I became stressed about my job and career again, obsessed with money, worried no man would ever date me again because I had breast cancer (among other reasons)...the list goes on and on. Where did all that wonderful perspective on life go? It seems I lost it when I realized I would live. The shifting of my perspective is something I have struggled with. I have been frustrated over and over again with the shift in one direction and the shift back. Why can't I seem to remember the point or why can't I implement it in my life? That I don't know. But I do know that something happened to me over the week and a half of before the follow-up appointment and mammogram that I had on Thursday. It might have gone unnoticed but I suddenly felt different. I felt certain fears melt away and I realized that it wasn't just that my feelings had changed, but that my thinking had changed also as I felt a new degree of openness born out of desperation. Maybe just maybe I could be open to the possibility of something I didn't imagine or foresee.

Those most powerful moments of surrender have always come out of such desperation. The more desperate I am, the more willing I become to surrender. For me, such moment are always tied to my life and my death. When I am faced squarely with my mortality I become willing to give up anything. There was a time when I didn't feel this way, when I negotiated with God for my fertility and I was willing to give up my hair, or my life even, or so I thought if I could just keep that one thing. It seems silly I know. I had such a really powerful moment of surrender the night before that appointment and in that moment I had a real appreciation of the fact that the degree to which anything is possible is directly related to the extent to which I am able to surrender. This journey has been a process of negotiation. Of hanging on and then letting go, of taking my will back and then surrendering it again. Until finally, in the most powerful moment of desperation that I have ever had, I let go of all of it. Everything I ever thought I wanted out of life, everything I ever thought would make me happy, I traded it in, in exchange for my life, and whatever it may turn out to be.

I suddenly felt the peace that comes with such surrender and being free from the expectations that have contributed to my unhappiness. I have given it all up, every last thing, which means that anything is possible. If I believe in AA and the things that I've learned there, then my faith tells me that what my higher power has in store for me is more amazing than anything that I could ever imagine for myself. The worst thing that I have ever felt in my entire life was the moment when I thought it might be over and I was only 29. The moment when I thought I might not live the rest of my life and that the life that I had lived might be it. What do I have to show for this life that I've lived but unhappiness and fear, bad relationships and anger, hatred, resentments and regret. The regret was unbelievable - I realized that I was going to regret most of my adult life and that moment when I realized that I might not get another chance to get this life right, was the moment that changed me and scared me the most.

The greatest gift of my life today is that I get to live it differently. Not everyone gets a "do over" and that's exactly what I've been given. For that I am blessed. Those days before that last appointment have planted me firmly in the place that I most want to be - in the moment, with a perspective that feels firmly rooted - I doubt this time that it will shift back in the other direction. I get it this time. You don't ever know, ever, whether you will have another chance. The moment, this one, right now, it matters. What are you going to do with it?