I've wanted to write, but I just haven't had time. I don't have time now really either - this is day 12 of working with no day off and well, I don't even feel like talking about that. There are other things on my mind - so many things, and I just need to write.
I have this inability to maintain perspective. I find it amazing, that after everything I went through - I cannot manage to hang on to a little perspective about life. It comes and it goes. I lose it and then get it again, and lose it again. I remember the first time I realized I had lost it - I just thought that the perspective I had gained about life by surviving breast cancer was something that would stay with me - but I woke up one day and I didn't have it anymore. It was in living my life that I had lost it. I manage to find it again every time though. I find it when I see my nephew laugh and play or when I sit in a doctor's office for 3 hours waiting for mammogram results. I find it - but I only really have it in moments.
Ever since the beginning of September, when I had my last mammogram - I have been living largely out from under the fear of dying. I just haven't felt that fear. I have been operating on the belief that I will get to live the rest of my life. Living as if - I guess. And in living that life, that I so desperately wanted to get to live, I have lost sight of the point again.
I have been working for days, I am stressed about this project, the partner isn't helping, it isn't getting done, am I going to get a raise in January, I want a raise in January, I better get a raise in January, I deserve one don't I, how the hell is this project going to get done, am I going to have to work 12 more days before I get a break, probably, should I pay my loan, what if I don't quite have the 100K for my down payment, how am I going to get this project done, I'm tired, I better get a raise, I hope they are aware that I practically live here, I need to find a guy, what if I don't find one before I'm infertile, what am I going to do. This is the pathetic contents of my head right now. I have lost it again, that perspective that allows me to see things for what they are, to appreciate them, to love them, to enjoy them, to believe that it will be okay, to understand what matters in the end, to not freak out over nothing. I have lost it.
I was getting undressed last night and my rib cage hurt. My rib cage hurts, I have a pain in my rib cage again. Wait, I have a pain in my rib cage again. Shit, I have a pain in my rib cage again. Shit. I fall on the floor and start praying to my higher power who has been basically missing these days. I don't know where my higher power has gone - I just don't feel the presence of it since that night in the restaurant. My sponsor tells me to pray anyway because obviously something kept me from drinking that night and it obviously wasn't me. Isn't this conversation getting old though? Dear God, sorry I am such a fuck up and I can't seem to remember the point of life, but please, I am begging you, don't let me die of cancer, please don't let it have spread to my rib cage. I promise - if you just let me live, I'll remember the point this time. I swear. I promise. I get it this time.
My rib cage hurts. I know - scientifically, it is probably nothing. But I can't explain it - it hurts for no reason and there is nothing rational about the fear of breast cancer spreading and having my life ripped out from underneath me again. There was a point when suddenly it became enough to just be alive - it didn't matter anymore whether I found the right guy or was able to have children or made partner at my firm, or got a raise, or whatever - nothing mattered in those moments when I thought my life might be cut short. To just get to live, and to live whatever life I was given, was enough. It was a gift - truly, every second of my life is a gift. I feel like I am careless with it sometimes - because then you live and the fear dissipates a bit and suddenly the things that didn't seem to matter seem to be the end of the world. I go along the way I have been for a while now - living I guess, free of that fear that unfortunately grounds me in some sense - and let me tell you, when I felt that pain, and when the fear enveloped me, the reality of the uncertainty that I have to live with, when your perspective gets shifted like flipping a switch and you find yourself on the floor, begging for your life again, it takes you breath away.
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