This week is the week

This week is the week that I somehow muster up the nerve to go ask for a leave of absence. Why? Because I can't keep putting if off and like I said, it seems like the prime time considering we have had a lot of projects go well, and given my obvious willingness to do whatever is necessary to make a client happy (i.e., this past week). Seems like the perfect time. Plus, when did I first mention that I wanted to do this? At least a month ago.

I am hesitating partly because I'm not exactly sure whether to take a leave of 6 weeks (or 8 - can I get away with 8?), or a vacation of 3 weeks. Do I want to have to make the billable time up? No (so I need a leave). Do I still want to get paid? Yes (so I need a vacation). What's more important? Not having to make the time up (so I need a leave). That's two votes for leave. Leave wins. I could go on for hours trying to sort this out. I need to just to ask. Oh wait, I mean inform. Or something in between I guess.

When I think about it - I just feel like crying. It being everything - my job and everything I went though. Why? Because I've worked my ass off for these people while going through hell, quite literally - and what have I gotten for it? Sure, my raise, some bonus money, yes they appreciate it, yes they like me, yes they are happy with me and my work - but what does it really mean? Nothing. In the end it is meaningless and even though I like my job a lot - it's hard to do it sometimes after having been through what I went through. It's hard to take my job seriously and a client's panic over a document seriously, when, you know - you can appreciate what it's like to face the possibility of dying. Who cares about a fucking document. Seriously. Sometimes I feel like saying let's have a little perspective here people.

I just want some time off because every time I think about what I went through - I just want to go sit in my closet and cry. Why the closet? It's smaller, safer. Contained. Because if I give it even more than a passing thought - it being everything I went though - I feel like I can't breathe, like I can't live with it, like I can't keep going as if it didn't happen, as if my life is the same - like it just stopped and started again and I lost some time in the interim. That isn't what happened. It isn't the same. I'm not the same. Everything is different and nothing makes sense. It's like I've said before - it's like tying to put pieces back together into something recognizable and nothing fits. It doesn't fit.

But I can't deal with it either. My only option is to pretend like it didn't happen because having to deal with it is impossible - having to figure out how to live with it is impossible. I can't live with it. I can't live with the constant anxiety about dying - the constant fear about it coming back - about it spreading. If I face it at all, it permeates everything. It is impossible, on a daily basis. And so I ignore it. I pretend that I am like everyone else, but I'm not. And I work a lot because I don't know what else to do. How else can I make the fear go away - the feeling go away? The only way to deal with it, to live with it, is to not feel it. Because what the hell are you supposed to do with that kind of fear and that kind of pain? It isn't the kind of thing that ever goes away - it doesn't lessen with time.

People always tell me that I tell the story of surviving breast cancer as if it happened to someone else. And they are right. I do. I have yet to connect the emotion to the experience - it is fragmented, it is almost unreal. I have so little emotion connected to the experience that I might be able to convince myself that it never happened at all. Except that it did.

And I can't seem to figure out how to live with it, or process it.

11 days from now is the 2 year anniversary of when I was diagnosed. In 13 days, it is my 31st birthday.