It is unpredictable

I have come to realize that most things in life are unpredictable.  You just can't know what is going to happen.  It doesn't matter how you plan it and it certainly doesn't matter what you want or what you expect.  Sometimes it's a choice that you make, between yes and no, and for better or worse, it sets the dominoes in motion.  Most often I think it is purely accidental. It is for no reason at all. I guess I don't walk around on a daily basis expecting the worst but things can change you know.  In the blink of an eye sometimes.  It takes just a split second. And you know that things will never again be the same.  You are forever changed.  It's a funny feeling.  Maybe you know what I am talking about - it's hard to describe.  It just happens in an unexpected moment and you know.  And then you catch your breath.  I had that kind of a moment.  I was sitting in my office at my new job, the day before my 29th birthday, three weeks in to my job, when my doctor called to tell me I had breast cancer.  The only thing I wanted to know was whether I was going to die.

People always say that the things that don't kill you make you stronger.  I can tell you from my own personal experiences in life that I think this is bullshit.

People also say that sometimes the worst things in life turn out to be the greatest blessings.  I am sure that this is true, sometimes.  But I am also sure that this isn't always the case.  It is not true for me.   What bothered me the most about having been diagnosed with breast cancer was not necessarily what I was about to go through.  It was the fact that I was afraid I would never be me again.  I would never feel like me again.  I would never be the same.   And I wondered if maybe I could be wrong about that.  If maybe on a day I would wake up and feel like me again.  It hasn't happened.

What happened to me is not a blessing.  It isn't anything.  It didn't happen for a reason.  It just happened.  I think people like to say that things happen for a reason because it is simply a way to explain the unexplainable and to accept the unacceptable.  But there are things that happen for no reason at all. Bad things happen and there is no reason and there is no explanation.  It is accidental, it is random.  It is meaningless.

I wondered if I was going to die and I also felt at the time that the life I had was not worth going through what I would have to go through to get to keep it.  But I did it anyway because that's what you do.  You just do what you are supposed to do and you worry about how you feel about it later.  For me anyway.  After coming out the other side and taking stock of everything, I still have my doubts about what was and wasn't worth it.

My grandmother is probably dying.  We know and we don't know.  It all started with an accident.  One of those split seconds in time.  One of those random and accidental things that set the dominoes in motion.  What you call the beginning of the end.  I can't say that I am close to my grandmother.  I can't say that I am not close to her either.  I can only say that there are years of family history there and that I wish, like most things, that things had been different.  I don't know how I really feel about the situation, it's just that all of sudden and unexpectedly, I feel incredibly sad.  Not sad for me because I am losing someone, just sad for her.  I just hope that no matter what she is thinking, that she isn't afraid.

If you were to ask me what is the one thing in life that matters, I can tell you.  Because this is something that I have thought about.  What is the thing that matters more than anything.  It has nothing to do with appearances or anything material or anything that is going on in my life right now. I don't care if I hit 2000 hours, I don't care about what it means and what it looks like or what I get for it.  I don't care if I have nice things or drive a nice car.  I don't even care anymore if I get any of the things that I thought I wanted out of life.  These things, they don't matter in the end.  They are insignificant.  The thing that matters to me, it eludes me, is happiness.  If I could just say that I was happy, that would be enough.  And then if I got to pick two things, the second one would be whether I had been a good person.  I think on most days, I fail miserably at both.  And then if I were lucky enough to have achieved a third thing, it would be to have lived in the present moment for as many moments as possible.  Also a thing which I fail miserably at.

I sometimes wonder what have I been doing with this second chance that I seem to have been given.  Am I doing enough with it.  Am I doing anything with it at all.  Have I completely lost all perspective as I sit in my office stressing out about the fact that I didn't hit 10.7 hours today.  Why is this one thing that I so desperately want so unattainable.  I am going to Vermont instead of billing hours because of what I know will matter to me in the end.  I am aware of my mortality.  As I have posted so many times before, I don't know how much time I actually have.  I know that none of us do.  I don't know if I will get breast cancer again.  I don't know.  And it is because I don't know, that I worry about what I am doing with the days that I have left, before that split second moment when everything changes again.  I worry every day that I am going to find out I have breast cancer again, that everything will change again and that I will have missed it.  I will have missed my chance.  I feel this sort of desperation that I have talked about before.  Like I am desperate to get this thing that matters and to have it for as long possible because I know what it feels like to face the fact that you might die.  I know what it is like to look at your life and to know what you did wrong and what you did right.  I know what that kind of regret feels like.  Maybe I am lucky for having had that glimpse and maybe I'm not.  It depends on what you do with it I guess.  Having breast cancer changed everything about my life and it changed nothing about my life.  So you try to live in this weird balance, of trying to live like you are going to live forever, while at the same time living like you have only one day left.  And on most days, you fail.  Like you fail at all the other things.

I am not sad that I am losing someone or sad about what it means, or even sad for the other people who are losing someone.  I don't have the faintest idea how my father feels because with him, it is impossible to ever know how he feels.  I am sad because I don't think she was happy.