this was hard to admit

everybody has their own shit to deal with on a daily basis.  everybody has super frickin' sensitive issues that are exercised daily or stuffed down deep too sensitive to be seen or heard by the stuffer let alone those close to the stuffer.  i'm going to call it grief.  those who exercise their grief daily might be doing one of two things: getting healthy or ruminating over the shit.

i thought i had made strides towards dealing with my super sensitive shit, that up until 10 minutes ago i didn't recognize as grief, i thought my shit was just this miasma i was having a hard time pushing through, and the miasma has become such a constant in my life that it has literally morphed into an accessory i wear, as well as a self defeating mantra i repeat over and over to myself that i am not worthy.  i've struggled with this for a long time, "this" being self-loathing and the certainty i am not good enough.  then tack on a struggling marriage and a terminal illness and some of my days are spent in the fetal position.  this is hard to admit, but it is a revelation i feel compelled to share because fuck, enough is enough.  and there better be a fucking leprechaun at the end of this black and blue rainbow.

i find it quite difficult to listen to anything cancer related.  i resist it because i do not have the capacity to take in anymore.  does that make me a stuffer?  maybe, which is news to me.  and as i mentioned before, 10 minutes prior to beginning this post i had finished listening to a fresh air segment about this accomplished oncology doctor who has experienced cancer himself as well as watched his own son die after spending 8 years inside a bubble because his immune system was gonezo.  now that was some relatable shit.  this oncologist DeVita has his own book but he also mentioned that his daughter wrote a book about her brother dying and i immediately looked it up and read a synopsis of the book and promptly began to sob.  the book is Empty Room: Understanding Sibling Loss by Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn. apparently she talks about how she didn't know how to grieve, and interviews others who have lost siblings and they discuss their losses.  my brothers and sister's faces flashed before my eyes and like i said i began to sob.  i don't know what it is that specifically triggered the tears to my eyes, but i'm fairly certain it is grief about the potential for loss, leaving my siblings behind, but also enduring loss, which in my recent studies is one expression of grief.

and i do believe that my self-loathing and sense of unworthiness are manifestations of not recognizing grief and then grieving.  instead i experienced loss, maybe talked a little about it then stuffed it and washed it down with glasses and glasses of wine.  thus turning that loss into a self-defeating energy, that occludes the genesis of grief and becomes a boil that turns into a second head that looks just like you but gives really bad advice and helps you make really poor decisions, especially if you ply it with lots of alcohol.

kind of like in the movie "how to get ahead in advertising", except his boil was the better fella

perhaps this is why my marriage is struggling.  my husband has said he doesn't know how to grieve and he is most definetely a stuffer.  but the revelation that i too may be a stuffer and that i have not recognized loss in my life, has led to the debilitating miasma that is my so called life.  by not grieving i have made my life terrifically sad, does that make sense?

then i blame.  i blame my husband.  i blame cancer.  i blame side effects.  what if an easier path is to grieve and then learn to live with grief?  recognize that what i'm feeling is as a result of unrecognized loss and not because my husband left crumbs on the counter.  i mean seriously that sends me over the edge, not grieving may be the reason i get so fucking pissed in the car.  yes i'm pissed because i'm dying but come on.  i feel as if i've kind of come to terms with my death from melanoma, and in that understanding there is grief, wow, it is a multi-layered grief.  and i thought it was healthy.  but today i realize that grieving for your own death whilst not grieving for things you've lost in life is like counting on a cake shaped by a house of cards with icing on it to sustain you.  there's nothing to eat, nothing to lean on.  

fuck i feel better.  i've got some new accessories i will add to my wardrobe, and will hopefully shed the old time sucker all too familiar self-loathing that's been disguised as a pearl choker.  it ain't gonna be easy, but i'm ready to allow myself to grieve.  actually i will insist.

5 minutes, i will take it

i had a deliriously simple and wonderful five minutes yesterday late afternoon.  i sliced a pear, carved off a few blobs of blue earth cheese, poured myself a glass of a dry white wine and took in the last rays of the gloaming and i gotta tell you, it made being alive seem like a worthy endeavor.

i believe i've mentioned that i've been reading the book "die wise", well in it jenkinson posits that with advances in medicine and palliative care people who should be dead are living.  which means that the more time you extend your life the more time you spend dying and that the human brain has a really hard time wrapping its proverbial arms around that concept.  so a person with a terminal illness, like me for example, i have stage iv melanoma that at times has rapidly metastisized like bigotry at a trump rally.  but due to these "magic bullet" drugs (as my friend eric called them) i have more time living,  but also more time dying.

  

which you would think would pave the way for mary tyler moore moments, spinning in circles, smiling and throwing my beret in the air.  but my life has zero semblance to that sequence.  each day i get up later and later. i am riddled with anxiety and i am really fucking angry.  i am angry with people i love and care about.  i am angry with neighbors i don't even know because their dog is in the middle of the street and might teach my dog a bad lesson.  even though i love my husband i'm pissed that i got married because the institution of marriage sucks.  i get so angry when i drive, i imagine swerving into people's cars who are talking on the phone, i yell cunt just three blocks after leaving my driveway.  i am angry with myself for not having written the novel i have in mind.

so somedays i wish i was dead already.  and i can't help but think being dead might just be easier for everyone.  but what is that feeling?  i know i'm not the only one in the world who has a terminal illness, and i'm fairly certain i'm not the only one who has these thoughts terminal illness or not.  i mean how do people survive life?  well simply put you don't.  none of us does.  but not everyone lives with this dark shadow of death draped over their daily lives, but maybe that's just it.  the real magic bullet is to invite death over for a home cooked meal, and make a space for it instead of dodging it like i dodge bill collectors.  but that seems too easy of a solution.  because in my reality i have zero capacity for the daily shit life throws at you, which is why i yell cunt so easily.  which is why i had a panic attack inside the MRI tube and had to abort the procedure after one horrible minute.  and why was i having an MRI?  to rule out any brain tumors that may be responsible for some dizziness i've been experiencing.  but there's no room at the inn for that type of information.  to potentially have to add brain tumors to the list is fucking overwhelming.

my mom has basically said that i oughta pull up my bootstraps and fake it 'til i make it.  uh, ok.  that's really helpful.  then she always says that i should join a support group.  which one:

so you've got cancer, now what?
driving with anger in your passenger seat, the jack nicholson therapy
it's 9am and you want a glass of wine, how to get to 10am
how not to rip people to shreds when they ask how you feel
how to roundhouse kick cancer pity faces right off their face
how to not lose it when asked to list all of your surgeries everytime you have a new procedure aka electronic medical records, have you heard of them?
terminal illness a trump card or keep it to yourself

five minutes.  that five minutes yesterday was incredible.  i've been having small moments of smiles lately, and believe you me, they have not gone unnoticed.  here's to 10 minutes.