trouble

i awoke to this song in my head.  my dreams the previous night provided the pathway for the song to kickstart my day.  simultaneously beautiful and sad and scary.  nothing new of course but considering my new circumstance, troubling.

i don't know who i am anymore.  i'm a bit lost and found.  i'm old and new.  i'm very fucking sensitive.  i'm happy and sad.  i'm a walking contradiction with a diploma in hand that says you can graduate if you just finish that one project.  just complete your thesis on immunotherapy and the diploma is yours as is your future.

but i never finished anything.  i have loads of big ideas but minimal follow through and my dream last night was that both my mom and husband had replaced me.  my mom had a new daughter she liked better, that seemed to impress her more and my husband had a new partner.  but all this was because i was supposed to be dead, but they didn't get the memo i was still alive and already traded me in.

i got into a physical fight with my mom, where i was threatening bodily harm.  it was completely upsetting to awaken from.  and my day has been colored by the dream.

eleven years ago i was helping my father care for his dying mother, my grandmother.  i stayed with her and tended to her as well as an amateur hospice granddaughter could.  i dipped the minty sponge lollipop in fresh water and swabbed her dry mouth with it.  i rubbed lotion into her dry skin.  i sat with her.  i talked with her and then to her.  this went on for weeks.  and as happens when the focus is on tending to the health of a loved one, your needs get ignored and suddenly there's no food or drink in the fridge to help sustain you while you are helping to sustain another.

i had no car at the time and it was lunchtime and i was hungry.  and i figured i would be gone 20 minutes tops.  so i hopped on my bike and got two tacos to go.  i was zip back in 20 minutes.  i walked in the house glanced into my grandma's room to check on her before heading to the kitchen.  she was dead.  i walked to the side of her bed cupped her hand and said "grandma".  she didn't respond.  i think her eyes were shut and the only sound was the oxygen pump mindlessly breathing life into a dead person's lungs.

i threw the tacos into the garbage, called my dad who was with clients and for some reason couldn't get away for another hour.  i call the number on the hospice business card, they too said it might be an hour before a crew could get to the house.

i returned to the room where my grandma's body was and sat next to her in the bed for awhile holding her hand.  then i opened all the windows in the house and poured myself a glass of wine and returned to her again and sat with her body singing the white stripes version of the burt bacharach song "i just don't know what to do with myself".  because it was all about me.

but it's not.  it's not all about me.

i'm just beginning to get a measure of the toll the past seven years has taken on everyone close to me. and fuck, it is overwhelming.  and because i'm in it do i have an objective perspective?  uh doubtful.

i came away from NED with this overwhelming love and gratitude towards my husband marty.  for all of his caretaking and the fact he married me knowing that the past two years could and did happen and yet he chose to be there by my side.  he is extremely good at it.  and my heart after the news exploded with love for him.  i can't recall ever feeling that way before, that in love.  it is the best i've ever felt in my lifetime.

i'm having the same gush of love and gratitude this morning for all my people.  the support from far and near.  it is overwhelming what i've/we've been through.  and i think i thought that i would 'POOF' go back to life as usual.  but what the fuck is that?  i know what it looked like before cancer, what my body looked like before edward scissorhands left scars big and small all over my torso, what it felt like to have jobs that i was passionate about, what it felt like to be independent.  what it felt like to not be in fight or flight mode.

so i'm just trying to make sense of it all.  chart a path.  but it is harder than i anticipated.

one day at a time.