"Today" (Monday, even though it's Tuesday on the calendar - I haven't slept yet - it's still today) I showed up at Cancer Care Northwest's south office for my final chemotherapy treatment. It's been awhile since I blogged, and I've beat myself up about that. I - we - are taking another step into more undiscovered country, though, and I just can't stay away any longer. I started this blog with the idea to chronicle my search for my inner breast cancer b@d@ss from then on, but it has been sporadic, to say the least. It has been approximately (exactly) 137 days since that first blog, and there are 7, total. That has bothered me. Often and intensely. Yes, the blogging and the FaceBooking was and is for my emotional health, first and foremost, but I am - at heart - an educator and a story-teller. So many have helped me along the way that I feel it's important to tell my story so maybe women - and men - who walk this road in the future might benefit from the steps I have taken - good or bad. It's how we learn, as a species, from our history, both macro and micro. I also took vows as a Buddhist to dedicate my meditation practice and my life to doing my bit to ease the suffering of all sentient beings. If the Buddhist belief in reincarnation is really the "way it works," the Bodhisattva vow also includes the promise that, should the vow taker achieve enlightenment, they will still chose to come back and work again to alleviate the suffering of all. My vow was my promise to God that I would be the best person I could be for as long as I am allowed so that my and others suffering is just a bit less because I lived - that's the goal, anyway. Really, I can't not tell my story. It occurs to me, though, as I begin this entry with the goal of blogging every day of my post-chemotherapy life until further notice (for a variety of reasons that include guilt), that I should go a little easy on myself. I am, after all, one of those sentient beings I vowed to ease the suffering of, if at all possible. If every living creature on this planet deserves kindness and compassion and the easing of their suffering - and I hold this idea as my dearest, universal Truth - I *have* to acknowledge that *I* am one of the deserving. And that hurts to say. I want so desperately to *believe* that statement, and it is *so* difficult. But that doesn't change the Truth that I deserve the same respect I give others. It does *not* change that Truth. It doesn't. But I so wish it didn't make me cry and feel like I need to keep repeating it to make it a little more true.
Anyway, in respect of the fact that I deserve relief from suffering, I am beginning a quest to view my sporadic blogging is *not* a negative thing (I will have to keep reminding myself this for some time, I'm thinking). It is a natural thing, really. Even in the best of times, dedication to the recording of your life is not an easy undertaking mentally, emotionally, or logistically. And it has its own time and place. Unless someone wants to chronicle their entire life, there are times when regular, frequent blogging just shouldn't happen. That's a whole different kind of crazy that gets movies made about them. Looking at the indescribable impact steroids have had - and are still having - on my emotional control, mood swings, sense of self worth, faith in myself, anger threshold, and pretty much anything else you can think of that involves *moods,* combined with the impact "chemo brain" has had, continues to have, and will continue to have for the foreseeable future on my ability to do my job easily, to organize the many spheres of my life, and pretty much anything else you can think of that involves traversing the *busy* that is daily western life, blogging with any kind of frequency would have been... well, I want to say unhealthy, but if I'm being honest, it would have been self-abusive. And if I saw anyone I knew attempting that while going through what I've experienced over the last three months, I would have literally sat on them to make them take a break and rest themselves. That means I deserve the leniency, if everyone else does too, right? I so wish it didn't make me cry and feel like I need to keep repeating it to make it a little more true, though.
So I allowed myself that time to rest. In fact, I didn't feel guilty about resting when I needed to, because I KNEW I needed to recover well so that I didn't end up extending my healing exponentially. Now that I can see the mending beginning and I am not trapped in the... mental and emotional... hell that chemo sometimes has been, I feel strangely guilty that I didn't blog more. I've been wishing I had recorded more of the crazy I experienced. But I have to believe that if I had been capable of recording it, I would have. During these meltdowns, every ounce of energy was spent not losing what little hold I had on my sense of stability and sanity. Don't get me wrong, this wasn't a daily experience, but there were enough of them and they were close enough together that they filled in the few empty cracks left by the steroid-chemo brain train wreck. I deserved it the breaks; the rest. And it's nice that it hurts a little less to say that now, because I believe it a little more.
(Sidenote - it is so interesting how the point of a blog often emerges rather differently than expected and it is so fun when it happens. It's happening right now :-)
My Ego wants to add that there were often days where I felt decent. Like, really decent. Decent enough to get things done - with work, with my sons and grandchildren, with my writing contract, with the oh-so-fun vintage eBay store, with my boyfriend of almost a year - who has walked *every step possible* with me, with my videos I want to make for my history classes, the fiction I've started and never finished. The steroids and chemo brain often leave me unable to complete complex thoughts and tasks, but it wasn't 100% difficult 100% of the time. Instead, though, I would often watch tv or play Diablo or some other leisurely, unproductive activity. There were times I could have been "working," but instead, I was playing. But my Ego is often unfairly hard on me - everyone's is, if you think about it - and it was doing it again. Don't I deserve to have some fun, I mean, even if I *wasn't* going through chemo, EVERYONE deserves fun, right? If that is true, then so do I, regardless of chemo. I prioritized my classes first, and beyond that, all work and no play makes Stacy so much sicker. I deserved the play time. And it hurts a little less to say that now, because I believe it a little more.
And so the purpose of tonight's blog was to help me let myself off the hook for the things I seem to feel I *should* have done, which really is simply a false statement. Because I *did* do what I was supposed to. I took care of myself as best I could so that I could start getting better as soon as possible. Even when I slipped and worked too long or stayed up too late, I always came back to taking care of myself. I deserved it. I still deserve it. Saying that makes me smile. Right now, I have little trouble believing it :-).
postscript: I have been watching "Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants" for the first time ever while writing this entry. The scene playing while writing that last paragraph was in a store where one of the four main teenage girl characters is making a documentary with the help of a 10 year old girl. The main character just found out the girl is dying of leukemia. Normally, the main character is rather irritated by the girl, but today, she's asking her to help her with one more interview. The girl figures out that the main character learned her secret and looks at her and says, "Are you asking me to help you with the film because I have leukemia?" Thoughtful, delayed response - "Maybe." The girl thinks about it and smiles a little. "Okay."
:-)
