The Hubris of the Scholar

sen·ior·i·tis

sēnyəˈrītis/

a supposed affliction of students in their final year of high school or college, characterized by a decline in motivation or performance and can be, although not always, accompanied by an absolute certainty that there is little left to learn.

As time pushes me ever closer to, once again, being a "senior," the reminders that I do *not* know everything seem to be getting more pointed.

The most recent?...  "Oh, L@@K," she said, all triumphant and confident and smiling, "I found her!  My Inner Breast Cancer B@d@ss was with me all along!  The Schol@r inside was just biding her time until I was ready.  And ready, I am!"  [Imagine arms up and out, with palms turned up towards the sky and head thrown back as the words burst from my very being] "I LOVE AND EMBRACE MY INNER BREAST CANCER B@D@SS!"

My naivety is a never-ending source of entertainment and consternation for me.  And probably those around me.

I was so happy to be in a place of "ok."  I was so relieved to find some peace.  I was so thrilled to feel *good* more frequently than *bad,* that I believed the hype.  I swallowed it all, hook, line, and sinker.  Chemo had ended *6 months* before.  All signs pointed (and still point) to complete and utter destruction of any detectable cancer.  I was moving through the reconstruction surgeries with relative ease.  With my rose-colored glasses adding a lovely hue to the whole scene, I allowed myself a congratulatory pat on the back for coming through this hell of a cancer journey with my sanity (largely) in tact.  I just *knew* that finding my I.B.C. B@d@ss was my first major step into "life after cancer."  I treated myself with a rare bit of pride and admiration at how far I had come in a year that was at once maddeningly long and anxiety-inducing short.  I may as well have been practicing my "Pomp and Circumstance" walk and decorating the mortarboard I would soon pin to my hair.  

I thought chemo was hard.  Well, to be fair, chemo *was* hard.  But there is a luxury in being the kind of physically ill that is painfully obvious to you and anyone around you.  No one (including yourself) expects much of you when you are getting a toxin designed to destroy human cells pumped into you every Friday.  And that, I have come to see, is something of a luxury.

The chemicals we put in me now don't make me puke, won't make me bald, and can't, technically, kill me unlike the weekly Taxol injections.  There are few visible signs of the chemical battle raging inside me.  But this, what I do now every day, this is harder.  Every day I get up, and I look in the mirror.  The way I look and the way I feel are so discordant, so opposing that cycle of physiological anxiety begins anew, just like it did the day before and just like it will tomorrow.  I look...  good.  But I feel...  indescribably terrible.  So much for my short-lived senioritis.