The Day of Magical Thinking

When bad things happen, some people of faith tend to say, “Well, that wasn’t God; that was just a bad thing happening.”

Holocaust, dead babies, friends overdosing: Not God. Just happenstance. 

To try to integrate trauma into a worldview that includes a benevolent power underlying all, one must, according to some, reject the trauma as a part of the benevolent power’s purview. 

Now, granted, one might imagine that an all-powerful being would probably have the authority to have a hand in such things. But for the case of some arguments, we’re told, Shit happens. 

Awakened in me, or at least uncovered in me, recently is a boatload of anger. A feeling of betrayal by some power in the Universe that just as I was beginning to come out of the trauma of a history dotted with: abuse, neglect, rape, alcoholism, pauperism and solitude: that it would be then that my blood would suddenly turn to cancer inside me. 

However, in order to feel a betrayal, I must believe that it was personal. Or, if not personal, that there was somehow a fairness or order in the Universe that was reversing on me. 

And, I can’t. I can’t anymore believe that I’ve been betrayed because it is upsetting the fabric of my nature. 

To think, Okay, now I have to go through trauma recovery around cancer on top of all the rest I was dealing with, makes me feel hideously resentful and angry and frustrated, and in the end, hopeless. 

Because if things are going to abruptly turn to a pit of fire at any given moment, what’s the point? What’s the point in healing, helping, creating, being?

And I can’t have that. I can’t be someone who carries around the question, What’s the point?

It’s very bad for me. 

So, what if I try something different, for even a day? Car won’t start? Shit happens. Find a penny on the sidewalk: Good shit happens. Cancer recurs and I have to transplant my bone marrow by shearing away the essence of my body? Well, Shit Happens. 

I dunno. Doesn’t sound realistic to me. But, then again, what does?

Do I just assume good things will happen to and for me, and wash aside the traumas? I am someone who believes that repression and white-washing doesn’t actually work, so what if you just reject it, instead of repress it?

If I begin to believe that I’m someone who can have stability, joy, purpose, fulfillment, connection and ease… well, anything that doesn’t fit with that worldview just file under “Not God”?

And here’s the rub with the whole “God,” Higher Power, Benevolent Force, Life Itself, Universe shit:

I happen to belong to -- and had my life saved by -- a group of people who say that in order to not drink yourself into oblivion and become a tornado in the lives of others … you need a “spiritual solution.”

Uh. Hmmm….

So, what if. What if just for a day (because hey, it’s a day I fought the fuck hard for anyway), I just assume and walk about and believe that good shit happens? That I have good luck. That I am destined to fulfillment in my work and romantic life. 

What if I let my anger and betrayal and hurt and aghastness rest… not shoved away or down, but just set into an open box called, “Shit Happens”? 

Meh. It's worth a shot. 

The Look-Good.

I was with a group of close friends on Friday night, celebrating one of their “not getting drunk and sleeping with strangers” anniversaries. These are women I’ve known for nearly my whole 8 years of not doing the same, and who know me and have seen me through my best and worst. 

And I couldn’t tell them the truth. 

It wasn’t until the assembled group was about to close that I got up, walked to the podium at the front of the room and said, “This is the place you’re supposed to tell the hard things. And, things are really bad.”

I began to sob. I eeked out that 5 months ago, I burned my life down, and I’m exhausted and isolated. I told the group that I realized I had to say something when, tonight, I couldn’t hold eye contact with my friends over our dinner. That the closest women I have in my life, I couldn’t look at for too long, because if I did… they would see… and I would break down crying. 

And I didn’t want to do that. 

Because it doesn’t feel like there’s anything to do. So, why talk about it?

I told them about being an expert at looking good on the outside, and feeling like dog shit on the inside. Now, the thing about the “look good” is that, sure, who doesn’t want to look good? Especially when you are feeling crappy, sometimes it’s nice to say, Well, at least I can still pull myself together. At least I can assemble an outfit, put on a little makeup, and … look good. 

However, the other thing about the “look good” is that generally, if you look good, people assume you feel good. And that’s part of the guise of it, of course; that’s part of its purpose… is to fool people. Because if no one asks, you don’t have to tell. 

It’s a pretty little prison we wrap ourselves up in, in an effort to try to do it alone. Because, again, what else is there to do?

In my case, I’m going on interviews, auditions, tours of school, taking tests, ordering physics books. I’m going about the wildest flurry of activity, the other day, I called it a blizzard. 

All this manic pushing to get out of my current situation that I feel ashamed I got into again. Molly, quitting another job without a plan. Molly, struggling to find work, again. Molly looking into a hundred different career paths, and feeling like a strung-out shell of a person through it all. 

Because, as I said earlier: Things are really bad. 

There’s a lot of crying, a lot of hopelessness, a lot of just trying to make it through these extended, exhausting retail days. 

A co-worker I’ve been sharing some of my, “Someone get me out of here” activities with said yesterday that shouldn’t this (the retail job) feel laughable in comparison to what I’ve been through? (She knows about the cancer.) And I said, No. 

Instead, it feels like, “Haven’t I been through enough that I shouldn’t have to deal with this fucking bullshit?” That’s how it feels. 

It feels like I push and try and explore and push and try and explore, and nothing moves. 

I feel like the hamster on the wheel, working so fucking hard, and getting no where. 

I will say that this new idea to pursue teaching feels like the first thing that makes real and doable sense in all my career lily-pad hopping. So, that feels like a win, and progress, and hope. 

And in the center of that remains the fact that my feet and legs ache, right now, I’m earning half what I did when I was at my office job, I have a dwindling savings account that was really fucking hard-earned, and I have no back-up.

So. What? Why do you talk to anyone about that anyway? No one really has anything to tell you of use, except, “We love you and you’ll get through this.” … And take that to the bank. 

But, no. It’s fabulous that I have people around me, and I know there’s something to telling the truth, and so I did. When I realized I couldn’t look my best friends in the eye for fear they might see the truth of what’s happening beyond the “look good,” it was time to say something. (Though, perhaps earlier could have been better, too.)

Did they particularly have anything that shorn through the bleakness in which I find myself, again? Not really. No magic bullets. No words of enlightenment. Just simple suggestions like, Go to a meeting everyday with people who actually know you, and share about this. 

And so, I am. 

I hate it. I feel vulnerable, and I want everybody to not talk to me about it afterward — but there’s no controlling people. 

Because here’s the undercurrent of all this surface nonsense, all this struggle to stay and get afloat and to try to believe that things will change and get better if I keep doing "the next right thing," that life will even out, that I'll be okay...: 

The undercurrent is: I. Don't. Know. That. (None of us do, surely.)

But, specifically, I'm talking cancer. I have a lot of cancer grief to go through, and I don’t know how. 

Partly I don't talk about it because I feel it's so dramatic to talk about, because I'm scared people will roll their eyes, and think, "Sheesh, enough with the cancer already; you lived, didn't you? Move on!" 

I don’t know how to share with people about how angry, betrayed, and every day still terrified -- with every cough, or sleepless night, or strange headache -- about a recurrence I feel. 

I don’t know how to begin to put faith back into a universe and a universal law that arbitrarily may decide to kill you "just cuz." How to “come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to wholeness” when everything solid was ripped from under me in an instant. 

And that’s what I’m being asked to do. I’m at the point, again, where I’m supposed to contemplate my idea of a “higher power,” and I want everybody to take their, “It’s the cycle of life and death,” it’s love, it’s community, and shove it with red hot poker down their own throats. 

Because: Fuck. You. (non-cancer having people, she mumbles mentally.)

I am going at all this activity pretty much on my own, without the guidance and space of meditation, without a wisp of a belief in the goodness of the world, or in the belief that efforts bring results. 

And it’s really hurting me. 

There’s a lot of work I’m going to have to do on this, and I feel SO TIRED. I’m so tired. Have you fought cancer and then had to go about the daily business of living, getting parking tickets and paying bills you can’t afford? And are you now being asked to reconcile that traumatizing experience with a belief in goodness or constancy in the universe in order to stay sober and not kill yourself?

Few of us have. And I don’t know how to do it, because I don’t know who to turn to. 

And so, I’m doing this -- or have been trying to do this -- all alone, in many ways. Sure, I’m reaching out, and the shell of isolation is cracking, and I imagine “good” things will come of it. But for now, I’m just so tired. 

So that’s what’s beyond the “Look-Good,” friends. It’s not pretty, or happy, or palatable for many, including myself. It’s sad and raw and real and really fucking painful to be where I am right now. 

And… if one of you tells me “this too shall pass” or "everybody dies sometime," i’ll shove an iron through your cranium.

(Because it is small comfort, even though it’s true.)

A Kick Start.

Well, folks. Tomorrow I will publish my indiegogo campaign to help me pay the back-rent accrued when I was in chemo.

It’s been a short, strange, and amazing process. About 2 weeks ago, I was sitting with a friend in a café, both of us “applicationing,” online searching, looking for work, looking for authenticity.

I said to him, “You know my favorite thing I ever did? I hosted this group art show in SF.”

I showed him the LocalArtists Productions page, practically defunct and way out-dated. I told him how successful it was, people came, people who didn’t know they could sell their art sold their art. I even sold some!

People laughed, ate, met, mingled. It was divine.

I then told my friend that I haven’t painted much since then. That I can’t really in my small apartment with a cat who likes to walk over wet paint. I told him about this art studio I found while exploring the 4th floor of my apartment building, and how I’d inquired to my landlord about it, and how he’d said, yes, I can rent it for $25 a month(!!!), if I pay off my back rent.

Almost $4000 now. Out of work for 6 months, only working part time after that. I racked up quite the debt. And have been slowly paying it back. But…

Here’s where lightning struck. My friend said to me, “You should do a Kickstarter. This is exactly the kind of thing people use crowdfunding for."

I looked at him, stunned, quizzical, a little vague. I tilted my head, trying to process what was just said, offered, opened up before me.

I replied, incredulous, “I guess people would donate to a cancer survivor who wanted to make art again, wouldn’t they?”

And so it was, 2 weeks ago we started something new.

Planning meetings, a few video shoots, a lot of “omigod, I’m not even wearing any make-up, I wish I’d smile, I look awful” moments. And it’s done. It’s being polished, and tomorrow morning, I will push this campaign out into the world in the hopes that others will actually feel something from it.

In the hopes that I can stop writing “back-rent” in my monthly budget. In the hopes that I can sever that weight of debt from that time in my life.

As I sat with my friend going over the language in the campaign, we have been talking a lot about “closing the cancer chapter.” And I turned to him and said, “This isn’t closing it, you know? This doesn't make it 'over.'”

There is no “closed” when it comes to cancer. I’m in remission. I’m 2 years into the 5 year “almost as healthy as normal people” period. But it’s never closed. It can be moved on from in many ways, but the simple existence of the campaign itself is proof that I’m willing to move into the world in a way I wasn’t before cancer.

Everything I do is in reaction to it.

I told my friend, tearfully, that this campaign is important. It’s helpful. But it isn’t the end. The “closing the chapter” is a great sound-byte, and I’m using it. But it was important for me to say to him, “Not quite.”

For better or worse.

I am proud of the strides I’ve made since being sick. I’m proud of the advancements and actions I’ve taken – being in a band, singing, being in plays, a musical, going to Hawaii, Boston, Seattle, trying dating again, flying a goddamned plane! – and I’m overwhelmed by the support I have gotten.

But, it’s so hard to sit with the reality that I am who I am because of what I went through.

I still get nervous when I get a sore throat, cuz that’s how I was diagnosed. I still have to keep extra tabs on my health insurance. I still have a butterfly-shaped scar on my chest where the chemo tube went.

And last week I put on a sweater I hadn’t worn in a while, and pulled a strand of hair caught in it. The hair, my hair, was long, past shoulder length. It was from before I was sick. Before my hair fell out.

It was like seeing a unicorn. Evidence of a mythical time. A time called, “Before.”

It existed. I existed.

The cancer chapter isn’t closed. I don’t know if it ever does.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t take action and strides and make use of the persistent lesson to live.

I am proud of the woman I have become and continue to evolve into. I know she exists now. And maybe she always did. 

forget frida.

When I was sick (that phrase again!), I wrote a blog entitled Frida. I was questioning why I wasn’t putting into action all of the passions I was saying I’d staved off for so long, asking why I wasn’t engaging in music and art during those long swaths of empty time laying in bed. Why wasn’t I being like Frida? Creating from my place of weakness and also of determination?

Of course, the feedback a cancer patient gets when they say something like this is, Molly, be gentle with yourself. But, it’s hard to do that when you feel riled up in the manic thrall of fear and impending death. You want to do everything right now. You feel you have to. And yet, of course you can’t. Because you’re sick.

It’s nearly two years since I wrote that blog, and the patience I wasn’t able to give myself then, the compassion and forgiveness of being in a situation that didn’t allow for movement like that is finally arriving – because I am and have changed.

I, of course, couldn’t change so much then; it was a “hold onto the ropes and try not to fall overboard” moment and series of moments. But, the storm has passed, and I have, despite any chiding I may have toward myself and judgment about where I am in life, I have moved to someplace different – I have implemented the changes I begged myself to take.

Of course, too, it’s hard in its own way to show up for yourself differently, to put yourself on the line – to put your dreams and goals out there, in black and white and in the real world. It’s nerve-inducing, it’s uncertain. As you’ve read recently, it means that I battle self-questioning, and “compare despair,” and still a nagging sense of “You’ve got to live your best life NOW!”

Well, in retrospect and with perspective, I get to see that I am. I am on that path I longed for. It’s become a bit more clouded (for me) since I’ve made the decision to leave my steady job at the end of the month. But, I have to trust that these actions and decisions are the outcome of a woman who started walking out of the dark when she wrote a critical, demanding blog about needing to be like Frida Kahlo, and who has taken impetus from that by engaging in those things she thought were too late.

To quote Galaxy Quest: Never Give Up; Never Surrender.

If I can hold the compassion of acknowledging where I am in comparison to where I was, I have to celebrate myself. Hard as that is for most of us.

But how many times, too, have I written that we never give ourselves the chance to acknowledge our successes? We climb and grapple and trip up a mountain, and once finally to the top, we pause for maybe a millisecond to look around and take in what we’ve just accomplished before we charge up the next mountainhead.

So, I take this moment to look around from the top of this place, at my bass I sort of know how to play now, at the script sitting on my kitchen table, and I thank myself and the opportunities around me for allowing me and helping me to get here.

The only person I can rightly compare myself to is myself. And today I whisper through the veil of time to that woman in a hospital bed – demanding she be something different – that she is. We are.

Can I get a Witness?

You want it to be done. You want to stop referencing cancer, or marking time as “before I got sick,” “when I was sick.” You wanna stop the pang of knowing that “sick” was more than a bad cold. You wanna stop remembering what it felt like. And you want it to stop being dramatic, and making you feel dramatic.

You want the, “Oh, you cut your hair” comments to not sting as much, since no, you didn’t cut it, it fell out. You wanna feel neutral when you see a t.v. show where someone’s diagnosed with it, and stop silently commenting, No that's not at all what it's like. You want to stop gagging every time you smell Kaiser hand soap. You want to stop feeling the fear and the grief and the heartbreak you’d felt when you were sick.

The feelings you couldn’t really feel then because you had to just soldier up. When you were told, You could be a poster child for cancer. When you had to be braver than you wanted because you needed to not scare your friends.

And, there were the few friends you knew you didn’t have to be brave with, or braver than you'd felt. There were the few who let you cry the Ugly Cries, and the one who laid in your narrow hospital bed with you while you napped, all wiped out from chemo. The one who went to three health food stores to get the right kind of protein drink, since you couldn’t eat solids. The one who bought your own bejeweled reusable cup in which she brought you green shakes, and who packed and unpacked your hospital room with you every single chemo round, and stayed overnight at home with you the first night after your first release.

You want to remember the witness, and you want to forget why you needed one. You want to offer the deepest gratitude and you want to stop feeling gnawed by the uncertainty of that time.

You want to love the witness, and you want to stop being reminded of what it was they held you through.

There is no forgetting, there’s only fading. And I don’t want to forget it really; I just don’t know how to process it all still. Though it seems I am nonetheless.

I was on the phone with my mentor yesterday, talking about this one friend who showed up for me then and how, post-cancer, our relationship hasn’t been as strong or connected. That somehow it’s almost like cancer, or acute trauma, was the foundation of our friendship, and now that it’s passed, it feels like there’s not much more to go on.

I told her how sad I am that we’re not like we were, but that I don’t know that I can or if I want to be otherwise.

It reminds me of a quote from a movie that will make you groan. But. In Speed, Sandra Bullock tells Keanu Reeves that relationships based on intense experiences never work. (She later jokes, they’ll have to base it on sex, then. And that’s not really an option with my friend, cute as she is!)

So, what do you do? I told my mentor that my friend was a witness to that hardship, and about my pattern of how difficult it is for me to let go of certain things because I’m afraid people won’t believe me. That my experience of something will be called into question, without someone else to verify it. My friend is my verifier and my witness. Without a current relationship, who will remember? Without the reminder, who will believe me?

So, it’s about more than her, isn’t it? It’s about more than needing her continued friendship as a point of reference of truth in my life. It’s about my own ability to hold truth and facts for myself without outside validation.

And that, is a lifetime process.

But it brought up a lot of grief yesterday on the phone (which is why there was no daily blog). The star-pupil cancer patient. Who wore bright colored socks and leopard print chemo caps. Who had her own stash of organic herbal teas and would walk into the hall to fill her own ceramic mug from home. The star cancer patient who worked so hard not to be one, now processing what it actually felt like underneath all that “Chin Up” posturing that was half-posturing, half-I’m totally awesome, and cancer can fuck itself.

But the friendship has suffered since I’ve been healthy. And I don’t know how or what to do on that. I think releasing the attachment of my friend as witness, of needing a witness is a good place to start.

I don’t want to remember and I don’t want to forget. And until I find a place of peace with “what went down,” that division will always cause me unrest. 

Blood Brothers

Yesterday morning I had coffee with a cancer friend, for lack of a better term.

He’s someone who reached out to me when I returned to work last Spring, who was 15 years out from his own similar cancer diagnosis, and said if I ever wanted to talk, he was available.

Since then, we’ve had coffee about once every 6 months or so, and we get to talk about walking back into a life that sort of looks the same on the outside, but has completely changed. We exchange the requisite, “Everything’s okay with your health?” question early in the conversation so we can continue on.

We speak mostly about work and fulfillment.

At the time we first met up, he was in a transition of his own, and now, about 18 months later, is again. And so we spoke about meaningfulness, about intention, about the often tipped balance between the checkbook and joy.

I love talking with him. Because he is my cancer friend. Because, it’s different than the first coffee date I had even earlier yesterday morning (a Jewish holiday and therefore a day off work), when I met with the home stager about potentially working and apprenticing with her.

With her, I only said things like, I’m just looking for a change and to instill more creativity into my every day life, to engage more of my heart in my work. With him, the whole conversation is built on the understanding of why that’s so. It’s not just because I’m a flighty 30something; It’s because I’m a fighting 30something (if you will).

I left the first coffee date with the home stager feeling mildly despairing and depressed. And I left the conversation with my cancer friend feeling uplifted, supported, and understood.

I know what he’s talking about when he says how it wrecks him that he has been so wrapped up in work again that he hasn’t had time for his outdoor hobbies. He knows what I’m talking about when I say that we have the privilege and curse of not being able to run on the hamster wheel of life without questioning what we’re doing.

I never wanted a cancer friend. I never wanted to be part of a cancer support group, and tried a few times without going back. Therapy isn’t the same thing either, though that helped. But talking with someone who also had their next breath marched up to the guillotine… it’s different.

It’s not "all cancer all the time." Our conversation wasn’t even about grief or anger. It was barely about cancer at all, except that of course it was. It is the reason we met, became friends, and can share with one another on a different level what our life paths are looking like and what we want them to look like and the struggle between just going along as planned and taking the time to question it all.

I imagine in some ways, it’s like war veterans’ ability to have an instant understanding of one another: You’ve both seen life and death; you’ve both fought bravely and been terrified; you’ve both come back to civilian life and are attempting to make sense of it all, while still paying your cable bill and buying groceries alongside every other citizen.

But you also know that, conscious or not, you both make every decision in reaction to and on top of your experience at war. You can’t not. It’s part of your DNA, now. You’re blood brothers.

I never knew I needed a cancer friend. And I sit here writing with tears of gratitude that I have one. 

T’shuvah

(In my vague and limited Jewish knowledge) T’shuvah refers to the time in the Jewish calendar between Rosh Hashanah—the Jewish New Year—and Yom Kippur—when our names are sealed in the “Book of Life” by G-d for the next year.

T’shuvah literally means to return, but most interpretations take it to mean a time of repentance. A time of atoning for our “sins,” and to acknowledge where we’ve “missed the mark” of our own moral target.

I’m not one for “sins,” or for “atoning,” or for asking forgiveness from a spiritual entity. In my own spiritual practice, there is a habit of taking note of where we’ve been wrong and amending that behavior, whether through direct conversation with someone we’ve harmed or through choosing to act differently in the future.

But, the idea of asking a “higher power” to forgive me for anything at all has never sat well with me. I simply don’t think that anything that has the power to create life and death and change and love would need my asking. I believe that whatever “G-d” is, “it” is much too loving or non-personified to ever require me to ask it to forgive my behavior.

As I said, I still think the process of taking stock of my behavior and righting my own wrongs is very important to my emotional wellbeing and my personal relationships. But on the spiritual plane, G-d would never need me to ask for forgiveness. There’s nothing to forgive – there’s only love, acceptance, and a desire for me to be my best self.

That said, I have been reflecting that this week of t’shuvah has certainly been one of returning. I feel that my actions are those of a woman returning to herself and her values; returning to my true nature, and returning to ideas and hopes that were feared or abandoned.

I am in a musical. I’ve returned to that dream of acting and singing, despite the fears and self-judgments it still brings up in me.

I have officially announced this week that I am moving on from my office job. Again, a return to my true desires, my internal compass. I have stopped hitting the Snooze button on my instincts and drives.

No matter what comes of it, disaster or “success,” I am trying something brand new for me. And that is certainly a return to curiosity, innocence, hope, and creation.

I told my coworker that I boycott Yom Kippur these days. The fasting and the communal atoning of sins. I shun this day and its activities because the idea is that by atoning for our sins, we will be “inscribed in the Book of Life” for another year.

According to the Jewish calendar, in 2012 the evening closing Yom Kippur was the moment of my Leukemia diagnosis. I spent the day of Yom Kippur in an ER. And closed the chapter of that day with cancer. I was 30 years old.

I have done a lot of work around turning that diagnosis into the seeds of a new life. But I will never deny that I have a few wheelbarrows full of anger and grief that still need … sorting or composting or alleviation. Or simply time to feel them, and then to let them go, perhaps, if that’s what happens.

But for me, the idea that on one of the most holy days of the Jewish year, on the day when a person is either granted another year of life or is not, I cannot hold the tragedy of being told half my blood was cancer on that same day. 

And, I imagine, my feelings toward all of this will transform, lessen, or evolve. But, for now, I boycott Yom Kippur.

I have used this week of T’shuvah to take stock of where I am desirous to return to and acknowledge and rejoice in the truth of my soul, and to note where I already am. I have used this week to affirm that life can be new and different and fulfilling.

I will never need the forgiveness of an entity that is either made of benevolence or simply is the indifferent force of Life itself.

My week of T’shuvah is and has returned me to a place of excitement and possibility. I don’t need a communal atonement to reward me for how exceptional that is. 

That said. Shanah Tovah u'Metukah -- May you have a good (tovah) and sweet (metukah) year, friends. And may we write our own Books of Life. 

Day 21

Today ends the 21-Day Meditation “Challenge” by Deepak Chopra and Oprah I’ve been following this last month. Today’s “thought” is about Fulfillment.

And despite coming home on Tuesday night (finally tucking into bed after a chaotic day of work and a busy night of rehearsal) and bursting into quiet tears of overwhelm, today as I get ready for the day, the soft tears are of a different sort.

Fulfillment.

Two years ago on Yom Kippur I was diagnosed with Leukemia. Last year around this time, I hosted an “I Didn’t Die” party and played in a band on the bass I’d carried for over a decade but never learned to play. This year on and around the anniversary of my diagnosis, you’ll find me onstage in musical theater, another dream set down for over a decade.

Fulfillment.

In workland, I continue to feel like the hockey player who gets checked into the boards, my own path crowded out by the demands of others and by the very nature of the perpetually-behind game in which I find myself. I continue to know that things need to change, want to change them, do research on changing them, … and haven’t (yet) changed them.

I continue to desire giving myself the “right” kind of time to flesh out ideas for a different mode of working, one that means more fulfillment, less time, more stability. I continue to lament that the nature of the game I’m in doesn’t allow for pausing. Except when you’ve been sent to the bench. Which I call Netflix-binging. But that kind of pause isn’t productive, and I know this.

I am looking for the space in which to create a different kind of life, to have the space to dream and plan and implement. And, it’s not this exact moment. Which can be really hard for me. Believing as I do, that my stasis in this position (over-working and underearning) creates a dissatisfaction in me that bleeds into other areas of my life, and keeps me feeling less-than and stuck and not ready or viable or worthy.

And yet.

As I’ve spoken of it, one foot may be in the bear trap, but the other is passionately trying to walk anyway – or, as in the Addams show, to tango. I continue to have one foot in the direction … no – in the reality of a vision and a dream of mine. It’s not the direction, it’s the reality.

And truly, how different I know this is than it was. To be in it, instead of dreaming of or lamenting it.

Can you be half-way fulfilled? I dunno. But, I do know that the hours spent in band, in rehearsal, in laughter, and in friendship are times of pure engagement, presence, and self-forgetting (sometimes!). That absence of commentary, of doubt, feels like the presence of fulfillment.

If I have created, and worked hard toward creating, a third of my waking hours to be ones of fulfillment, I have to acknowledge that the scale is tipping. It isn’t there yet. I still lament and cry and question if I will pursue, but those hours spent in joy …

*insert silent wonder*

Open Sesame!

I’m still a little giddy from last night’s show with my band. Our debut and farewell show! (Though, there are rumors we may have a “reunion show” on Halloween.)

But a friend said something to me after the show that’s been sticking with me. She said that I am so much more open and confident now, that I’ve changed so much in the last year.

This same friend sat with me in ERs, cared for my cat while I was in chemo, and allowed me to bawl on her couch when things seemed so hard.

We’ve known each other only for maybe 4 years, but a lot has certainly happened since then, and she said she feels like she’s seen me blossom. And that, especially with everything that I’ve been through, how heartening it is to see that I’ve become and am becoming more open, and more engaged.

She referenced a quote she’d read in a book about women’s aging, that women come to a crossroads in their lives where they choose: become more open, or become more rigid, and therefore bitter. I told her, I don’t think that’s just women!!

But, what struck me about her initial comment was that it echoed something I’d thought to myself only a few days earlier.

I was in my car, and made some kind of comment aloud to myself, and laughed about it. And I had a flashback to when I was in junior or senior year of high school, and this one frenemy commented that I’d become much more relaxed and funny in the last little while.

Which may have had something to do with the fact that I started drinking and smoking pot… but… She was right. I wasn’t as exacting or perfectionist as I had been.

I sort of took that “easy-going” train off the rails a few years later... But I remember feeling then that she was right, that I felt less … not “square,” but serious, I suppose. (I was a very serious teen!, like most emo children.)

And as I sat in my car laughing to and at myself the other day, I had a similar self-awareness: I’ve become and am becoming more easy-going. (In some ways! In others, you have to untangle my brain with a tweezer and a magnifying glass!)

To have that same sentiment reflected back to me only days later by my friend was heartening, affirming, and... sentimental.

She said that as she watched me play, she found herself getting teary, thinking about everything I've gone through, and what I’ve made of it. And then she had to check herself, because you don’t cry at a rock show! 

The same understanding about rigidity or openness I heard on an audio CD about “Exceptional Patients” from Dr. Bernie Siegel. He said that after cancer, people tend to go one of two ways: become scared of everything, because death is just around the corner, or (finally) throw caution to the wind, because you’ve literally faced one of the worst things that can ever happen to you. You’ve stared death in the face: Will you now shrink at all risks, or will you say, Tah, this is cake?

Well, we all know, I don’t think it’s “cake” to say “Tah” to fear, but we all know that I’ve been doing it anyway. Because, really, there isn’t anything greater to lose. There isn’t any harder challenge. (Now, yes, there are other challenges that people face that I cannot imagine, child loss being one that’s top of mind lately.)

I find no glory in shutting down. I’ve lived most of my life in a state of “flight” and paralysis. I will never call it a gift, but I do recognize with appreciation and awe that, following visceral horror, I have become a woman more willing to be open, free, funny, and present than I’ve ever been. 

My Brain Reads Like a Cafe Gratitude Menu...

I am pure, undiluted joy.

Honestly, you could culture my blood for Potions class.

There was an impromptu dance party.

I left an incoherent bubbling message on my mom’s voicemail, and called my brother, too. Who told me I’m awesome. And who I told back that he is, too.

For those who don’t follow my Facebook feed, I found out this morning that I got the role of Morticia in “Addams Family: The Musical.”

The one I don’t even know how I found the audition call for. The one I auditioned for this weekend to my own mediocre reviews. The one I was called back for, to my own mediocre reviews.

I’m sensing a trend here: What I think, and what reality tells me, may be two very different things.

And, here, for the better.

The astounding thing to me is this is the second lead role I’ve been offered in as many months. From, “you know your height gets in your way” to “please join us” … Wow.

There’s a quote that called me to sit for a moment in silence on my bed, breathing heavy from the fist pumping, Elaine-thumbs-out dance party:

Don’t forget to pause a minute and thank G-d for everything.

Thank you. Thank you, Universe, for conspiring for me. Thank you, Molly, for showing up even though you’re scared and doubtful. Thank you, FRIENDS, for receiving those phone calls and texts that ask you to send me love and support. Thank you, friends, for sending love and “likes” and hope.

I need you way more than you know.

And you always show up, which is marvelous – like, something to marvel at. Really.

The play will run mid-September to mid-October. This means that I will spend my October 7th birthday in performance.

I spent my 30th birthday with fondue and friends. I spent my 31st in a hospital bed, saying, "Next year: Brunch, huh?"

I celebrated 32, indeed, at brunch with a dear friend and her two kids whose laughter is part of my salvation.

And, god willing, I will spend 33 in pursuit of a dream I have let languish in a faded costume closet. The clothing of another woman in another life.

Life moves and shakes, it do.

And part of my work is to accept that these costumes, these roles, these friends, this love, this life … are for me, too.

Let’s throw open the doors, pull out these moth-eaten dreams, and hold them up to reality. They may be more solid than I’ve wanted to know.

Thank. You. 

Card Reading

I had very specific plans for when I came home last night: watch Apollo 13, “take care” of myself, and go to bed by 10.

Only one of these happened.

For most of the day, I was out & about in lots of conversation with lots of people, expending lots of up, outgoing energy, and I wanted to counter it with some quietude. Before coming home for the evening, I was in a coffee shop, finishing up some extra work, and addressing cards for some friends.

I didn’t have the address for one, so I texted her for it, and told her that I must have 10 of her envelopes at home with her address on it; in fact, I had one of hers on my mantle.

She asked me which one, but I couldn’t recall exactly, and told her I’d send her a photo of it when I got home.

This, was the first domino toward the hijacking of my evening.

I did come home, take a photo and send it to her, a lovely decorated envelope with stickers and curly-cues and kind words, like all of hers. Next to it on my mantle (well, the top of a bookshelf, really) were a card from the director and one from the assistant director of the play I was in in April, with deliciously glowing, appreciative, complimentary, and supportive words. Such kindness and such a reflection of my being “seen” by them, in one of my aspiring avocations. The last one up there was a thank you card from my best friend on Long Island’s wedding, thanking me for being there and what a treat it was to have me there, literally in her bed, the night before the wedding, and helping/watching her get ready the next day; that it wouldn’t have been the same without me.

You can see why I keep these things.

But, it was also time to probably pack them away, do some cleaning. And I wanted to send more photos of my friend’s envelopes to her, since I knew she was in a space to need her own (literal) sparkle reflected back to her. 

And, down the rabbit hole we go, into the desk drawer where I keep cards, envelopes so I can remember return addresses (yes, I know there’s a better way), and art inspiration bits, like postcards from galleries or pages torn from magazines.

I’ve known this drawer needs attending to. If, god forbid, I were to croak, it would be hell for the person cleaning it out, and I know they’d just trash the lot, since, who keeps someone else’s old greeting cards.

But, also, it’s unusably full at the moment. Because in it, too, are all the cards I received when I was initially diagnosed with Leukemia in late September 2012, and also a host of them came in around the Hanukkah/Christmas season that year.

I’ve been avoiding having to carve through them. Because how can you discard those messages?

When I was sick, I lined all the cards up on the walls of my hospital room. I taped every single one up around me, to remind me of the network of support and love that I had. Each card, a message of love, faith, healing, fortitude, just for me. You couldn’t come into my hospital room without immediately knowing that I was loved. And how f’ing important was that.

This was not the room of a dying woman. This was not the room of a woman told she had a 40% chance of living through the next 5 years, even with treatment. This was not the room, either, of a woman who looked like a patient, despite the baldness, weightloss, and IV stuck into my arm and chest. I wore jeans and a sweater, like everyone else. I was a human, not a patient. I was a woman loved, not a pity case.

How rallyingly important was that to know, feel, and remember every single day.

But, when the trips to the hospital were finally over, and it was time to reacclimate to living in my apartment full-time, what to do with those cards?

I’m a keeper of things. Sentiments, magazine pages, interesting rocks I find on a mountain or beach. I wouldn’t say I’m a hoarder, but I do have a bag of gently used tissue paper in my closet … but it’s folded neatly and in color blocks, so it’s okay, right?!

I also have a bag in my closet of the covers to theater booklets of plays I’ve been to; movie stubs; plane tickets; the brochure for a place I went camping or an attraction I toured.

The trouble is, I’m not a scrap-booker, so I just kinda carry this bag of non-chronologically ordered “crap” with me from home to home. But, that’s okay. One day, like the cards, I’ll go through them.

But, last night was for the card drawer.

It was slow-going. I had to take a deep breath before taking the rubber band from around the batch of 2012 holiday cards. I knew this was going to take a while and probably bring things up.

But I began. And with each card, I was reminded of why I’d kept them until now.

Here’s the one from my college classmate, now in LA, saying she’d enclosed a gift card to Trader Joes.

Here’s one from a former colleague saying she loves getting the bloggish updates I was posting then to my lotsahelpinghands website.

Here’s one handwritten from an Etsy company saying “a friend” was thinking of me and wanted me to stay warm. This, I remember, accompanied a package of 6 “chemo caps” ranging from thin to thick, the one I wore most, a fuzzy leopard print that kept me feeling fun and warm. I still don’t know who sent those, as there was no name. Thank you, whoever you are.

Last night, with each, if I knew the sender and their cell number, I took a photo of the card, and sent it as a text with a note of thanks to them. Each text, a reminder to us both of what friendship means, even for people who aren’t close.

It was nearly 11 when I finally decided to stop. I’ve barely made a dent into the drawer. But was able to cull a few things out, deciding that with some, having a photo of them now is enough.

At the closing of this activity, I found myself in soft tears of gratitude. So many people surrounded me with love. With funny cards and sentiments, with crazy wacked-out envelopes, with heartfelt messages of hope and healing. And only a handful of these folks were people I keep in regular touch with. So many people came out of the woodwork to support me.

I was told once during the time I was sick, that I had no idea how many people were rooting for me. I agreed. I knew I had no idea, and I knew that was astounding and one of the greatest showings of human generosity that I’ve witnessed.

I had priests, rabbis, Muslims, and Buddhists praying for me. My mom’s hairdresser and my Aunt’s student. I had a class of kindergarteners praying for me.

I remember, too, when I was sick, trying to figure out how I could send thank you cards to everyone who’d contacted me, but I could only handle a few.

In this retread through the cards, in sending them back out to their sender with my note of thanks, I hope I am closing that loop of love, and letting you all know:

Your prayers worked, and I love you back.  

Aesop was a Scientist.

Chances are, like me, you’ve heard a hundred versions Aesop's fable, "The Oak and the Reed," wherein we're taught to bend like a reed in a storm, instead of remaining stalwart as an oak which will be blown over.

The moral is to remain flexible in the face of challenge or adversity, instead of becoming rigid and unmoving. To move with the times, to let things shift around you without trying to control them or how they’re affecting you. To be at ease with how things are, because when the storm does pass, if you’ve remained reed-like, you’ll stand up into the sunlight again.

Yes, we’ve all heard this, and again if you’re like me, you vacillate between these flora’s coping mechanisms, flexible to rigid and back again. Sometimes within the same hour.

However, one story I didn’t know was one I heard on the little audio book I’m listening to now: The Biodome Moral.

(Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with the Pauly Shore movie, but it’s valuable nonetheless.)

Scientists in the 80s, the book reports, created a perfect replica of Earth and Earth’s atmosphere within a dome. They then sent 8 scientists into the dome to live there for 2 years. Among their findings was what happened to the trees.

Inside the dome, there was no wind and no storms. The scientists assumed that without the challenges of storms to damage the trees, they would grow taller and stronger and faster than those outside the dome.

Indeed, the trees grew faster and taller. But not stronger.

The trees were weak, and easily uprooted. The scientists discovered that the trees needed the challenge of the storms, of withstanding the storms, in order to become strong and healthy. By eliminating all adversity from their lives, they became big and tall, sure, but they also became hollow and weak.

Remind us of any other species?

I am not an advocate for adversity. I bristle vehemently when told that adversity is "a blessing," as I’m occasionally told about my cancer.

Which, by the way – never tell someone that. If they want to say that to you, great; listen, nod, be compassionate. But never be the one to tell them that it makes them stronger, never tell them that there will be a gift from it, or that it is itself a gift. All these things may be true, but fuck you, healthy person, for telling me to look on the bright side of leaking out my ass for a month. Even though you mean it authentically, lovingly, and truthfully.

I happen to know these things are true. I write here that they are; that having had that adversity has impelled and propelled me to engage in my life and in activities that I’d procrastinated on; necessitated my creating new relationships and boundaries that I’d been too scared to create before. Having had and survived cancer has irrevocably changed the rest of my life and given miles of perspective to every other storm I may encounter.

But if you haven’t noticed, sometimes we get tired of encountering storms, and I’d really prefer for you to not steal my lemons to make your own lemonade. -- And I still wouldn't call it a blessing. An opportunity, I'd concede. But I'm sure no one ever said: Bless me, father, with life-threatening illness. 

... I guess I still have some letters of complaint to write to the Universe's customer service department.

So,

The absence of storms makes us weaker. But, the preponderance of storms makes us exhausted.

To continue in fable-speak then, I suppose it’s appropriate to quote Goldilocks on the merits of balance and the middle way. To endeavor to create, withstand, be free from and grow from challenges that are not too big, not too small, but “Just Right.”

"Only Her Hairdresser Knows For Sure!"

I am likely not the only woman to tear up at the sighting of a gray hair on her head. But I may be one of the few who wells up with tears of gratitude.

Yesterday, during my morning primping, I noticed a gray hair. I usually don’t pull them out; this isn’t the first I’ve noticed. But this one, I decided to.

About 5 inches of silver, shiny, light-catching hair. 5 inches that have grown back since it all fell out from chemo in late 2012.

Call me crazy, but I’ve never been scared of going gray. I had none at all before cancer, and several now. But, even before then, I always thought of it as a rite of passage. As a crowning achievement, really. You’ve made it. You are alive to go gray at all. You are passing into the stage of life that is for richness, boldness, satisfaction, self-esteem and a greater degree of self-assurance.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from reading about aging generations, it’s that so much of our self-questioning begins to fall away once we reach “a certain age.” We begin to think less about how others see us, and more to question what we want to leave as a legacy. And this brings with it so much reflection and truth-finding.

Who wouldn’t want to age into that category?

Surely, you don’t have to turn 50 to begin to assess your values and your desires for the remainder of your years. Like me, and surely others, you can do that at most any age. But it helps to have some experience behind you to make those choices from a place of peace, not fear.

The first memoir I ever looked at, I didn’t read.

I saw it on a shelf in Borders (when it still existed) about 7 or 8 years ago. I noted the title, looked at the flap, and went on with my day. But I never forgot about it, and last year finally picked it up to read.

The title? Going Gray: What I Learned about Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Really Matters. A woman’s exploration of what that means to “go gray” in our culture and society. A lifelong hair dyer, she made the decision to give up the illusion, and embrace whatever lay under the chemicals, for better or worse.

Author Anne Kreamer looks at the history of dying our hair; goes “undercover” as a woman trying to reinvent herself to re-enter the workforce to see if image consultants will tell her to dye her now growing-out grays (none do); and comes to discover that with her new look comes a new clothing color scheme, and a new confidence.

She also doesn’t purport the superiority of letting her hair grow out. She talks with successful women who do and don’t dye, and let’s them have their experience. All she can speak to is her own.

Surely, it helps that she goes gray in a “nice” way, with silvery and dark chrome strands. Which is much the way I anticipate I will.

With my dark coloring, I imagine that I will go silver, instead of stale gray, or as my mom describes her (dyed) fading blond: dirty dishwater.

So, that "beauty in the beast" helps my acceptance, I’m sure.

But what brought me to tears yesterday as I stood there, admiring this newly-found strand, now plucked and held like a precious object in my hand, was the reality and giddy reminder I feel every time I find one: I made it. I am alive to have gray hair.

I’m alive to see what will happen with it: if they’ll turn out all spidery texture and I’ll lament I ever praised finding them. If I’ll consider dying it after all. Or if I’ll love every single thread of life these gray hairs represent.

I tear up when thinking about this, because it’s true. Because, like someone admiring a sunset, or their sleeping child, or the taste of a food never eaten, it means I’m alive. Which itself means I have a chance and a choice to make my life whatever I want it to be.

My gray hair represents possibility, transformation, and authenticity.

Who wouldn’t rejoice? 

On Leave.

The thing about being a good little soldier is that eventually you suffer battle fatigue.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve had doctors appointments up the wazoo because of a liver enzyme test that came back extremely elevated. Granted, it’s the first time they’d ever run this test since I finished chemo last Spring, but don’t try and tell them that.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten panicky emails from my doctor to stop drinking alcohol immediately (check), to get another test immediately (check), and asking if I’ve had my hepatitis vaccines when I was a kid (check).

Being the good little soldier I am, and using the wisdom of not pushing the panic button, I’ve done pretty well these past two weeks, doing what I’m told, following up diligently, and trying to follow the new all-organic diet suggested to me by my naturopath.

This is all well and good not to panic when panic isn’t prudent. But yesterday I came to see, while reduced to a ball of tears in front of a friend, that there is a third option between panicking and “soldiering on.” There’s acknowledgment of my fear.

I told my coworker the other day that I just feel weary – that trying not to freak out is exhausting; that trying to maintain an emotional equilibrium is hard work.

And underneath that even façade, which also has a thick vein of veracity, is fear. They can co-exist, but I have to acknowledge that they both do.

It is activating to have to go through all these tests. It is not my favorite thing to google "autoimmune hepatitis" (which, we learned, I don't have). It is even less my favorite thing to contemplate that the reason for this trouble in the first place is a result of something doctors did to me – despite the rational fact that they had to. I had Leukemia. The cure is chemotherapy. Chemotherapy causes havoc.

I am not freaking out, but I am concerned. And I am “activated.” It’s hard not to be – I’ve had legitimate reasons to freak out in the past – but even then, if you were a reader when I was going through that, you saw that the times I freaked out were few and far between – and then, they weren’t panics or freak outs, they were the falling-armor acknowledgments of a real threat to my security and joy.

I was a good soldier then too, but it was also very important to break down sometimes with someone trustworthy. To acknowledge both sides: Bravery and Vulnerability.

Which are coexistant. The first does not preclude the second. And I'm pretty sure the second enhances the first.

It was not as if I had some grand easy epiphany about allowing all of my emotions to be valid. I sat yesterday with a group of folks, and by the end of our time together, I was leaking silent tears. I didn’t anticipate to do that, but we create a sacred space together, a place where it was safe to allow something I didn’t know was happening arise. And because of that, a friend was able to see my pain, and sit with me while I let the soldier take a rest, and let the scared and weary and angry woman take a spin for a while.

I felt better after I acknowledged all that was going on. And coming to realize in conversation with her that I’d been forcing my experience into two categories: Panic and Perseverance. Acknowledging fear does not equate panicking, is what I learned. And it was important, so important, for me to let some of the rest of my emotions out, besides good humor, diligence, and perseverance.

Because I believe that without letting some of that pressure out, without allowing that vulnerability to arise, our capacity for soldiering is greatly hindered.

What happens is burn-out, instead.

When I only allow validity to one side of my experience, I am hampering my ability to move forward.

I don’t have to be a crying mess about having to seek out only organic meat and my fear of the cost and the inconvenience, and wondering if I’ll have to now be like those people in food addiction programs who have to carry around heavy-ass glass containers of their own food to restaurants because they can’t eat anything else and become a burden to myself and my social life…

but sometimes, at least once(!), I do have to admit that these are thoughts and emotions that are happening, too.

I’ve never really been a fan of the Buddhist term, “The Middle Way,” but fan or not, I seem to be learning all about it.

The Facebooks.

Yesterday, I saw another of those articles posted by a friend on Facebook about the rose-colored facade that Facebook allows us to put out to the world. About how we only see photos of grand trips and lattes with foam hearts drawn in them and that uber cute one of you and your partner looking so darn happy.

This article and those I’ve seen like it tell one side of the truth, but not all of it.

I didn’t comment on my friend’s article, as his friends were aggro-commenting about Falsebook and how pissed it makes them that we don't see the "whole" picture of others' lives. I didn’t want the agida of the notifications if I put my thoughts there, so, I’ll “post” my comment here:

Facebook saves my life.

When I was first diagnosed with cancer in an ER and led right upstairs to start intensive chemo treatment, there was no packing of stuff, no notifying loved ones or having some hippie prayer circle. I called my mom, and then I called one of my best friends and asked her to do the major task of letting Facebook know, because that is – whatever feelings we all may have about modernity, technology, and disconnection – where my friends “are.”

Because she did that for me, my friends knew where to find me, and what to bring me, and how to get in touch with me.

A few weekends ago, an acquaintance – someone I’ve met only a few times, someone I could say “hi” to “in real life” but wouldn’t call “in real life,” aka a Facebook friend – put up a call to go to a local lake for a lazy Sunday afternoon. I had no plans that day, I’d never been to that lake, and I took a chance at spending time with someone I barely knew by letting her know, via the Facebooks, that I would love to go with her.

We did, and I made other new (Facebook) friends. I had a wonderful and, for me, an adventurous afternoon.

When I got frustrated with my job search recently, I threw my resume up on my “wall,” and two people have given me actual live leads for work, and two have contacted me to offer me help on my resume. I’ve looked at this thing so many times, I see only dot matrix anymore.

When I couldn’t stand that I don’t know if I’ll get to go camping this summer once rehearsals start, I let the Facebooks know I wanted to go, and now will be going into the wilderness with "real" friends, having a respite from this social network thing that brought this trip to fruition in the first place.

I get to see that my college roommates aren’t dead, what state they live in, how many kids they have. I get to see friends from my high school musical days launching and thriving in their artistic careers. I get to read the witticisms, intrigues, and slush that my friends post, and I get to feel that I know they’re safe.

I have learned about friends’ weddings, deaths, job changes, moves, births, divorces, successes, struggles, and banalities. And they get to learn about mine.

I won’t say Facebook is a benevolent entity, wanting us to all feel connected in a disconnect era. I won’t say that this is the “best” way of keeping in touch with people you’ve lost contact with, or moved a few zip codes from. But it does work.

I can also see it from the side of the aggro-commenters, lambasting the system for creating a culture of constant "less than."

I can admit that just the other day, I Facestalked a crush’s ex, and felt the creeping compare/despair that I see so many of those Facebook “expose” articles lament. But, what I did as I felt that gnaw of “not as pretty, funky, cool, yoga-y, artistic, traveled, fun, witty” creep up was not to skewer Facebook for allowing her to present an awesome and curated face to the world. What I did was LEAVE HER PAGE.

For the love, peoples. It’s certainly not that I don’t also fall prey to that depraved inclination and curiosity. I’ve Facestalked ex’s new girlfriends (or wives), and I’ve Facestalked crushes exes. I've kept tabs on who's "talking" to who and leaving little digital roses on one another's doorstep. But, what I’ve learned to do by now is to remember that a Facebook wall is NOT the whole story, but EVEN IF IT IS, it’s NOMB (none of my business).

Other people are allowed to have happy lives, curated, sappy, enviable. And the choice I get to make is whether I want to engage with envy, not with Facebook. 

"Push the Button, Max!"

In the 1965 hilarious film, The Great Race, Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon) chases our hero, The Great Leslie (Tony Curtis) around the globe. Whenever Professor Fate attempts to unleash a hidden gem of an engine booster or booby trap, he yells to his sidekick, PUSH THE BUTTON, MAX! – which Max does, to uproarious and hijinxed disastrous results.

It would have been a Leslie Nielsen film if it were done in 80s.

What sparked this memory this morning is how often there’s a voice inside me egging me on to push the panic button. Come on, Max, this is a great idea! Let’s pull all ripcords, let the chips fall where they may! Damn the consequences, HOO-RAH!

Yesterday, I got an email from Kaiser to follow-up on some routine bloodwork I get done every few months now, just to keep tabs on my post-Leukemia cells. Apparently, my liver enzymes were elevated. Like, Wonkavator-through-the-factory's-glass-ceiling elevated.

My doctor wrote me that I had to come in for follow-up labs right away, that if I drank alcohol I should stop immediately, and that she was informing my oncologist, Dr. Li (which humorously autocorrected to “Dr. Lithium”).

Professor Fate wanted Max to push the button so bad. It’s bad news, it’s tragic, it’s cancer, it’s death, it’s imminent! PUSH THE BUTTON!

But… here’s the thing I’ve learned about pushing that button, from the movie, and from my own life experience: It rarely does anything productive.

So, I texted my coworker and my boss that I would be in late, that I was going to Kaiser, and then I called my naturopath/chiropractor/nutritionist in SF and made an appointment with him for that morning, too.

Because, this is how The Great Leslie would approach it: Pause, Assess, Reframe, Choose Love.

Well, maybe he wouldn't use those terms, but he would pause, at least, and assess before leaping out of the hot air balloon.

I arrive at Kaiser, and walk down the hallway. I’m toodling to myself, softly singing/humming tunelessly, just making notes up to distract my thought-life. I realize I’m practicing something called self-soothing, a practice I read about for babies learning to fall asleep on their own.

Instead of fully freaking out, I’m using a positive biofeedback technique to calm my pulse, my panic. And, it works, a little.

After they take 7 vials of my blood, I drive into the city to see my chiro. The man I credit for saving my ovaries from nuclear annihilation during chemo, with his supplements, nutritional advice, and amazingly accurate diagnoses of what’s going on in my body.

I tell him that my Kaiser doctor said it had nothing to do with having poured chemo into my body for 6 months, since that was finished last March. It couldn’t possibly be related.

Assholes.

No: Idiots.

Of course my liver and kidneys are still bouncing back, shmucks. I “love” the way Western medicine brains work: There is no immediate cause of this that we can see, so it must be something new and traumatic and deadly.

How about a patient history, assh— Sorry, Idiots.

It’s like telling someone who broke their ankle a year and a half ago that that has no bearing on why they’re now experiencing pain in their hips. … You guys did learn the whole, “The knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone” song in medical school, right?

Anyway, my annoyance with Western medicine aside, I went to the doctor I trust, after having done what the Western folks wanted me to do.

We did some muscle testing, which is like the coolest thing ever. He handed me a small vial filled with clear liquid marked GMO corn. Told me to hold my other arm out and try to resist his pushing it down. My arm fell like an anvil. It weakens my system.

He held out one labeled organic corn? My arm stayed straight as a compass.

We did this several times: Pasteurized milk? Down. Raw milk? Up. Non-organic eggs? Down. Organic eggs? Up.

What I should offer at this point is that I have been eating a ton of crap these past few weeks. Whatever cookies, candy, cupcakes have been lain out at work, I’ve eaten – because I’m stressed. And sooner or later, my ban against refined sugar and dairy yields, and I go to town.

I’ve also been busy so I haven’t been cooking at home, and have therefore been eating take-out foods, which, although aren’t the worst foods I could choose, are surely not all made with my liver in mind.

So, I’ve been tired, stressed out (as you’ve read), and eating crap to boost me back up.

Yeah, apparently my overworked and Hirojima’d organs need some TenderLovingCare.

(Heh. ... Organs... lovin'... heh...)

Pushing the panic button does nothing for me except exacerbate an already very sensitive system. I don’t like hearing that I really have to stop eating the cupcakes at work, and not use half&half at Peet’s. Or, since it's not organic, I can't drink Peet's at all. I don’t like knowing that because of something I didn’t ask for I now have to work extra hard to fix its effects.

But, What I like less is driving to Kaiser on a Friday morning, thinking about the children I won’t be able to have. The life I won’t be able to “figure out.” The X-Men movie I won’t be able to see.

Look, Death and I have a pretty intimate relationship. We’ve fought an epic battle, and He’s waiting and watching in the corner, seeing if my hubris will bring me down. If, like in Million Dollar Baby, I will let my guard down and He’ll have the chance to (spoiler alert).

What I got to see from yesterday’s panic/not panic "opportunity" was that I still am pretty keen on this Life thing. That I can’t quit my job without health insurance. That I stress out about things I don't need to. And that I’ve accomplished a whole lot in the year and a half since I was diagnosed, things I want to continue to do: play music, make art, be with friends, travel.

I don’t need to push the panic button to “wake me up” – Life has a way of pushing it for me. Of pushing the button on the side of my cosmic cell phone to illuminate the time and remind me to stop freaking out in my head and get into my life.

So, today, I’m going to hum tunelessly as I get dressed, cook organic eggs, do (some) dishes, and head to an 11-year old’s birthday party to shoot mini-marshmallows at my friends. Because that’s the text Life is sending me today. 

But don't worry, I won't eat any. ;)