You scored as People. People are what cause your depression. They have hurt you, bullied you, isolated you, and this has caused you to form an immense hatred for them. You have built a barrier around yourself, not letting anyone pass into it. You hate them, but they are everywhere. People consume you. Please rate. People 81% Lonliness 75% Love 66% Past 66% Stress 41% Friends 41% Death 28% Family 22% What causes you to be depressed? created with QuizFarm.com

update

I've been cheating on everyone here with Xanga.

http://www.xanga.com/private/yourhome.aspx?user=butshebites

But they're driving their stuff across the river and reassembling it and I'm woebegone. So here I am.

I'm happy to report I am a LOT saner than I had been last time I posted. Work is awesome. I won one of those umbrellas so I'll be in the next ad I haven't scored a 10 yet on a call, I always fall short by just a little. I got some additional training yesterday which will help. I missed a lot being out for six months.

I dyed my hair red:

And took this pic.

I even get bad hair days. What a luxury.

The gardening is coming right along, I planted morning glory seeds anywhere they could climb, iris, liatris, geraniums, violas, astilbe, and we still have bleeding hearts and lamium (with little pink flowers). I divided the peonies as the Loki Rose is encroaching on them big time.

I still have to put in the gerbera daisy, white zinnia and blackeyed susans.

I am still waiting for final reconstruction - all I need is a surgery date. But now I have a bronchitis dammit and if I have surgery I am NOT going to be able to cough this stuff up so if they give me a date soon I don't know what I will do.

Well I gotta go drag my sorry butt to work. I texted my boss that I think I have bird flu.

Haunted Birdhouse

IT'S SUNNY!
So I will go outside and wreck my hands some more gardening...but first I want to show off my very latest little project:


and here's the other side:










Do ya think I could do this on ebay in winter? If I start now I could make a lot of them, all different kinds.

The Year of Bad Decision Making

In Feb 2004 I moved in with a man who lived in Enfield. He moved me into his house by the vanload while I was at work. I found out later his wife had only died 2 months before I met him!

I left a very good job as the commute from Enfield was too long. I took a temp position with a local company. I got sick and was out two days. They let me go. Two days before that, on October 24th, my sponsor Laurie died.

Mike was extremely annoyed with me for leaving my high paying job for the one closer to home. Hmmmmm.

In time I became "invisible" to him - he apparently was having a delayed reaction grief experience - and by December 28 2004 I moved out. I couldn't stay if there was no love. I had nothing to stay for. I left my MoonBeam kitty with him as I was afraid the move would retraumatize her and she was getting picked on by my other cats anyway. I regret that decision a LOT. I miss her terribly. I still cry.

I got my job back - the one I had left. Thank God for the miracles along the way.

I moved in with a girl from AA named Karen who was very sick. It was not a good experience. Within 6 weeks or so she had put her condo on the market and I had to find another place to live. She trashed my computer by file sharing when I was at work and she also turned into the Antichrist. She would stand in my doorway shrieking at me that I was disloyal and that I shouldn't talk to people who didn't like her. I'm a little too old for that shizznit.

I accepted a place in east Hartford with a gal named Kim and after about 3 nights there I realized it was not going to work as she had too many restrictions (don’t do this, that or the other thing) and I was being used so she could save her apartment. I couldn't even let Nini and Aida out of my bedroom, poor things! Again I had to move.

I called my friend Alecia whom I had not seen for a while and then she called me back and offered to let me live with her in her house in East Berlin until I found a place. I was actually ecstatic and very, very grateful.

Left most of my stuff in storage and moved in with her and her husband. We had great fun and I laughed every day. I felt I was healing up from all the trauma that had gone before. I felt rich with such a friend. It was like water on a dying plant.

I had stupidly co-signed on a jeep for Mike and he didn’t make payments on it. I had a friend named Moe drive me up to Enfield one day and I took the jeep and drove off. I sold it to some kid in Kentucky, but not before I had made four payments on the damned thing

I found an apartment of my own within a couple months, but then I was diagnosed with Cancer on 4/29/2005.

Alecia insisted I stay so she could care for me. I told her no initially but then relented as she insisted. I thought to myself "Why don't I try doing it someone else's way for a change?" I should have gone with my first instincts.

I quit smoking on July 4th.

On July 7th I learned that instead of chemo and a lumpectomy I had to have chemo and then both breasts completely removed and the ovaries out. This was because I had a genetic predisposition to developing additional cancer in my breasts and also ovarian cancer.

I developed a bad case of asthmatic bronchitis on July 9th and wound up in the hospital. The ambulance had to come cuz I waited too damn long and could hardly walk much less drive.

I came home July 12th and Alecia was waiting to talk to me.

While I was still barefoot and wearing the clothes I had worn to the hospital she told me I had 3 days to get out. I had no hair. I was still sick and weak. I was only a week out from my second chemo treatment. Alecia got shriller and more deranged. I called the police to cover myself as I was afraid she would throw my stuff out on the street. I was terrified and heartbroken and took my overnight bags and my cats to a hotel for the next 2 nights. The nice man at the front desk let me bring the cats in the back door.

I don't think I have ever, ever cried as much as I did that week.



I had called German, my ex husband and best buddy, and he said it was okay if my cats stayed with him until I got settled. While I brought them to him he suggested I live with him. Being as sick as I was I said yes. By the end of the month we had brought all my stuff here.

I did not tolerate chemo well. I felt like I had been run down by a truck. I had terrible mouth sores, couldn’t eat for the first half, was weak as a kitten, and spent a lot of time sleeping. The second half I had severe bone pain and fatigue, my fingers and toes hurt and I filled up with about 20 lbs of fluid. I had trouble breathing. I could not walk for more than a few yards without having to rest.

Because Alecia had tossed me out and forced me to move, I had to transfer all my care to another hospital as Manchester was over an hour away, so I went to Yale. It was not a good experience.

My time in the hospital after surgery was dreadful. I was so sick from the morphine, and all they were sending me was acidic fruit juice that I could not drink. No one would wash me. They washed only the parts that didn’t need washing. I couldn’t get clean bed linens.

My roommate had loud visitors 24 hours a day and no one made them go home.

I needed solid food after the vomiting and acid and it wasn’t until I could teeter out of bed and down the elevator to the cafeteria that I got some yogurt and turned it around.

I went home a day early.

My heart is on the ground.

Cancer was okay. I'd do it again with a will if it crops up. It's losing a sponsor, a job, a home, moving three times, losing a lover, a kitty and especially the betrayal of a friend that hurts.

I am having a lot of trouble with How To View Other Humans.

I'm not very happy with the vast majority of them. I don't want to be one either. If some of the behavior I see is performed by my species I wanna get transferred to be another species or something. Pushy piggy grabby loud selfish and insensitive...is this just because there's lead in the water where I'm living? Is this a phase in sobriety? Please tell me it is.

Cats, dogs, squirrels and birds are civilized in comparison to what other people do. I'm beginning to think my attitude should be I'd just as soon waste their ass as give them the time of day, except I would get put away for it.

I could put my head back in the hole in the ground and stop watching the news and live in a fantasy world again, where everyone is Good and sometimes makes mistakes. I was crying in one of my dreams , because I wanted no one to be beyond redemption and not to throw anyone out but it looks like it's time to redraw my Map.

I won't trust anyone ever again unless they earn it by taking a bullet or doing time for me.

Meetings set my teeth on edge because I know most of the people sharing are full of shit.

The result of all this is that I don't leave the house unless I must. I have no need or desire to be with other humans save to make my living.

I miss Moonbeam. I’m grateful for German and my job. I'm angry and unstable. I get up and grab a paintbrush and start painting a birdhouse first thing in the morning. I have to paint something. Then I go to work.

I don't know who I'll be at the end of all this. I'm grateful I had health insurance and people who love me. I'm grateful I wound up in a safe place. But what I went through to get here, it pulverized my soul and I feel like I am just doing time here until I die.

And that's why I am nuts.

sneepin

Well well....what was that line about being the king of endless space were it not that I have bad dreams? well the bad dreams are due to an excessively soft bed. Pillows are the answer. Pillows are always the answer.

Cats make sleeping difficult. I suffer from catlap upon sitting down anywhere in the house, and when I lie down I have one in front of me and one behind me so I can't move. Well I could move were it not that they weave their magick which makes me loath to disturb their furry little arses.

Lazy bums. I want their lives. Sleep in the sunshine, eat something, climb the cat condo, sleep some more, eat some more, get coo'd over and petted by some huge human or better yet, brushed, then turn in for some well-earned sleep.

When (if I am stupid enough) I come back to this planet, I am coming back as either a cat in a nice house or a 6 foot tall male. Being a short female sucks.

Catz

Wow I want another cat. I need to find a homeless unloved kitty and bring him home and love him to pieces. I just wrote the humane society about a tiger cat who has some Siamese in him. I love the Siamese. They're funny and goofy and talkative. I mean, look at this dude:


Maybe my two girlcats won't like it much but wow, I deserve another cat. People like me can't have just two cats. That's ridiculous. I hurt so bad I want a cat. I miss Moonbeam. When Alex went off on his forever walk and I never saw him again I went into such a tailspin. I was lost. I promised Ninja I wouldn't get any more cats though, she's an old lady and is enjoying her old ladyhood immensely. I got all her teef pulled and now she's perky as they get. Having a head full of bad teeth must have been sickening for her. Now she runs around and yells at the top of her lungs just to be funny.


I got Aida 6 weeks after Alex kitty disappeared. She needed me and I needed her. I didn't put her down for three weeks. She was so very tiny and so sick. She purred constantly and slept across my neck. She thinks I am her mamma.

If I get another cat, German will get mad at me and try to make me bring it back. The Big Suck about living here is Mr Wet Blanket. Okay so he keeps me out of jail. Whatever. And okay he took me in when I was desperate. sigh. Today I wanted sushi but he was a pain in the ass so we ended up at Chili's and it was awful. Tomorrow if I go out I am going out alone.

anon

The "Girlie Spot" is on the radio every night as I drive home. Sometimes I listen. Last night callers were picking a number and they would get a difficult question to answer.

One of them was, "If you knew there was going to be a nuclear war in one week, what would you do for that week?"

I would plant a tree.

You see, this sucks above all. Hope is unsinkable and it sucks. As suicidal and miserable as I get there's this part of me that is insane and thinks it will get better. Hope and Honesty don't live well together in the same house. I feel fractured, completely lacking in integrity with regard to my regard of this Life.

My head tells me there is no point whatever to this life and the rest of me keeps plugging along like the little engine that could.

I dressed very nicely today. I put on makeup. I filled the tank with liquid gold. I was on time to work. I did the best I could. The continuo was I am sad I am sad I am sad so many i loved are gone and i miss them and it hurts and i want to cry ahhhhhh too much love really will kill you. I smiled and nodded and was pleasant.

I called the plastic surgeon's office to find out how much liposuction costs and to find out how long I will be sidelined by reconstruction surgery. Can't find out til monday, doctor is out, assistant is out. I am thinking of the lipo because I think it really is better to look marvelous than to feel marvelous. Everything hurts, so it might as well look good.

German is downstairs watching a movie. I am glad he is out with his arm in a sling for a few more weeks because that means he won't let me stare at my navel for too long. Who am I kidding. I can't see my navel any more

What is a gift, really?

In his book, "Love, Medicine and Miracles" Bernie Siegel, M.D. asks his patients to ask themselves a number of probing questions. The one that caught me out was "What did you need from the cancer?"

Wow. He knows. He saw right through me, 30 years ago he knew I was going to be here with this head and this thinking.

I needed honesty and I think I got more than I wanted. It's hard to swallow. There's no going back. I feel like Neo second guessing his choice to take the red pill. blue pill. Whatever.

I got the real world, stripped of any ideals or suppositions, theories, hopes or fantasy. It is not a pretty place. I found out who my friends were and just how few they were. That was hard. I see people as they are, and I don't want to see it. It's horrible. Were my expectations really that high? Did I really think that most people are doing the best they can? Did I really think most people were interested in spiritual growth?

I have been whogging away on this thing for a couple months now and I can't get past this. The pain is endless. I can't accept this. So much hurt in this world. So much dividing people into Us and Them. I mean, aren't the natural disasters enough? Why do we need to watch eachother bleed?

What if this is all there is? What a truly awful thought. But maybe not, maybe it's a comforting thought.

I am only marginally choosing life each morning. I am not participating in any of my support groups. Not my cancer group; not my 12 step, and I don't want to try to make any new friends. I am doing brash and foolhardy things without so much as a touch of adrenaline rush. I might die. I might care. But I don't.

The only reason I don't commit suicide is because I'll be dead for most of eternity, which is a long time. So I put it off...also my cats would be really upset.

I remember watching the perfect human in the 5th Element finding out about things like war and genocide, and how it nearly destroyed her will to live, nearly killed her. Someone, somewhere, give me a reason to live.

oh beHAVE

I think of Bugs Bunny saying "If I dood it, I get a whuppin', but I dood it." I have an anger management problem. No problem with anger, I got plenty. I am waaay too old to be participating in Chicken on the highway with Great Big Vehicles. If the police see me now they'll say "Oh it's YOU again!" And if the driver of that Toyota truck sees me again he'll probably quarter panel me and drive off. Sigh.

Now I know this stems from anger at the cancer. I don't know if I'm sticking my neck out here. My Indian name would be "Sticks Her Neck Out." I don't know of anyone else who has written about surviving the trek down that road and the feelings that surface. They're big feelings, and they have to do with not being able to accept the world the way it is. Or the people therein.

I no longer participate actively in any of my support groups. I don't want to make any new friends. I don't trust anyone any more. It hurts way too much. Freddie Mercury's song "Too Much Love Will Kill You" is apropos to the way I feel. I cling to my home and my job and to German who is the one truly true-blue person in the universe that I can trust with my life.




I am thinking I will stay here. My little dream -- of having my own house with a garden in the woods, a pot bubbling on the stove and an open door for friends to find a safe haven -- all that's becoming blurry. I don't want friends in my house. I don't want to cook for people who are not really my friends. I don't like to cook. I don't want to be alone and my hands are in rough shape from arthritis. I don't like living on a busy corner in a semi-city but I can still plant things and see if I can get the birds to nest in the houses I paint.

Well that's it for now, gotta run to work. Spring is coming, that's a nice thing as always. I now have light brown hair instead of gray, and of course there is more of it. The plastic surgeon says that a couple more inflation sessions and I'll be ready for permanent implants. I'm going to the gym steadily and soon the weather will be nice enough for bicycling. I guess I am going to need to count my blessings daily. Ugh.

As IF!!!

I asked if I could go get Moonbeam back. I left her with my exboyfriend who didn't make payments on the jeep I signed for (yeah, dumb, dumb...I DID say it was my Year of Bad Decisions didn't I?)....well I went and repo'd my own jeep which meant Mike certainly was going to feel wronged. Which meant no chance of seeing Moonie again. This is moonie:


What is it with people? That the things that they don't like are somehow morally wrong, and the things that make them feel good are somehow morally right? What's up with that nonlogic? Or is that just White Trash Nation speaking?

So anyway I write this carefully crafted email to Mike's daughter Amy. She responds by saying I left my CAT with a man so that I could somehow reestablish contact with him -- much in the way a woman might leave something behind after a night of pleasure in hopes of more -- hence the title of this blog.

Uh..no.

I really didn't want to leave him alone. I really didn't want to traumatize my Moonkitten by moving her again. She's a run-and-hide kitty, and it always took her months to get over any kind of major change. I didn't want to do it again to her but I'm not sure she's safe or happy or loved where she is.

Please God let them let me come and get my Moonie back

Can I colonize a new planet or something?

My weekends suck right now.

see, I said "right now" like I still have some hope. I desperately need to let go of hope because it keeps me afloat and all around me is this endless waste. I need to just be able to give it up and sink.

I'm sick of being ugly. I'm sick of having short gray hair and being overweight and having pseudo boobs slowly being inflated. I had my nails done, at least they look nice. I want to go out and be beautiful and dance and flirt and maybe even go home with someone. I want to turn heads again. This was me before my Year of Bad Decision Making:



and you see me over there, now -------------------------->

I went to the gym today.

this blog has nothing to do with what I really want to say.

What I really want to say is I am never going to be able to go back to the way I was. I don't know how to interface with this world inside of me. It's not pretty. People are awful, most of them. They don't give a damn about anyone but themselves. I always thought people were better than that. Even those that seem caring and nice, when you push them to the wall it disappears. I don't want to be a human being any more.

Nothing helps. I even broke down and bought a pack of cigarettes but I didn't want them. I kind of forced myself to smoke a few. Nope.

I hope there is a heaven.

click here

Life is Good. Whew that was close. I thought I was reaally going to lose it.

knock me down with a feather

i am this close. i can't win. nothing is right. work was the one safe place. but apparently being out on disability or all the medical claims from cancer or something has them looking for reasons to nitpick me to death. i want to go live under a bridge where i don't have to answer to anyone. except it's cold. and i'd miss the cats. i cried at my boss today. i mean, i fucking passed the foreign service exam and left everyone else still writing in the room. i know what my iq is. so what is wrong? are they sifting through everything i am doing to find something to fail me on? what? well what they might not know is that i rarely quit work. they have to fire me. and they're going to have to pay me.

Time for some of that Joy

Spring is almost here, the air is very cold but you can feel it.

I have moonflowers, morning glories, cosmos, zinnias and black-eyed susan seeds to plant. Just looking at the seed packets makes my heart jump. The days are getting longer.

My reinflation process is hitting the big time (o pun intended). The doctor is rather conservative and keeps asking me how big I want my boobs to be. I try not to answer but I am looking forward to wearing some of those little summer dresses.

We went to the health club today, my friend and I, and the good news is I can't possibly get any weaker!!!

I struggle with living here. I want to live anywhere but here. I don't know if I will have the heart to leave when the time comes. I have that little dream of a house in the woods, on a cul-de-sac or lightly travelled road. A place where I can let the cats out to play and be cats instead of bored adored prisoners.

I can't even get sparrows to come to my bird feeder here. It's too polluted on this corner. With spring comes hope. I'm squirrelling money away like mad. My job is my lifeline to my dream.

The horse ain't dead yet

While I have started to feel better physically after surgery I have kinda gone over the edge mentally. I couldn't figure out whether or not I was suicidal or grieving the losses or angry at all that had happened or a combination of all of it. I have written hate mail to the government and the oil companies, sent money to some pretty radical groups and argued with everyone, including my supervisor at work (who is a remarkable man. He used the word "odious" in a sentence. I never heard anyone do that before). I have stopped eating animal products.

This is a good way to lose weight, especially if you dislike green food.

I have road rage, shopping cart rage, and have thought about buying a gun and going into business as a hit woman (my eyesight sucks).

I want to put a bumpersticker on my car that says "fuck you" to all the tailgaters. I am sorely tempted to quarterpanel the next car that cuts in front of me, just for fun. And to see if I can do it right.

I cried about losing my cat Moonie, cried over the lost friendship with Alecia, the lost hopes of marriage and relationship, the loss of my independence, the loss of money, the fact that I am living in Derby, cried because people are mean, you name it; I was in tears about it.

I have decided that most people are beasts and I will never trust anyone again and that I don't belong to the species "Human". And wow, I haven't picked up a cigarette (not to mention a drink either)!

Nothing helps I suppose I gotta grieve and be angry and tend to my emotions which have been stuffed into "coping" mode for so long. It's gotta boil over sometime. I am glad I am in a safe place with a very forgiving person so I can go insane without consequences.

Paradoxically, the joy and energy I am starting to feel is tremendous. Work is a safe place.

I take a raft of vitamins now, my cancer was not hormone receptor positive so I take a menopause combo pill, pycnogenol, co-q10, c and e in the morning and the same at night, along with 5-htp, valerian, and occasionally melatonin to zonk me out. Every week I take a b complex. When my stomach will allow me to, I take a multi.

Hot flashes suck, they are the basis for spontaneous human combustion *pow* now I'm just an ashy little grease spot on my chair....

The house where I grew up

I drove by the house where I grew up yesterday.

It’s in what is now a very pricey neighborhood. I noted with some satisfaction that it looked much like it did when I lived there…the yard is unkempt, the product of ambitious landscaping plans and no follow-through. Shaggy trees, lawn, nothing special about the exterior of the house except its location near the beach. Someone had actually fixed the shutters though.

The satisfaction sprang from the feeling that no one should be allowed to clean up and make presentable a place which, for so very long, had harbored the desperation of a family afflicted with alcoholism and generations of despicable behavior. No one should tidy up the remains of my childhood. The world should see this.

I can hear the shouting the crying, the police at the front of the house. I broke the rule of silence. I didn’t care what our neighborhood thought. Wrong should out. You adults behave like criminals you get the treatment.

The same hardworking, low-brow, barely literate family resides next door, forced to look at my back yard the way it always was. They’re there because Department of Defense contracts, under Ronald Reagan, allowed Mr. Neighbor to earn a ridiculously high union wage, allowing him to pursue the horrifying hobbies of hunting and taxidermy, to buy a boat and two purebred hunting dogs who received little, if any, love. I bet they hoped the new people would have some self respect hahaha.

Understand I am still a little insane from the past year. I’ll calm down hopefully.

My dad used to start building projects and then never finish them, leaving the pile of materials in the back yard. Mrs. Neighbor was certain there were rats in that pile. She would call the department of health on us. I wonder if she calls on the new owner? I feel like sending them a congratulatory letter for carrying on the tradition.

I walked on the beach for an hour as I had time to kill. I was looking for beach glass. My cd player’s batteries had died and I was grateful for I had not listened to the sound of waves in a long while. Hypnotic. The sun was brilliant and the wind burned my cheeks.

Everywhere I looked I saw the present juxtaposed atop the past. There used to be a nickel payphone in Penfield II, and we would buy French fries there, feet burning on the painted wooden deck. I sunburned badly here the summer I was 12, looking for hermit crabs and seashells. There was Nancy’s wedding on the deck, 15 years ago. So different. Am I that old?

Ghosts of all those caved-in and weathered cottages in the 60s beamed from within the elaborate, proud three-story beach homes that only the rich can afford. A host of bad storms, my mother said, had ruined all the little beach bungalows and no one had rebuilt them. How we forget.

After being treated to the CNN spectacle of Katrina gutting a quarter of the US Coastline this summer, I became inordinately grateful for a dry bed, air conditioning and a roof. I shook my head in wonder at the risk these beach people are taking. Connecticut gets zonked with a winner every 30 or 40 years, and we’re overdue. I know that the high water mark is not what it appears to be in the sand. It’s actually a few hundred feet down the road. I know that all the basements flood. This was Wolf Swamp in the 18th century.

It’s hard, knowing every crack in the pavement but not recognizing the houses. This place is my place, it’s in my bones. Every memory, happy or sad, this place built me as much as the people in my life. I know where every tree stood and still stands. I get angry at pseudo cool Audi drivers tailgating me down MY street. They don’t belong here.

Maybe someday I can move back here. Maybe I can sell my soul to the company I work for and they’ll pay me enough to pay an obscene amount of money so I can go back home again. Maybe I’ll even buy the old house. I’ll bring along a truckload of construction debris for the back yard J

Losing our focus? January 2005

After the chemo I had surgery and after the surgery I finally treated myself to an eye exam for a new pair of glasses. “A funny thing happens to us as we get to our age” said the ophthalmologist. “We lose our focus.” He was born in 1960, the same year I was born.

He’s so right, on so many levels.

Good lord, I’ve lost the tenacity of my younger days. Feisty didn’t begin to describe it. Picking my battles wasn’t necessary. I had enough piss and vinegar for all of them, great or small. I tore through life, one of those tiny women who terrorize.

Sometimes losing one’s focus can be a good thing for society.

I know something about these golden year things. Mine started when I was 25 . One by one all my joints have given out on me. My hair turned prematurely gray. Oh yes, that’s what we all say, isn’t it? I was put together with used parts, I would joke.

The diagnosis of cancer and subsequent chemotherapy, double mastectomy and oophorectomy (wherein the ovaries are removed -- an “oofie” the nurses call it) have left my animal brain indignant, outraged and frustrated.

My human brain can do all sorts of interesting things with this; I can look at it through the lens of spiritual challenge. I can look at it as a call to evaluate my life and the time I have left. I can, as Viktor Frankl put it, ask what Life wants of me, not the other way around. But my animal brain is having none of it. It’s still pissed off.

I thought old Viktor could teach me something new but I see that I have learned his lessons treading my own path. I’m 45. I didn’t go to a death camp but I did get my face slammed up against that glass wall for a good look. Couple of times now.

I’m still waiting for a renewal of some sort. Springtime maybe.

Please – I am not complaining. Much. Just ruminating and sharing. The last time I wrote something like this I got letters trying to console me and convert me to Christianity. Sigh. I don’t need consolation. I choose to live. It’s normal, I am beginning to see, to suffer.

Shunryu Suzuki said “suffering is how we extend ourselves, it is how we live our lives.” And that we see all beauty against an ever-changing backdrop of chaos. In his words I found tremendous solace and meaning.

Breast Cancer

October was breast cancer month. Month? Well for me it's been the BC year. The year my life unraveled. Lots and lots of chaos. I lost a relationship, a home, had to move several times, my finances are a shambles. And none of it really matters much. I can get it all back. It's just stuff. You can always get more stuff. It's been the worst thing that's happened to me and the best at the same time.

I have just hit a wall all us cancer patients seem to hit after chemotherapy, kinda depressed. Six months of it. I never thought I'd get through. So much anger! I am like a child who wants to tell a Big Person how much it hurt and where they stuck the needles and how sick I felt and that some of my friends ran away and didn't come back. That hurt more than anything. I can only hope there is a God out there holding me, and telling me all will be well.

We keep ourselves all hyped and girded up, stiff-upper-lip you know, for chemo, and just get through each day as best as we can -- and then whoosh! it's over. And and I look around and I say, That's it? Who do I get mad at? Who do I hit? I got mugged and poisoned and I stuck it out and didn't cry (much). I did it. I even quit smoking in the middle of it. I feel like someone's gotten away with doing something horrible to me. They need to pay.
Most days, I wouldn't trade the experience for the world.
With cancer, I am a colorless citizen of the universe. People look at me as though I have some kind of special answer they lack. As though the thick and seemingly insurmountable hills and layers of status and stuff and race and appearance have been strip-mined and there we are: naked to eachother, mortal defenseless human beings, temporary travellers. I can look anyone in the eye and find them in there, behind all the temporal stuff. I got a secret. We all die. You're eligible too.
Now I am going to have surgery. I am the poster child for Not Tolerating Chemotherapy Well. Not this gal. I am in such rough shape they want to do a full cardiac workup first. As the anaesthesiologist put it "I don't want to put a tube in someone and not be able to take it out." Finally a take-charge, bossy, brilliant doctor. He's perfect for his job. I can finally go limp and let him do his work. I so need to stop carrying all this. I can let go and drop down to the bottom of my internal ocean where it is dark and silent and sleep.
I am not thinking about waking up, not yet. There will be another hard chapter when that happens. Missing body parts and all. I can only do this journey one step at a time. Right now my task is to breathe in and out, keep my feet elevated and wait for this darkness to pass and the color to come back into the world. Hug the cats. Fill the birdfeeders. Talk to the other women and men who are travelling this road with me, or have gone before so I know I am not alone.
If I can find a good enough movie, maybe I can even cry.