Hope, Reality, and Being Present

Hey y'all... it's me...

I feel a need to add this preface for y'all who lovingly read, share and like my posts.  I know that some of my posts venture towards the dark and scary places in life, the places we most often run from or feel the desire to stick our heads in the sand when these subject comes up.   BUT... I want you to know this is NOT where I live 100% of the time.  Y'all are just the lucky ones who have chosen to walk this path with me.  Sometimes, I want to take a video of me laughing or dancing and being goofy so y'all can see I am not Gloomy Gus all the time.  This is simply a snip-it of my life and while I feel the more urgent draw to put pen to paper when life is tumultuous or my mind is active and overthinking; I also don't feel stories of the lost sock in the dryer, the crazy dog who acts like a goat, or the 16,000 trips (no lie) back and forth to the swim club are quite as riveting.  Those times are when I am feeling pretty much like plain 'ole Jo, living the dream of kids, home, family, and boring old life - which is where I live 95% of the time. 

This particular post is one I actually wrote the old fashioned way, pen and paper.  The words began to swirl so fast and it was an evening when I was already propped up comfortably on my bed.  While I couldn't stop the words, I also couldn't summon the strength to walk down to my computer - yes, that is correct, I am the last man standing without a laptop or hand held device.  I am old school, I sit straight backed in my office chair, typing away on a keyboard at my desktop computer.  I'm a dinosaur - I know - but there's also the matter of necessity.   So instead, I frantically searched for paper - you know the vintage type with lines and everything and then needed to find a pen that wasn't exploding or crapping out.  Here is the transcribed result.  Enjoy!

OK so it's a cold, rainy night and to be honest it's been a hard few weeks.  I experienced my first real loss of someone I knew to MBC and it hit me like a mountain slapped me twice.  Sometimes, I think it's important for you to allow the crash to happen, let yourself FEEL the sad, mad, and scary. Stifling it isn't going to do anyone any good, it will probably result in increased stress, hormonal breakdowns, and ulcers and when you're done cleaning up that mess, you will still have MBC and some of the more unpleasant emotions that go along with it.  I'm a little OCD so in my book, it's a more efficient way for me to handle things - Can you say CONTROL ISSUES!  On top of the emotional crash, I am feeling every ache, twinge, pain and yelp from my broken down bones.  Mother Nature needs to get her shit together and knock off the rain, cold, and high swings in temperatures around here or she's going to have one pissed off Italian screaming at her pretty damn soon.  

I am not going to give power to the image I saw in my head at the service.  Use your imagination and then you might understand why I crashed head long into a puddle of mush and self pity, fueled by fear and anger, loss and sadness, with a sprinkle of hot mess on top.  But I also think it is the season that was getting to me.  Spring is the season of hope - new life, new beginnings, opportunity opening, and the world blossoming.  It is the season of graduation, celebration, weddings, moving on, moving up and forward.  Everyone is taking another big brave step toward the future.  "Mother May I... take one giant step of accomplishment and one small step toward living out my dreams.  And Mother May I responds to the masses - yes but to me she says, you may stand here with one foot up in the air, balancing, halfway to moving forward but one foot must stay planted on the ground!"  What the Fuck Mother May I????

Wanna hear a secret???  I am afraid to know but not know anything bad.  Now you must think I am drunk but I'm not, so bear with me.  A long long time ago, about a hundred years or so, I was at a party and there was a psychic doing readings, tarot cards and palms.  Cool right??  UMMMM no, not for me.  I believe in everything spiritual, I have had feelings and visits, messages from beyond, I believe in ghosts and angels.  I believe in the power of the mystic and the truth and peace it can give us on this earth.  BUT... it's a big BUT... don't be flipping a card or tracing a line on my palm with doomsday news.  I have never wanted my future read for this reason, I don't want to know the bad.  Lalalalalalalala - that's me singing over the psychic's words.  I don't want to hear anything bad about my future.  Except I have!  My V8 moment came after talking with a friend.  My fortune has been told, a little at least.  The only difference is instead of the fortune teller wearing red silk scarves and robes with rings on every finger, he wears a white lab coat and is someone I put my faith and trust into everyday.  Dr. K!  Dr. K has let me in on a secret that I didn't want to know, the "probable known of my death".  Now yes, maybe I will get hit by a bus, run over by a flock of geese, or choke on chocolate chip cookie but in reality I know a little more about my potential demise that the average Joe.  In fact, anyone who has a terminal diagnosis has been let in on this secret and that's some heavy ass shit to handle.   

There has to be something good that comes from this knowledge.  Sometimes, I will tell you I don't have a fricking clue what it is and others times I will say it is the power of information.  I have this power to do whatever I can to keep the known at bay.  But this is where the shit gets tricky!  I ask myself what else can I do, I take a powerful drug everyday, I get shots monthly, quarterly, I drink elixirs but what else, what else can fill my bucket of hope?  This is where I have to be careful, our minds can fuck with us as much as help us.  I think it's the rearing of the nasty Cancer Bitch that pushes me towards chasing hope.  I am a puppy chasing every leaf and my mind continues to whisper, "yes try this, you need this, do more of this" until you close your ears and scream STOP!  I think this is one of the reasons Dr. K has always cautioned me from searching my disease on the internet - it's a scary, dark world out there and who knows what will be uncovered.  

I have MBC, that is a known.  There are so many differing beliefs on how to stave off this disease outside of conventional therapy.  I have been told to try oils, floating, salt caves, eating oranges, lemon rinds, dandelions, this or that diet, so many supplements that my pill container needs a back up container.  It's been suggested to go to group therapy, find a MBC support group, don't find a support group, energy work, fasting, hypnosis, art therapy, lotions, potions OH MY!   Now to be fair, I do some, a lot of these.  I have carefully chosen what speaks to me to fill my bucket of hope and I always keep space for something new. But am I missing something?  Everything comes with a price, not only monetarily, but physically, emotionally, and spiritually and this is where having this known can be so dangerous.  There is so much I can call bullshit on, I do not think eating lemon rinds is going to cure my disease but someone else might and that's perfectly OK. I truly mean no offense to anyone for whatever type of treatment they pursue.  It is all about what we can and are able to believe in, what works for one may not be the perfect fit for someone else.  I have to be very careful not to fall prey to chasing hope.  It is a fine line, doing everything I can, having my bucket full to the brim and without dangerously sacrificing the actual art of living now.  


There in lies the balancing act, standing between both worlds, living present and mindful, adding to my bucket of hope all the time with something new, something old, something borrowed and something blue but also never looking back on whatever wasn't chosen.  This is fact, there is no one thing that will magically cure my cancer.  Every outlier who lives beyond the statistics has their own unique treatment therapies but also their own unique set of DNA, cells, lifestyles, and family history that makes up their own set of circumstance.  There are no two that are the same, if there were my story and the stories of countless others would be so different. So what to do, what to do????  I don't have the answer to that.  I am still working on shutting down the spiral of the past few weeks and I realize it isn't going to be any one thing that will snap me out of this funk but the main, most important reality, is that I continue to work at it - I continue to remember my job of living. Yet I am afraid I am not living enough.

Another added caveat - chasing hope is always something more powerful when your body isn't cooperating.  This post has been hanging out in the preview queue on my computer for over a week now - for some reason I wasn't ready for it to go live.  Since then, my low back has flared angry and irritated.   Dr. K is away so a lot of pain meds and a scheduled MRI for next week awaits me.  In the meantime, I wonder - what is this, what should I do, maybe the lemon rinds will help!  Should I try this or that, is this something, nothing, old age or cancer waking up and stretching it's hairy cells and getting ready to wreak more havoc in my life.  Is it muscle, is it bone, is it an alien from mars who took up residence in my low back just to annoy me!  I will drive myself batty wondering, don't think about it, people say.  Don't worry, people will say.  Don't let it envelope you, people will say.  And all I do is fail each and every person who tells me these kind and thoughtful pieces of wisdom.  I try to not think but every time I move and the bones in my low back cry out for me to stand still, it is a whisper in my ear. This is a glimpse of that reality. 
I often say I am in the middle, on one side I am holding hands with hope and on the other, I am holding hands with reality.  Sometimes I may be more focused on one or the other but the BEST time in my life is when I am focused straight ahead, living within the beautiful space that is present.  There will always be moments of reality, I can't take that away.  It may be painful for some to face or simply too scary - I understand that feeling.  My hope is that there will also be many more moments of hope and even more moments of just being me.  

Peace ✌