Day 365: to the girl in the waiting room

Twelve days after my transplant, after I got out of the hospital and was in for my first weekly check-up, I was sitting in the 8th floor waiting room, infusion side. My parents and sister were there. A lean and pretty girl was sitting reading across from us. She had a short dark pixie cut and adorable clothes, and honestly except for her bracelet I don't think I would have known she was a patient. She sent her husband out to get some Starbucks, and I caught the front of her book: Anne Lamott. I was actually feeling pretty good that day, considering. I guess I was just so happy to be finally out of the white box that I'd spent the past two months in, and my throat sores had subsided considerably. I told her I loved Anne Lamott-- and we got to chatting. She told me she was in for her year check-up, post-transplant. I couldn't believe my eyes. She looked so good. She told me about her class (she's a middle school teacher) and that sometimes the kids ask her about the scars on her chest. She laughed. She told me that I looked pretty good for being day 12; that she was still in an Ativan haze around then. She said "It gets a lot worse before it gets better. But it is so worth it. Keep going, soul sister."

And again, I am reminded of Rilke. How could she have possibly known? Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. 

It meant so much to me (more than I even knew at the time) to see her, looking so healthy and happy and strong, a year away from where I was. At the time, I couldn't imagine myself being in her place. I couldn't imagine it. I couldn't see outside of where I was. I was still so blown over, so caught up in dealing with symptoms of this deadly treatment that I couldn't imagine a time when cancer wouldn't be my life. I hadn't even really started the arduous journey of dealing with everything that cancer disrupts or takes away. I felt it's immediate stoppage, of course: I was ripped out of my life and put on a single-lane fast track labeled in big letters CANCER. It changed everything. And then later, when the solitude and mental exhaustion took its hold, I couldn’t make jokes anymore and winter and depression drove me close to losing my mind or taking my own life--I couldn't see outside of it. There were nights I didn't think I would make it, because I would cry myself to death. 

And yet. I am here. Somehow I have survived this long, trudged this far into the journey. I have a lot of people to thank for that. Some people would say I'm so close that I might as well finish this. I can hardly grasp that I am one year out. It doesn't feel like something that will end. It feels like it can’t end. And in some ways, I don't want it to--what I mean is, some of the changes I don't want to lose sight of. I don’t want to forget how I feel about living now, right now at least. After really experiencing fragility, and beauty and terror all together...it makes me want to live differently. It’s a part of me, and a part of my story now, and I am different. I knew this would change me; and I’m still learning what that means, and figuring out who I am now. 

Today I’m trying to claim that bravery again, finding ways to celebrate even if I don’t feel like doing it 100%. Finding way to be thankful, and trying to thank the people responsible for my still being here (the list is long). Because cancer has changed me. For one, it makes me not want to be afraid of dumb shit that’s not scary. Life is so temporary. Ask for his number! Fly to Edinburgh! Start a new job! Open a café! Apologize! Forgive! Take risks! Ask questions! Do things! Choose Freedom! Choose Love!

The effects of cancer have outlived the cancer. And that is a mixed bag, I must say. I am not whole yet. There are effects that hurt; really hurt. I am still climbing out of this emotional wreckage, let alone the physical wreckage that is my now weird body. But I am--today, in this moment--trying to focus on the constructive effects in my life: the ways in which I am changed for the better. I am lucky to be able to do that right now, and perhaps tomorrow will not even look quite as bright. But life won’t stop being hard after this is over. Challenges will always arise, and life will seep down to the bare mundane tasks if I let it. I need to keep finding ways to live and love better. I have to trust that time heals, that days will go by, and that I have a thousand choices in each one of them. 

To the girl in the waiting room: thank you for saying that to me.

And to the other girl in the waiting room: you did it. One year down. One hundred more to go.