full moon got me like...

Maaaaan, this full moon cycle is hitting me really hard. Not sleeping well, and the waning hours of daylight are heavy and depressing. Lethargy is pulling my body around my house while I wait for something to lift. Depression isn't just mental, it's deeply physical. Mostly in my stomach. Body aches. Disembodiment cloud of fog. I am here.

Just last week I got great news from my transplant doctor: basically I'm doing really well physically. I've stopped my immuno-suppressant drug; which I have been on for over three years. It was what was keeping my new immune system at bay until it got used to living inside my body, a foreigner. I'm lucky that I am able to get off of this drug- any other type of transplant, you have to be on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of your life and you will always be immuno-suppressed. Mine's a special case: since I got my immune system replaced, there is a chance that I would be able to get off the drug eventually. And, hooray. It's happened. It is no small thing. I've been off of it for a couple months now, and none of my organs are shutting down.  It is no small thing.

I'm grateful. My doctor actually smiled at me, told me: "You don't need us anymore" and then gave me a hug. It is no small thing. As I hugged him in his white coat; I said "thank you" and it felt like I was actually thanking him for saving my life, for the first time. I didn't need to say anything else. I couldn't, really. Just "thank you."

I just performed in a movement piece a couple weekends back- after devising the show for two months. It was incredible to be in my body for the first time and feel like it somewhat belonged to me. It's been a long time since I've felt that way. I loved performing. It is no small thing. I really didn't know, until now, that I love performing. That I need to do that.

I performed a heartbreaking physical theatre show four times in a single night: cried through most of it as I embodied a girl growing up, getting caught up into sex trafficking and drugs, having an internal war with herself and finally finding an arm up, which was from inside her. It doesn't end happily. It ends hopeful, I guess. But it was where the real work began. The end was the beginning.

Getting to the point of embodying the headspace of trauma was not what was difficult. I have a well to draw from. We all do. The hardest part was that exact realization. There is no other. We all embody trauma. The woman I embodied was me. It was you. Your daughter. Your sister. My sister.

I was overcome after creating this work (and discovered even more while performing it) of the strength once again of human beings. This woman, this one story we told through movement, is the story of strength. It isn't the story of pity, or the story of weakness. It is the story of bravery. No one is immune to trauma- internal and external. What amazed me was embodying this woman who went through most of her life hating herself, disembodying, disassociating. But in the end, her liberation came from within her. She had to choose to get out. She made the move to do it. Every single time we got to the end of the show, there is a reveal- and even though I knew- actor-brain-wise what was going to be revealed... I was shocked every single time. Honestly, earnestly and authentically. I didn't feel I was acting. I was embodying. I've never had this experience before. Not like this.

So here I am, approaching the end of 2016: job searching, a totaled car, lethargy and depression steeping in me like earl grey. And yet. This time last year I had recently been released from the hospital after one of the most dehumanizing experiences of my life; depressed and entering the literal darkness of this time of year. I am not her anymore. I am a year older, wiser. I see what is happening to me- the full moon or whatever it is, and I can call it out on its' shit. I see you, depression. You are not me. You are not who I am. You try to own me sometimes, but you don't. And that is no small thing.

Approaching this new year with a curiosity. I have almost no idea what will happen in the future. Job searching is lonely and difficult, but I am also just curious. What WILL happen?

I'm lucky to have what I have. I have a body that is still alive, for better or for worse (bit of both). I have discovered what I am meant for: theatre. performance. directing. devising. writing. creating. Not everyone can say either of these things. I am lucky. It is no small thing.

So, full moon: effing bring it. I'm gonna put on my running shoes and leave the house today, even though most of me is saying no, just curl up and die. I'm gonna put on music that inspires me to be a better human. I will be unafraid to read or think things that make me cry or feel overwhelmed by the idea of the world. Beauty and Terror in everything, is everything. Because feeling these things reminds me that I am alive. And that is no small thing.

On Growing

1

it feels like cold liquid metal climbing your neck

sealing off airways

solidifying your upper vertebrae

and brain stem into a

silver statue

while your jaw spasms

tilting your head backward until all you can see is up

muscles tightening, backing into a dim corner

and it goes dark.

Sometimes it’s just for a moment-

I’m sitting on the stairs in front of the kitchen door

shoes on, ready to go

but something invisible grips me

and I can’t move my body

Sometimes it’s for a long time- days even.

Laying still, crooked but frozen,

a week of night sweats still in my sheets

as the only protection I have from facing myself

and the possibility of the world.

it makes breathing hard, burning like that

it makes you sink into the floor like lava--

the kind you’d avoid as a kid

hopping couch cushions and chairs--

is now what your body is made of.

disappear, wane, vanish, seep away

and every other word or phrase

I can think of to describe

that darkness

and what it makes my head do

I just want to dissipate, dissolve,

disappear--

and then, light.

I can’t explain it

it’s my mothers’ arms

it’s naming green objects in the room

it’s the final slam of the door

or my face on the floor

sobbing into the grass and then

turning over to the sun in my face.

remembering love

remembering breathing

remembering light. life. living.

Remembering beauty and terror.

both things

inseparable

two sides of the same coin

the back and palm of your hand

the curve and the concave

the wave and the particle light

the ultimate paradox

the only thing I call

Truth.

2

There are many things I wish I could do

dance professionally

grow as many botanicals as I wanted

decide the weather

I have my poor-man’s version of my dreams:

I work and stretch my muscles every day

I have a large assortment of herbs growing and

bundles hanging around the house

drying for tea as autumn settles into my stomach.

but I ache to be the best version of myself.

whatever she is.

I dream of her, see visions of her

sometimes catch glimpses of her:

early mornings with coffee and my dog outside

watching her discover every single leaf in the yard

and carry it triumphantly over to me.

I should treasure my possessions

like she does:

delight in every single leaf in the yard.

My lemon catnip tea from my garden

and my bundles of lavender hanging

upside down.

Be in awe of my body holding on through waves

that can crush bodies alive.

To stand in awe, that here, she is:

in the mirror, post-anxiety attack

after crying or anger or joy

after laughing with friends or burning a candle

to look her in the eye

to stand in awe of her

of that version of me;

no better than five-minute ago me

no worse either,

and say

She

is the best version

of me.

3

I came home today with

a bundle of oregano that took two hands to carry inside

a fistful of thyme, a skirt-full of lemon catnip,

a fortune of lavender blossoms and four tomatoes.

There are still five bell peppers swelling

and three dark purple eggplants dropping slowly

from their leafy perches

and still a forest of curly kale.

The squash leaves are withered

and the sunflowers stand their mournful

beautiful ground

only their eyes saw the summer bees

and bunnies

playing in my garden.

They are echoes, those large heads

stalks three fingers wide

of the former days

of early Spring leaning graciously into Summer

I think of my own cycle, echoing the seasons-

echoing the sunflower heads bowed

some of my stems broken; petals brown and dried

like tissue paper.

I was tall, once. Bending towards the sun

I was majestic; colorful; fuel for the bees’ sacred mission--

and I am now cold, dry, like tissue paper

and just as defenseless. Susceptible to water,

damage, fire, frost.

But inside me

are echoes of those summer heads:

ideas floating like bursts of life

the many seeds of new lives that are coming

and one day, I too

will dig deep my feet

and grow again.

The Water Table of the Human Condition

"You took it all, but I'm still breathing." 

Okay so, Sia has been on repeat IRL and also in my head for a bit now. She's really climbing the ladder of my cool list. This line has been tumbling around in my head for the past few weeks, from one of her newest songs called "Alive". I didn’t start singing along as a self pep-talk, it's just been in my mind like a welcomed ear worm. Then I realized this morning how much this lyric is saying about my life. Blah blah blah cancer you absolutely sucked everything out of me, but in spite of your efforts, I'm still freaking ALIVE.

Cancer takes a lot. I'm actually just sitting here at my desk with what’s probably a pretty blank expression on my face because I'm not sure what to follow that statement with. Yeah, it takes a lot. It takes away a lot of things, it takes a lot out of you, and it takes a lot of who you are. There were a good 7-10 months when I thought my personality was literally dead. Like, gone forever. I didn't think I had anything left inside me, at all. I am not exaggerating. I felt like a stupid hollowed log of a fallen tree rotting into the ground. Although it didn’t feel even that poetic; and that's not even good poetry to start with. I certainly couldn't have accurately explained how I felt at the time because it escaped words. Maybe I'm trying to explain it now. And maybe you are yourself at a place where you feel this way- cancer patient or not. I’m learning that this is a very real human experience. The experience of fear which often gives way to a dispassionate sensation that’s the one step past terror: a coping mechanism where your emotions just shut off as you watch everything you thought defined you slip away like the smoke of a blown out candle.

I've come away from my experience (haha. "come away" like it's over or something.) with cancer with a hugely expanded respect for the human condition. And I mean that in many ways. Philosophically, the human condition is defined as the essences of human existence: what it means to be a human. It often paints a picture of existential meaning, morality, mortality, etc. It's one of the reasons I am drawn to philosophy; I am sort of cursed with eternal existential crisis. But the respect I now have for the human condition has grown considerably: most notably the interminable human imagination in dealing with conflict. Whether that conflict is in relation to yourself, other humans, the world, or stupid, stupid fast-growing mutant cells that just wanna kill you. The ability of the human spirit to bushwhack through insane circumstances is, honestly, pretty damn impressive. I certainly don't claim to have survived humans' greatest plight or anything, but I have definitely experienced a level of existential (and while we're at it, physical) pain that I had not even touched the surface of before. Whether or not my actual experience is on "level" with some of the most horrific circumstances a human can go through (I don't believe it is. What with the Holocaust, genocide, refugee camps, bombings, child hunger, orphanages, lack of clean water, losing a child; the list marches sadly on and on), I do believe that I have tapped into the water table of the human condition a bit. 

When we experience something horrific- and no person is exempt from this- we tap into that deep flowing river of muck water. We experience the same feelings of so many people have who have gone before us. In a way, it's like a horrifying rite-of-passage to becoming a human being. Again, I'm talking from my own experience here, but I see this imagery in my mind so clearly: It’s like a dark undercurrent of filth that flows beneath the surface of what we imagine life to be before real stuff starts happening. It’s just straight manure, blood and tears surging along under the crust we walk with our baby soft feet. And then something happens and we dip our toes (or wade in waist-deep- what’s the difference, really?) into that murky shit water and it never seems to fully wash away. And the current is strong, and the sewage is thick and disgusting and grips us like a crocodile death roll. It takes us down and it appears to be infinite.

I’ve talked about water before: it’s fluidity of states-of-being, its cleansing and life-giving properties, and the endless cycle it run through on our planet since the beginning of time. But now I’m adding water into the dirty part of living too, and it’s powerful there too. Take drinking water, for example. Millions of people in the world are unable to have clean water in their lives. And as I sit here at my desk while my stomach is telling me I’m slightly hungry and like, yay instagram- it’s hard to fathom that children are dying because the water they have access to is non-potable. It’s filled with dirt and disease. And that changes their lives- shortens them, certainly. There is so much pain. What an unfathomable thing. Our bodies are about 60% water. Blood is 90% water. Our brains and muscles are 75% water. Even bones are made of water. If you get bad water in there, your body just won’t work.

I’m getting increasingly metaphorical here, but back to my picture: So there’s the dark waters of deep shit, whatever your deep shit is or ever will be in the future, and you’re tainted and it won’t wash out, like Macbeth’s bloody hands. Water is powerful. But I also see that somewhere even deeper, a layer way below the unseemly depths of this wreckage, there’s another, different river surge. Picture a dammed river being released, or the water Arwen calls forth to flush those Ring Wraiths down the toilet of Middle-earth (c’mon let out your inner nerd).

Water is a conqueror. The dirty stuff wants to bring you down and suffocate you. But to live through circumstances that challenge us, even break us- living through them in my mind is diving head first into that polluted H2O, pushing deeper and deeper into the earth of living until you break that barrier into that clear, cleansing, beautiful cascade of water that is the deeper understanding of what it is to be a human being. And that in the interminable human imagination and spirit.

All this rambling has surfaced the words of (what a surprise) Rilke. I absolutely did not have these words in mind when I began writing all of this, but I now find myself stunned at the accuracy to which he is able to capture what I am trying to say. Way to go Rilke, you nailed it again with your concise and heavenly poetics that explain better than I ever could:

You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.
So many live on and want nothing
And are raised to the rank of prince
By the slippery ease of their light judgments
But what you love to see are faces
that do work and feel thirst.
You love most of all those who need you
as they need a crowbar or a hoe.
You have not grown old, and it is not too late
To dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.

and here’s another translation of the same poem that’s just. omg I’m on the floor. the. floor. hnnnngggg

You see, I want a lot.
Maybe I want it all:
the darkness of each endless fall,
the shimmering light of each ascent.
So many are alive who don't seem to care.
Casual, easy, they move in the world
as though untouched.
But you take pleasure in the faces
of those who know they thirst.
You cherish those
who grip you for survival.
You are not dead yet, it's not too late
to open your depths by plunging into them
and drink in the life
that reveals itself quietly there.

Thirst. Light and darkness. Diving into depths. Drinking in life. Water.

“Hi my name is Rainer Maria Rilke and I’d just like to say: You are not dead yet, and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths and drink in the life that reveals itself quietly there.”

*pauses for effect* *drops mic*

Day I've stopped counting: Updates and Winterizing my life

"Hello from the Outsiiiiiiiide. I'm freezing over; soon you'll cryyyyyyyyy" -November. 

(November is such a plagiarizing cheat, Adele, I'm sorry.)

Actually, we’ve experienced record warmth this year ("70s? IN NOVEMBER?" I rejoice). But I know its only a matter of time before snow arrives (this part's not so bad: it's beautiful and exciting and surfaces those nostalgic memories of every first-snow you can recall), the dagger-like wind picks up (and due to the fact that I am a paper-doll at the current moment, I fully expect to be whisked away to some distant land in the clouds never to be seen again. I'll write to let you know what it's like to fly, if I can find a pen and a reliable carrier pigeon), and the dropping temperature will chill both my physical and mental state into an angry Dark Ages. I hate the winter.

I remember being young and exhilarated by the prospect of this time of year: waking every morning with the glittering hope of a snow day, watching the school-cancellations scroll across the TV; building underground tunnels and igloos in the mountainous snow banks left by the plows; taking turns playing Snow Queen with my sisters--and when our cheeks couldn't take it anymore: hot chocolate and marshmallows awaiting us inside. It also meant that the holidays were approaching, obviously. Thanksgiving and Christmas: highlighted with melt-in-your-mouth sugar cookies, little red candles spinning the (German? Swedish?) nativity pyramid on the kitchen table, and the smell of evergreen wreaths when you walk through a doorway. Actually now that I've written all of that, it doesn't seem half as bad. Nostalgia is a very powerful thing.

But as you get older and there's no school days to be cancelled, snow means shoveling, scraping ice off your car with numb-ass hands because you can't find your gloves, sitting bitter and freezing as you wait for the engine to warm up, and for me: being perpetually late everywhere because I always forget to factor in how much longer it takes to leave (bundling up the layers, and readying the car, see above). I've also learned something about myself in recent years: I hate being cold. Not just that it's uncomfortable, but I actually get angry. Like really, really angry when I am cold. It's as if my brain shuts down in extreme efforts to focus on staving off hypothermia, and everything and everyone is a noxious distraction from my every cell trying to zip up its tiny winter jacket that the wind seems to blow right through. Not to mention the time-change and ever-shrinking hours of daylight. As soon as I'm cold, I turn into an ogre-ous (this is now a word. You’re welcome, English) form of Bekah. It's terrible, and I hate this version of myself. 

And on top of all this (the impending Doom), I’ve also had some not-great (read: the worst.) life things in recent weeks. I’ve written before about my muscle spasms. Well, they’re reaching an all-time high/low, whichever/whatever. The New Deal: about a month ago, my spasms went (quite suddenly) from a more intermittent irritation (though still excruciatingly painful when they’d happen) to a full-blown life-takeover. Every single day was a time bomb, counting down a spasm clock with the launch procedure completely unknown to me. All I knew that was at some point every day a part of my body will give up the ghost and submit me to torturous agony, often setting off a chain reaction as other parts of my body join in on this...escapade of debauched fate. (I am not exaggerating. I have a high pain-tolerance and I try very hard not to embellish my experience of pain. I have always been this way. This is the same person who unknowingly tore her (first) ACL and couldn’t properly walk for 3 weeks and then couldn’t squat, kneel or go up stairs without pain for over 8 months, but thought she’d just ‘power-through’, and then ignored red-flags of a serious medical condition, aka Cancer, for almost a year after that...dumb. So. Not an embellisher.)

And then every night, frequently hourly: spasms jolting me awake and I try to untangle myself from a blanket mess/straight-jacket to launch out of bed to try to quell the pain that I can only describe as my muscles attempting to break my leg bones. Literally every hour. Clockwork, I tell you. This extreme change in the frequency and intensity of the spasms scared me, and I spiraled real fast into a very dark depression. My life was being taken over by an evil dictator who lashed out erratically, but with enough regularity that I had to cancel, reschedule or amend all plans and appointments for weeks- which in turn caused isolation, which heightened my depression. And in addition, I had recently started taking prednisone again in a seemingly last-ditch effort to regain control of this body spinning off the road. Prednisone is a steroid/archenemy/med that doctors throw around like candy. Sure, it can help a lot of things in a lot of cases, but the side-effects both short and long term can be very bad. Very very bad. Read: bone necrosis, for one. Steroids also F with your brain and intensify any emotion you experience. Read: Depression. So, yeah. Spinning wheel of Death, Brain-side.

I was maxed out. I was maxed out on the pain, and maxed out on dealing with it. Every time felt like the last time I could handle it, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t want to do it any more. Most of my days were spent wishing I could just be knocked out or put under so I wouldn’t feel it. When I wasn’t just straight up crying (or screaming. I hate to admit this, but I sometimes scream into my pillows so I don’t wake neighbors. These muscles are not messing around. At all.) I’d just be asking god or my body or whoever could be listening: Why? WHY? and then No no no no no no. Your brain can do some pretty weird stuff when you’re in pain. I compulsively talk to myself because, psychology. “You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re ok, it’s okay. It’s okay its okay you’re okay” I call myself sweetheart, honey, my love, darling. And then sometimes it’s the opposite; I curse out this god-forsaken body with a string of uncreative obscenities.

And my never-ending question is How HOW can non-existent muscles cause this much suffering? There’s nothing even there to see (ie. paper doll), let alone spasm to the point of my bones feeling like their going to break. It feels like my body is trying to kill me, again. Cancer didn’t seem to work, so here’s the next attempt. Or perhaps my muscles are in mutiny and seeking to prove that they still exist in spite of me. I don’t know.

Well, finally after about three weeks of these shockingly quick-changing unforgiving circumstances and my mental state spinning out: I had one night of spasms so horrific, lasting so long and attacking new and larger muscle groups that I had no way of calming down or stretching to release, my parents took me to the ER. Of course as soon as we get to the ER my body had relaxed, as is the way of things (I can’t really move when a spasm hits, so we had to wait almost a half-hour in order to get me to the car). I wasn’t upset by this, I mean, not really because I didn’t want to be in pain any more. But it’s also difficult to explain to someone that, just a few short moments ago I was in the most intense pain I have ever experienced, by way of a now pacified and complete hypocrite of a body. The only thing I had to show for it was that I was totally exhausted. The fatigue following these episodes is obscene. They nodded. They took my blood. And my white count was high. Read: infection.

They did a chest X-Ray which revealed that I had pneumonia. I was admitted to the hospital that night and put on Big Gun antibiotics to knock it out (TMI alert it makes your pee smell terrible). With my still being immuno-compromised, pneumonia is nothing to mess around with. More X-Rays, more antibiotics, more nights in the hospital. What’s amazing is that I wasn’t presenting any signs or symptoms generally associated with pneumonia. Nurses and X-Ray techs kept asking me how my cough was doing, and I always had to answer them “I don’t have a cough” to which a quizzical look was always the response. Especially when follow-up questions like “Wheezing? Fever? Shortness of breath?” also got the headshake. What’s also amazing is that the muscle spasms started clearing up as the spot on my X-Ray did. They didn’t go away completely, but the regressed to about where they’d been prior to the Three Weeks of Hell. I tried to be active, walking laps around the floor- because that seems to help keep my leg spasms at bay- and sitting in a hospital bed wasn’t helping the cause.

It wasn’t until the night before I came home that we (well, my mom brilliantly sleuthed out) put together what I see as a pretty clear understanding of what had just happened to me. Why my spasms got so bad so suddenly, and conditionally why my mood spiraled out of control with it. Of course now in hindsight I do recall prior to my transplant, my doctor talking to me about chronic GvHD, and that if I did happen to have it (which was likely, given I had an 8/10 mismatched donor), that it would likely have “flare-ups” throughout my life, usually when I'd get sick. This happens because when the body gets an infection, the immune system “wakes up” (as it should) and goes to town on the infection, which causes symptoms (stuffy nose, cough, etc). At least, that’s what a proper immune system should do. In my case, because my immune system is transplanted and not my own, when it was triggered to “wake up” because I had developed pneumonia (hurrah), instead of attacking the pneumonia, my immune system got confused and started going to town on my muscles instead.

Hopefully my immune system will eventually feel “at home” in my body and not attack healthy things (like my mini muscles). The goal of this transplant is that the donor immune system will do what it’s supposed to do: keep my body free of infection, and keep cancer from returning. That’s called CURE. They say five years in remission is when cancer patients and doctors can start saying the word “Cure”. But I’m not so sure if it’s the same numerical path for me, we’ll see. The hope is to be able to get off of immuno-suppressants so that my immune system can reach it’s full potential to guard me. That may never happen, especially because I have a mismatched donor, and GvHD may be too intense (and dangerous) to ‘take the blinders off’ my immune system completely. But that’s the goal. For now, knowledge is power. Knowing and understanding what just happened to me has released some of the anxiety and depression that wrapped so tightly around me for the past month. If my muscle spasms (or my other, somewhat-less-frightening-but-still-obnoxious presentations of GvHD: so far I have five other ones) ever start to increase like they did this time around—I’ll know, I probably have an infection and my immune system just doesn’t know how to “do this” yet. The scariest part of it all (besides how bad the pain was) was not knowing why it got so bad—and that it was so suddenly and completely taking over my life for no apparent reason. Now I know.

I’m also taking other steps to build a healthier identity. It can be very disheartening when I look back over the year and it’s easy to chastise myself for not being further along than I am. I’ve fallen off the 2015 Year of Health horse a bit, but I can’t let that control me. I have to start where I am. I have begun PT for full-body reconditioning. A harrowing task, but I need to do it for my health and sanity and soul. I am starting to see a new psychiatrist and therapist closer to my home so I don’t need to drive into Boston so often. I am actively trying to gain weight (bacon). I’m doing research and learning how to be my own health-advocate (yup, even 2+ years into this thing and I’m still learning how to do this). I’ve seen a new transplant doctor at MGH for a second opinion, and he was very encouraging that we are NOT running out of options to deal with my GvHD- something that was told to me by my current team at DFCI. I am very grateful to my DFCI team and thankful for everything they’ve done for me, but I’ve had to learn that not everyone knows everything. It may appear obvious, but there you go. Lessons.

We’ve also found a clinical trial researching chronic GvHD that is recruiting new participants. It’s through the National Cancer Institute and the trial is based out of Maryland, so I hope to head down there at some point to be a part of their research. In their list of chronic GvHD symptoms, muscle spasms wasn’t even listed (my other 5 were) so I almost feel its my duty to science and other transplant patients to inform the research about this other form of GvHD #science. I know how important it is to not feel alone, and I want other patients experiencing what I’m experiencing to know that. So, to Maryland I go! I’m planning to contact them this week to start the process.

I am also drawing upon the lessons on self-care from last year, remembering what pulled me out from under last year’s depression: surrounding myself with beautiful, life affirming things: poetry and music, doing arts and projects, intentionally seeking out people and waking up earlier to catch more sunlight. Active self-care is work, but if I don’t do it, I will be doomed to the catastrophe of Winter. So I am Winterizing myself. Building a network of people I love, reconnecting with people I miss. Rilke and Rilke and Rilke. Making things with my hands when they let me, and leaving them in peace when they rebel. Allowing and reminding myself to be where I am, free of judgement and self-loathing. Stretching my muscles, watching the sky, breathing deeply. Winter, there are no strings on me.

Day 247: surprise and thanks, for you and the Greek Goddess

The world is so beautiful, so new, and so full of surprise. I'm currently staying at my parents' place near the Cape, and even though the weather has been pretty windy and cool, it's warm in the sun. This morning, for the first time, I saw a baltimore oriole outside my window (the bird, not the sports team…). Anne of Green Gables may be right that each day is new with no mistakes in it; but it also is new with surprises. I'm not what you would call a bird watcher, but this beauty was fully worth my praise; a brilliant mac-n-cheese tummy flitting between leaves of the japanese maple. 

And more surprises. Over the past few months, a friend of mine has been organizing a fundraiser “Café2Café” bike ride on the North Shore. The 70+ mile ride was today. Last year the donated proceeds went to a women's house on the North Shore for survivors of human trafficking. This year, the money was raised for living expenses for my sister and me. They raised almost $1500. I am again, and again, and again, floored by the love of people. I have never felt incredibly great about accepting monetary gifts, so I try to see this as the outpouring of love that it is. People are beautiful, and so good. The right words are hard to find to thank you all for your support, of all kinds. This has been the hardest, most physically and emotionally challenging year of my life. There were times I wasn't sure I could make it through, or was convinced that I didn't want to. Meds talking or not, there have been really dark moments over this past year. I've seen the bottom of the pit; I've dwelt there and felt the effects of that place on my psyche. Any plans I thought I had were utterly disrupted or severely re-routed beyond recognition. I've watched my body wither away and change shapes and colors, aching every moment as the strongest poison washed away my immune system. The months that followed were spent fearful and weak; sleeping most of the days, waiting for my body to miraculously start healing itself. It didn't seem possible that I’d ever come out of it, that I’d make it through those long months.

But it's happening. Right now. The distance traversed is gigantic. I'm not as dependent on pain pills anymore, I don't sleep nearly as much (though still a lot). I feel energy coming back to me, slowly--but nonetheless, returning. There were so many days and hours I felt I would never reach this point; and I can't believe I'm saying this. I am here. In this place, at this time, alive. Growing, healing, transforming. 

Lately I’ve been feeling negative towards my body for its lack of muscle and flexibility, and for general flabbiness. I am still blotchy, and I still have dark circles around my eyes, baby hair, and scars on my chest. But I am reminded today to look past these trifling problems, and pay homage to the great strength that my body has shown through the tribulations it has endured. My body has served me well, and I need to celebrate it. You done good, body! You've shielded me from many side effects, you've been beaten down: first by cancer and then by the near-lethal treatment--and remained even still. You’ve travelled noxious ground victoriously, voyaged dangerously close to death and pulled through, you Greek Goddess! You are worthy of praise and adoration! I will constantly fight the negative feelings and hold you in awe.

In those moments of doubt, as I’m sure they won’t ever leave me for good: when I’m not sure I want to do this anymore, struggle longer, wait for an elusive end to the trial—I must recall these moments of true surprise. I’ve found myself almost nine months out from my transplant, and a year out from the beginning of this saga. What surprise! I wasn’t sure how I could do it, how I could survive even another day of the solitude and depression and fear. But I am here. Here, almost nine months out. Only four months left of this quarantine. I’ve gone so far into the forest that I’m now on my way out the other side. Eyes on the (sur)prize!

So, thank you to everyone who rode in the Café to Café ride, and to Patrick for organizing the whole event. You guys confound me in the best way. And thank you to the Greek Goddess. I literally wouldn’t be here, right here, without you.

Day 240: one year, and a letter

To my dearest kin, my Knight,

It has been a full year since this began, somehow. 365 days. The earth has gone all the way around the sun while I have puttered and pillaged through another year of my confusing comedy of a life. I am now in remission. I am over 200 days out from my lifesaving transplant. I am here because of you.

And, I don't know you; in the sense of how one knows another person. And yet you are my nearest kin, my blood brother. We are so close, so connected. I have your blood in my veins. I now have your blood type, your immune system. Because of you, I am alive.

I don't feel that I have the words to say to you. Nothing sounds right. Nothing is enough, or fulfills my feeling about you and your choice to save me from dying. I don't even know if you think of me still. But I think of you every day. I love you, strangely and bizarrely. In a way I will not love anyone else, because I can't. I am in awe of you. I am proud of you. I am indebted to you.

It is strange to me that we may never meet. Though, I don't know what I would say, should the moment arise that we do. "Thank you" is so simple, stupidly simple; we say it when we take our coffee from the counter. We say thank you when someone holds the door. We say thank you when someone saves our life. Language fails. It is not enough.

So thank you for this beautiful day, the sun warming my back as I write this. For allowing me to see today. Thank you for this great book I'm reading. Thank you for my neighbors' dog running around outside, and the birds in the bushes. For music, for dance. For playing on the grass, sitting on the beach. For pretzels. For my hair that's growing in. For coffee in the mornings, for flowers. For my family, my sisters, my dear friends. For every feeling, all my tears, laughter, even anger. Thank you. I would have none of these things without you.

truly yours,

Bekah