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.

Day 706: human AND dancer?

10 weeks since my last post. I may do better as a writer to be more disciplined at this, but honestly, I just wait until the impetus to write starts bubbling up. And it's been bubbling for the past few weeks- and after so many things happening, I finally have a moment to sit and write it out. My friend today asked what it would be about. I answered: "I don't know yet" because I don't. This blog has been a discovery for me, nearly every time I sit down to type, I have almost no idea what I will write about, and I make discoveries about myself and my life as I write. So here goes.

[edit: Upon reflection/re-read, this is serving as a catch-up post for people interested in what I've been up to, and not necessarily all of what I've been thinking about, which is usually somewhere between crying over beauty or being crippled by existential terror. But that's always sort of thrown in I guess. There's more and more still waiting in me, but I think it shall wait for its own blog post.]

I'm sitting in an unfamiliar kitchen in Ipswich MA where I am dog/house sitting. The pooch is an adorable, loving 11 year-old chocolate lab mix, and we're best buddies now (it's my second day). I may not need a shower as I've been licked head to toe by this baby.

I'm thinking over what has been crawling through my mind these past few months- and much has happened: good and bad things; and as always, Life showing itself truthfully. I 95% moved out of my old apartment and into my new apartment this past weekend. I can't believe I've moved so many times, and each time it is so similar; too similar. First, moving is sooo fun. In addition to being anxiety-ridden and stressful, I am seemingly always the last person to leave an apartment (read: I am responsible for cleaning the entire thing). Thankfully I still have another weekend to move the rest of my stuff (HOW SO MUCH STUFF?! HOW) and to clean it all. I've been fortunate to have time to move; the usual move out/in and clean all in one day is a nightmare, and I'm pretty sure everyone has experienced this at some point.

Good news on the goal-front! I have traveled a bit. I am making it happen, sort of. I haven't mentioned it yet, but I went to Southern CA back in April, and though it was the COLDEST WEEK in recent memory (WHY, HOW), it was more cleansing than I could even understand until I got back to MA. I've not traveled too much in my life yet, but that trip- though I spent many (too) many hours in my rental car driving all across the (Southern CA) world- it was healing and just what I needed. It was a difficult winter (yes, didn't we all love it), and I was seriously getting ready to move out to CA sight-unseen, but decided to take this trip first. I now don't have the urge to move out there, at least not at the moment, but just going on a vacation (my first personal vacation! ever!) cleaned me out and refreshed me in a way I didn't know it could.

I also just got back from SCOTLAND. Yes. International traveler, me. I went to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival and it was divine and difficult, both of which I was anticipating. Edinburgh is a very walkable city, but it is also mostly hills. This was tough for my body, and though it got easier every day, it was still pretty rough and I was almost always tired. It was also quite chilly (though apparently the week I was there we had some of the warmest days in recent memory... I guess good karma from my iceberg CA trip?) and I am a perpetually cold being now, even when it's 70.

I first went to the Fringe Fest in Edinburgh back in 2011, and I saw some work there that completely changed my life. It inspired me to start my own theatre company here in MA, and I've been longing to return ever since (on a side note: a few months before I was diagnosed, I was planning to go back that summer with my sister). So in going back, of course I wondered if I would see anything that would break me like my first time in Edinburgh.

...It happened. It took until my second-to-last day there, but it happened. I almost missed the show because while standing in queue, I suddenly got a massive coughing attack (oh yeah, I got a great chest cold about mid-way through the week. Nights full of feverish delirium. Sweet) and had to step out of line while they let everyone else in. At the literal last second, I was finally able to compose myself and climbed to the very back of the stadium seating (which actually turned out quite nicely: I was able to see the entire stage, and being a shorter person, this is not usually the case.) The show was a physical theatre piece called Institute by a UK company called Gecko. It was absolutely brilliant. I could attempt to talk about it for a while, but honestly, physical theatre and dance is always it's own, usually wordless language. I would find myself crying, not even entirely sure why.

After it was over, I stumbled out of the venue, put on my sunglasses and tried not to burst out sobbing on my way back to my flat (thankfully not a far walk home). I couldn't speak. And when I finally could, it was tearfully to two girls who were in my flat, as tried to explain what I had just witnessed. They had to leave for something else, and I went to my room and lay on my bed and cried for a while. Seriously, just laid there and cried. I wasn't trying to "process it" in any real way, but rather just let the experience wash over me. And it still does.

The next day, my last day there, I went back to the venue after the show got out because I heard that the company actually comes out afterwards to chat with people, which is incredibly generous especially after giving everything on the stage! It was amazing to talk with them about their process and their different paths to finding themselves in a physical theatre company. They asked where we "went"- what the show was to us. I spoke a little bit about spending a lot of time in hospitals (there was definitely imagery resonating there), and how we all try to care for each other even though we are failing at it all the time. I was trying to not cry. One of them asked me if I was a dancer, and I sort of stuttered and managed to burp out something about missing my chance. One of the company members points to one of the quieter members and says "Chris was a firefighter in California."

For some reason this stuck with me. I have spent so many hours and days being so sad and pissed off about how my "new" body fails and constantly disappoints me. From lack of mobility for so long, my muscles atrophied, and it's taking SO MUCH LONGER to get back than I could have ever imagined. And my flexibility is so poor that usually when I try to stretch it just becomes a crying session. But seeing this company's work, and in talking with them after their show-- I have a renewed sense of vigor to build my body again. For the first time in a long long time, I feel like I actually might be capable of getting to where I want to go. I know that it will take a lot of work. Probably more than I even realize at this moment. But I want it so badly.

Before I got sick, the only real option that I was considering for continuing my education into grad school was physical theatre and/or clown school. People would chuckle after I told them, then I'd usually have to say, "no, but seriously." I don't know necessarily that clown school is in the cards for the future, but I feel this urgency--a vitality to jump start and get this body to a different place. I'm promising myself that the next six months are going to be dedicated to self-care in the form of HEALTH: building muscle and flexibility. Let's do this. I've always felt that I could have been a dancer. And now: who knows? Maybe I will be one.

Day 607: Two Years.

To use a borrowed phrase, everything is illuminated. The past few weeks especially, I have watched as the flood waters came in. I have been overwhelmed by the power of all the energy and the prayers and the words and the cards and the gifts and the time: the hours days weeks years and the people people people people. You guys, people. Human. Beings.

These days I don't know where to start anymore. When people ask me how I am, or how it's been, or how I've changed, or who I am now. I usually stumble out some form of an answer-- one that doesn't seem to make sense even to me. I feel like I am in a watching stage. Listening stage. Accepting stage. These past couple weeks, or months--I haven't been counting. It's not that I don't have things to say, or that I don't have things in my head. It's just maybe I'm often tired of talking for now. I'm learning about how it's been, how I've changed, and who I am now. I've been talking and talking and writing about it for a while, and now I just need to sit back and observe.

But something else is bubbling up. Gratitude. So much pure thankfulness. For so many things, but especially people. Too many people to name. I am shaking my head as I type this because it's literally beyond grip how many people, and how thankful I am for them. I am washed over with gratitude. If if wasn't what is feeding me, I would be drowned in it. I want to wear it like a blanket, or a robe, or a crown. I want to point to it like a nighttime field of breezy grasses, loud with peepers, with dark outlines of heavy spent sunflower heads bowing to the ground. I want to scatter the ashes of these past two years over the whole earth, thanking every human who has breathed air with me. 

You can not begin to imagine that any list would suffice, but I endeavor anyway because I must try. May chemo-brain be revoked for a few minutes. May you forgive any forgetfulness at the shrine of chemo-brain. And also, at the shrine of human-ness.

To my family. To Rie, you sweet, sweet darling. My protector and strength for so long. You sat next to me, held my hands, and held me up--sometimes very literally. My heart hurts over you. To my Mom, with the most appropriate name, Joy, who looked me in the eyes after I finally stumbled out "I have leukemia" and said "Okay. We're gonna do what we need to do." To Sar, for your quiet strength and humor. To my Dad, for many things, but especially for holding all the financial and insurance strings and somehow making it look like a kite. To Jacob: you precious, sensitive, funny sweetheart boy who reminds me to "Look up to the sky, Aunt Bekah. Look up to the beautiful sky". To Grammy and your cards and gifts and love. 

To Ed who shoved the unwilling me into his car and took me to the ER. To the YTC staff who took over for me opening night that fateful weekend. To nurse Jen who, of her own intuitive choosing, took the blood test that discovered it all. To Zach the EMT who held my hand in the back of the ambulance to Boston and who told me "You're gonna kick this in the ass." To the nurse who gave a paper flower to the old man in the bed across from me that first night in the Brigham and Women's ER. You're beautiful. To 700 year old Mary, my first hospital roommate, who blasted infomercials all night and tried to sneak a cigarette. May I endeavor to learn from and attain your feisty, stubborn spirit.

To my incredible oncology and transplant teams. To Gabby and your smiling face. To Sarah who performed the least painful of all my bone marrow biopsies. To Dr. Ho. To Erin. To Jess. To Lisa and Amy Joyce and Margot. To Nurse David in the ER. To countless other nurses, aides, examiners, technicians, transports, housekeepers, phlebotomists, and fellow patients. To the Infectious Disease doctor (his name is escaping me) who still waves and yells hello from across the room just as the elevator doors start to close, because he is that kind, and insistent that I am his favorite patient, to this day. To Dana Farber Cancer Institute. To Karen for listening and for your intuition. To the fellow masked-and-gloved old man who asked me to dance in the waiting room. To my soul-sister reading Anne Lamott on the 8th floor when I was 12 days out who told me "Just keep going." To Becca, for writing me that note. To the gentleman who got the call about finding his donor while sitting across from me. To Bambi. To Theresa. 

To Martha, Kim, and Justin. To Garet, Gail, Adele, Amy, Dick, Deb, Barbara, Lindsay, and Kathy. To Livestrong for encouraging me and forcing me to lift ping pong balls, then 3lb weights, and now 8lb weights and beyond.

To the saints who have carried me in their words. I cannot explain. I am still here because of something that you wrote. Rainer Maria Rilke. Mary Oliver. Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi. Czeslaw Milosz. Anne Sexton. Martin Buber. Anne Bogart. Hannah Arendt. Anne Lamott. Abraham Joshua Heschel. Carl Sagan. The list goes on.

To my teachers and friends. I literally cannot name you all because I would be here for actually ever and my limited human/chemo brain would cause me to forget someone, or I would die of old age before I was done. If you're wondering if you're on this sacred list, you are. You are. You are. You are. Freaking Hump Day videos, you guys. Reading Steinbeck to me while I lay in bed. The Bash Leukemia Bash, to the artists and friends and givers who showered me with such love that I cannot contain within words. To mewithoutYou who came to play for me in the hospital because I couldn't make it to the show, to talking of Martin Buber, and grandmothers. To my theatre company, The 5th Wall, who waters me to grow like the stubborn plant that's prone to wilting that I am. To my readers. To all my soul mates. And to my donor: whomever, wherever, however you are. I love you.

And I raise thanks and gratitude for my body, the greek goddess who has marched, charged, wept, laughed, jumped, slumped, watched TV, danced, slept, sat, drooled and carried on through all of this. To my muscles that are growing and slowly learning how to bend again. To that whatever part of me that I am discovering, strangely: like a desperately old and yet new, friend; that small voice gaining sound, that part of me that endures beyond all things and throughout all my years crawling and climbing the mountains and crevices of this planet. To these same knees I used to scab up as a kid. To these same feet that have been carrying me around all this time.

You all saved my life.

Yes, in many many ways, two years feel stolen from me. So many things in and around me were derailed. My friends and family held their breath for a long long time--and we're still holding it, in some sense, though it's gotten easier, and maybe we take turns. I held my breath. I'm starting to exhale now. And when I exhale I try for peace and understanding and acceptance, but there is anger here too. I don't understand why bad things happen. Cancer is just one bad thing of so many, it's stupid. Philosophers and theologians and artists search for the answer, but it will forever be elusive. What can we do in the meantime? That's my quest, I think. Yes, I feel robbed and sometimes I feel really pissed off, and scared. I'm scared that it will return, that I will have to face death so close again. There are many things I can't control. But there are things that I can. And noticing, listening, watching things is one. One for now. And I now have a human body that I understand more intimately than ever before, and a human soul that I accept and trust more than ever before.

--------
here's a poorly executed collage of small things

 

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One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-mary oliver, The Journey

Day 559: more human

Just a bit over a year ago, this was the entry in my private journal:

---------------------

every day is a drudgery waiting for something in me to completely give up and die by organ failure or overdosing pills i want it over. im tired of keeping it up. i'm tired i can’t sleep. my mind is a blank white room with no windows

---------------------

I thought I could never emerge from under that depression. Everything that I had attached to my meaning of self had been stripped away. I had nothing to give. I felt my personality had truly died, I was just an endless cavern of need, and the world felt like a constant flashbang: stunned and wide-eyed ringing but out of focus and I couldn't shake it.  Who I was poured out from under me like a bowl of sand.

And now, I can look back. I am actually looking back on that time when I couldn't see a future, as in, I am past it. I really am in total shock that I have somehow existed this long, and through all that has happened. What has actually happened is a mystery to most people that I know, save for a precious few; and even then, I'm still the only one in this body. I have written off and on throughout this thing: some of it made public through this blog, and many short ramblings of days when a few depressive words was all I could muster. But there is so much that went undocumented, and so much that I don't even remember (that may be for the best, honestly). I am astonished to find myself on the other side of these almost two years. And for that, I can only attest to the raw human spirit. I basically feel like a witness to this. I've discovered, after the fact: something in me, perhaps inherently--and it is not something that I feel I have cultivated with any real energy. Usually my energy depleted by just existing every day, and the little animal of my soul nosed around in the dark, so hungry. I had my plans, of course. Cultivate an inner universe. Let everything happen to you. I tried my best, but most of the time it felt like I was dragging my lump of a frail body behind me, aimless and stumbling. But that human spirit emerged, like the runt of the pack: weak but determined. 

And I even find myself on the other side of the last couple months, in some ways worse for wear. Thanks, winter of the soul. But my mind is continually changing; striving (I hope) towards enlightenment, or peace, or something.

So far the answer lies in what I have come to understand of the world: there is no perfection. There is no one goal, no one place where we all gather and do the peace dance forever and ever amen. There is no one right choice and one wrong choice. I am learning that life is not a linear groove drawn in the ground, stretching out in front of you. It's not clean, either, Bekah. It's so goddamn messy, and you bumble along until you find something that you can hold on to for a while. And then you let it go. Or it lets go of you.

I'm not trying to be fatalistic. But there's something about who we are throughout our lives, void of whatever we are holding on to, or whatever is holding on to us. Human imagination: the raw human spirit that can think beyond the hole you're in. It's one step to conjure the million possibilities. The next step is choosing and doing. As far as I can see, the next rung on this ladder out of here is human agency: the capacity to act in the world. I believe it has the most to do with who we are, on a basic level, even more than what you actually "do". I’m interested in the person who is making these things happen. It’s something independent of who you know, what you have, what projects you are involved in, what you do for work. True freedom is being able to be who you are, where you are. And maybe if I can find that freedom, it will allow me to make a difference, somewhere somehow in a small way. When I think about what I am actually “accomplishing” in “the world” right now, I start to feel bad about myself. I don’t have a job, it’s been months since I’ve had a real creative project, I'm sick a lot, my body is a shitball, I don’t see people that often, I don’t go on vacations, I don’t have a career I don’t have a house I don’t have a boyfriend I don’t have a dog I don’t have a wittle bundle of joy I don’t have a five year plan, and my room is a mess. I’m not saving people.  The causes for which I feel deeply are plugging along without me. I don’t have a field, I don’t have a plow.

But I am sensing, over everything else, the importance of being an authentic human being on this hilarious rock flying through a dark universe. And that feels more real and enduring than any other one thing.

My not having most of that list above doesn’t bother me too much. It's not my goal in life to get married and have babies. For some people, that may be their most prized wish, and I am not hating on that at all. I find what ends up bothering me the most is the missing out on things that I wish that I was apart of. I want to do things that matter, I want to make art that reminds people they are human. I want to be a part of the movement to start saving this planet. I want to have a garden, I want to be flexible and strong. I want to feel beautiful. I want to be happy.

But none of those things will make me happy. Maybe the act of moving towards them will. Putting in the time and the energy. But maybe being a true human all the way through my life will. Finding the something in me that carries through all these hard things, that endures through jobs, hard conversations, relationships, health problems, trauma. Simplifying the society-made and self-perpetuated pressure on me to be something, and focusing on being Someone.

Sometimes people ask me how I am different now, and I have been asking myself that too. Now, on the almost other-side of cancer as a young person, how has it changed me? Well, I feel a sense of my self that wasn’t completely present before cancer. It’s hard to make that sound anything but corny, but I really mean it. 

I’ve spent a long time referring to pre- and post-cancer Bekah as different people, mostly because the difference is depressing and I long for the old me. Sometimes in my mind I see this dichotomy: Pre-cancer Bekah was strong and flexible multi-tasking never-sick I-don't-need-you-to-lift-that-for-me dancing-and-cartwheeling girl. Post-cancer Bekah is flabby boney blotchy-skinned less-spunky rubber-band-muscled somewhat-bald can’t-stand-for-more-than-an-hour lonely chemo-brained sad girl. But I have been trying to stop doing that, because ultimately, it’s detrimental to progress. So I'm practicing autonomy from the ‘I used to be’s. Those comparisons suck. They paint a picture of two different people: one better than the other, but I’m still the same person. And it ignores the things that have grown: my ability to handle being alone, my deeper understanding of human trauma and how we deal with it, my personal coping mechanisms and skills, my ability to slow down, and how I relate to people and the dynamics of relationships. I have learned that everyone, no matter what age, is still learning something. And again, it sounds super corny, but I have gained an understanding of myself that I didn’t have before; a baseline calm has emerged. I have a sense of who I am that endures through my whole life, regardless of good times or hardship. And I carry all that's happened to me, but it isn't all of who I am. It’s not a perfect picture, I’m not a superhero gandhi. But I feel like my interactions with the world have shifted: I see myself differently, and I see the world differently. I am more in tune with myself and I feel more peaceful, in general. I can look back, and forward, and I see this whole thing more clearly--even the fact that I can’t see it all. I feel like I understand the point, more than I did. At least, today. This doesn’t mean I don’t get agitated, because I do. I get both rightfully and wrongfully agitated: at love and injustice and at dirty dishes and bad hair days. I’m still a human. No, I’m more of a human now, I think. I am more human. 

---------

Everyone should be born into this world happy
and loving everything.
But in truth it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.
Halleluiah, anyway I’m not where I started!

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes
almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?
And have you too decided that probably nothing important
is ever easy?
Not, say, for the first sixty years.

Halleluiah, I’m sixty now, and even a little more,

and some days I feel I have wings.

-mary oliver

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.