I got high last night (family-deal with it) in an attempt to feel better and remember what hungry felt like. Leave it to me to end up scarfing down tangerines all night and obsessively googling "hemipelvectomies" for hours on end, scaring myself shitless.
I am slowly realizing the severity of my situation. It takes time to research, for everything to settle in. Hopefully things will go exactly as planned- I'll never need surgery, the cancer will go away with radiation, and I'll be in remission/cured forever. Realistically, though, one must confront the possibility of not-so-favorable outcomes. One must confront death. I had a dream a couple of nights ago in which I did just that.
You see, I've had a conversation with death. At a Denny's, no less, which I can only assume signifies purgatory or hell or some other horrid sterile place. We sat at a booth and had a cup of coffee. I had a sense death was a man, but with no discernible body. Just fuzzy blackness. I never looked directly at him, just stared at the speckled beige tabletop.
We worked it out. We've reached an understanding. I'm not going to die anytime soon. I was conscious that it was a dream, but still terrified in the beginning, as if thinking about it would usher death in. It was like a nervous first date, I slowly becoming more comfortable as the conversation progressed. In the end, I was left with a feeling. Just a feeling, indescribable, but I will try to anyway:
the only thing that matters is to be happy by making others happy, to love by being loved, rather than being controlled by desire.
I'm not sure if I even subscribe to this (isn't desire so much fun?), but this was my overwhelming feeling upon waking up.
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5 comments:
I like this one.
Hey...whatever helps with getting you an appetite. :) They'll have to understand...my grand aunt took pot pills in order to help her with her cancer. It was the only way to get her to eat and ease the pain.
I'll never forget when I hit 125..and the hardest part was trying on clothes only to have them fall off...lost curves and everything. On the better side, it was just a reason to go get new clothes. lol. :P
I hope things DO go as planned for you and that it never comes back. Cancer has this cruel joke sometimes of taking itself in and out of your life, never really keeping you in the clear, always being a lingering reminder. If only there was a way to banish it. The only thing that makes me breathe easier is the CT/ MRI scans I get every year.
That's awesome you were able to get to that understanding. That's something I never did. I just had the determination to keep going full force cus I was too young and I wasn't going to let anything end my time here and not see my little cousins grow up. There was only one time I think I let the notion of it in my head, when my cousin passed away from her treatments, the same ones I was going through. I think I put the idea of death in the back of my head and focused on goals though...maybe it was away to avoid being scared...distracting myself.
"the only thing that matters is to be happy by making others happy, to love by being loved, rather than being controlled by desire."
Love it....very well said. :)
Keep on fighting girlie! I hope these next few months fly by for you and that it will all be over before you know it.
This is totally amazing.
Hi,
Just wanted to say - great, great blog. And that dream about desire is right. Desire/pleasure and fear/suffering go together. You cannot have one without another. Life always destroys every dams we build to stay warm and cozy in our little pools of stale water. Desease is one of the gifts that makes us much wiser. More intelligent (not intellectual) and sensitive. Just perceive thoughts passively along with everyting that is happening. That is sensitivity. To observe everything. The highest sensitivity is the highest happiness. That is love. And the desire/suffering is nonfunctional thinking.
this might be the best blog entry i have ever read. and i tend to avoid blogs like the plague (why do people say that? i'm sure you can't just "avoid" the plague or a hell of lot more people would have).
at any rate, what i meant to say was: awesome. i can totally see Death at Denny's and the feeling you were left with is one that's taken me over 20 years of "adulthood" to arrive at, and it's totally cool imho to sprinkle it with desire. nobody to my knowledge has absolutely forbidden it except some who i suspect are a little sadistic, masochistic and/or drama queens (oh, the irony) - not that there's anything wrong with that.
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