The Hard Questions

I went out with a friend tonight and was confronted by the impact of my situation.  The vastness of the word CANCER.  The fear.  The sadness.  The inextricable link to death.  Tonight, when I reached out to a friend for comfort unrelated to my illness, I realized that though I've begun to heal my wounds, escaping the impression this disease has left on me and those around me will be much more difficult.  No matter how much I try to ignore it, pretend it didn't happen and move forward, I am bound by the scars this process has left on me and the questions that linger in the air around me, unspoken, like silent veils subtly obscuring the person I really am.  These are the questions that the people who care about me are afraid to ask.  Frankly, these are the questions that we are afraid to ask ourselves.  So here I go.  I'm going to ask them for all of us and get them out of the way.  

Will the cancer come back?  Has it spread?  Will I have children? If I do have children, will I live to see them grow up?  If someone loves me, will they be left lonely?  In a nutshell, will I die?

Well, the truth is, I don't know.  Just like everyone else, there is no way for me to predict the answers to these questions.  All I know is that I've done everything in my power to prevent it from coming back, and that's all that I can do.  But does this mean that now I shouldn't pursue a normal life?  That I should be afraid to love and be loved for fear that I may not be around as long as other people?  Should I stop dreaming and striving and envisioning my future because of the possibility that it may be cut short?

There are no right answers to these questions, but if there is anything this experience has shown me is that I cannot sustain an existence clouded by death.  I have to believe in the possibility of love and life and a future or all my hard work will have been in vain; and if having cancer means that these basic elements of life are no longer available to me then the question no longer is will I die, but when.  

The reality is that the only thing that separates me from everyone else is that now there is a visible threat to my life.  Most people my age get to blissfully ignore how delicate our bodies are, living life with a sense of immortality, which allows us to take the necessary risks to succeed.  My biggest flaw is that I, because of my age, confront people with their mortality, reminding them that if I can die, so can they.  Unfortunately though, that innocence is no longer available to me.  I cannot ignore the fact that my body can and will at some point falter.  So what's the remedy?  What do I do?  I cannot go back and erase what has happened.

The only answer is I have to live, and not just live, but live well.  Otherwise, I'll never be able to lift the veils that have hung themselves over my spirit this past year.  So 2009, here I come, 'cause frankly, I'm freakin' tired of this shit! (I know, I know, really poetic, it's the menopause, I swear).

Thanks as always for reading.

Crawling out of the trenches,

DT