Resting

I really had it out with Ryan yesterday.

He really hasn't understood what I'm going through, and how much I need his help to be the glue in this family when I am down and out. That everybody needs to have their hand held, me included. That nobody is as strong as I was being. NOBODY. That I hurt just as much as anybody else, that I need love just as much. That "I'm fine" doesn't mean anything if I'm bleeding and swollen and hurting and tramatized. I think that "I'm fine" in those circumstances means that you if can't see how not-fine I am, how much I am struggling, how much extra care I need, then you are not really looking at me. If you can't look me in the eye, I can not reveal my pain.

That's pretty messed up. I know. Ryan is closest, so he gets the brunt of it.

Ryan protests. He wants to help. This is where it gets sticky. He is so frustrated that I have not let him help; I am frustrated that he has not tried harder. I am frustrated that I wasn't allowed to ask him for help as he struggled with his own demons, and that I had to shoulder so much in his place. I'm damn angry, as a matter of fact.

Ryan is a good man. I'm glad I married him. I love him. He is a great dad, and Tessa thinks that he hung the moon. He is capable of great things. This is not about belittling him. I'm just trying to be honest about where all of this "stuff" I'm dealing with is coming from, and it's not all roses.

My strength is real, but also a farce. It's what I did to hold it together through a long ride through hell, but it has its limits.

And I have reached those limits.

A woman on the YSC has been through more than I have. I won't tell her story here because it is not mine to tell, but she knows about pain and loss and cancer and other tragedies; she started her journey before mine, has been going without a break, and isn't done yet (though she will be soon). I admire her more than I could possibly express here; she is graceful and real at the same time. She sent me a reply to my "help!" message that I sent out to the girls in Cancerland, and she told me that she had been watching me since the beginning. She told me that she's been waiting for this, and that it was okay for me to break down now.

Suddenly, it all feels so transparent. This was inevitable, and I didn't see it coming.

I have not really dealt with all of this. I have told myself that Bad Things Happen and It's Okay.

Bad things happen. It is not okay. It's reality, but it sucks.

And a LOT of bad things have happened to me.

As somebody else put it to me, PollyAnna never got cancer.

It has been pointed out to me that a lot of survivors get post traumatic stress disorder. A counselor on the YSC pointed out to me that she thought I had an acute case, and to get thee to a shrink post haste. I'm pretty sure she's right.

I have taken great pains to prove to people that I Am Okay. That I am Bigger Than Cancer. That I Am an Inspiration.

Well, maybe I am. But I'm also human. DAMNIT. This part hurts. That no matter how much I deal with pain in various forms, in the end, I am not WonderWoman. I can take bullets to the chest and lift SUVs off innocent babies but in the end, I'm just human, and I still hurt, and I still bleed. I can lift the SUV to save the baby (or myself), true, but I still put out my back, damage my muscles, break my bones, and burst my blood vessels. I am not unscathed from the process.

I have forgotten how to acknowledge pain. When is pain too much? For me, it's when the nausea overwhelms me and I feel terror because if I throw up my chest stitches will burst open from the force of the vomit expelling from my body. I know the pain is too much if I start shaking uncontrollably. I know the pain is too much if I wake up moaning. I've experienced those things more times than I can count.

But right before the moaning, or the shaking, people ask me if I'm okay and I think "Well, all my parts are there. I guess I'm okay," and so I say "I'm fine."

I'm not fine. It should be abundantly clear that I am not fine. But when the pain is a throbbing in my body and it's almost manageable if I lie perfectly still and keep my breathing shallow, I haven't been able to acknowledge that this is the kind of pain that nobody should ever experience. Never mind that if I HAD to, say, if the hospital caught fire, I could make it out on my own two feet, it's not okay. Never mind that I can take it as long as it doesn't crank up any more. I shouldn't have to take it.

The nurses are surprised when they come to check on me and ask me my pain. "What number on a scale of 1-10, 10 is worst?" I think. It feels like I'm dying. But I know I'm not dying. 7? Oh, don't be a wuss, 7's for really bad stuff, and this isn't all that bad, because I can still talk in short sentences if my eyes are closed. "Five?" I say, uncertain. "FIVE?" they respond, "Why didn't you tell me! Let me get you some more narcotics! Let's bring that down."

How come I don't even know how much pain I'm in, on my own personal scale?

My cancer has been inconvenient to more people than I can count. People are tired of my complaints. They like it when I'm brave. "Oh I'm so glad you're up and about so soon!" they say. This is how I have defined myself. I am successful when people are telling me how brave I am.

I'm the girl who lost 40 pounds while in the middle of hell. The girl with a mastectomy who went swimming the day her head was shaved bald. If I can do that, I can do anything. I'm the girl who speed-walked the first year of the 3-Day.

I'm also the girl who wrote a 3-Day speech that had 2500 people in tears. It honestly struck me - why are they crying? It was supposed to inspire! It was supposed to show that there could be joy with pain! We all know that cancer is painful, but I was showing joy! Why were they crying?

More importantly, why were they crying so freely when I was not?

If you've followed any of this rambling, you know, as I am now realizing, that I am completely crazy. I have really lost it this time.

I spoke to Rev. Peg yesterday, and she reminded me of the sermon from last week, teachings of a Buddhist monk whose 3-part name (Thac? Nan?.....?) I can never remember, even though he is an amazing teacher and human. Anyway, it was about owning all of our parts. It was about allowing ourselves to acknowledge our anger, to turn it over in our hands, to accept it, and to look at it with acceptance before doing anything with or to it. Or maybe it's about not doing anything to it, just acknowledging that anger is real, as much as joy or other "positive" feelings. I need to go online and read the sermon, that's for sure. (I heard the lecture when 24 hours out of the hospital, in pain, on narcotics. Pardon me for getting the details mixed up.)

Because I think that I have said, "There is no point in being angry over something I can not control," and I have tried to turn my anger into positive actions (focusing time on fundraising, for example). I have not accepted that I have burning anger. That it just "is." That it is an (acceptable?) part of the package. That you cannot go through what I have been through and emerge unscathed.

And now the anger has exploded and taken over. Instead of apologizing for this, instead of smoothing everything over, instead of pretending that I feel better than I do, I am attempting to stand back and watch - let - it blow.

This meant that I spent a lot of last night crying and yelling. Let me tell you, this is not Lifetime Movie material. This is ugly.

Part of what I am realizing is that I have spent a lot of time making people feel better about the fact that I had cancer, the fact of my pain, the fact of my concern. People love to talk about how I'm going to fight this thing and win; nobody wants to talk about the fear of losing. "Oh that won't happen to you," they say. Well, I'm allowed to worry. I'm allowed to acknowledge my fear. My cancer isn't scary because I had to take bad drugs and do awful surgeries; my cancer is scary because it threatens to take away my breath, to turn me back to ashes.

And I'm angry that I have all of this fear and nowhere to put it.

I'm angry because if I spend an hour at home watching Dr. Phil I feel like I have let down Tessa and myself and everyone because Dr. Phil is junk-TV and not useful and I have wasted a day that I was lucky enough to have. I feel guilty because I could be doing something useful to improve the life of my family or of the planet. I feel guilty because I'm resting when I should be working. There is always work to do. But when am I allowed to just rest? When am I allowed to take an hour to gather my thoughts, or to just rest?

On Monday, fresh out of surgery, Tessa at my mom's, why did I do four loads of laundry, change the sheets, take out the recycling, load and unload the dishwasher? WHY? There are a lot of answers to that questions, and I'm not interested in the most simple answers.

I guess I'm running out of steam. I'm waiting for Dr. Rinn to call. I need meds. I still feel completely off balance.

Ryan stayed home today to take care of me. I am under orders to rest.

Our fridge and freezer are stocked with meals from friends and Mom. Tessa has been under wonderful care from my Mom, Heather, Katie, Beth, and others. I can't blame any of this on a lack of a support system. I have bouquets of flowers, food, desserts, cards, gifts to remind me of how much people love me. It makes no sense at all that I would feel unlovable, but I can't explain it. I am so grateful to my friends and family - you know who you are, and how much I love you.

I'm just a basket case.

And for those of you reading this and thinking that this is just a phase, let me say in no uncertain terms: this is me, too. This me has been there all along. I need to be in this place right now. It's dark and it's scary and I hate it but I've got to get through it. PollyAnna is still missing but I'm starting to resent the hell out of her because she led me down this path and then abandoned me in the wilderness with no map to get out. I'm pretty pissed off at her, for letting me believe in her, for letting me believe that I could count on her to stick around, because she has left when I needed her more than ever.

In a day or two I hope I will be functional again, not weeping at every turn. But not today. Today I'm crying a lot and so confused. In a day or two I will have to emerge from my hole and face the day and look at the sun (or feel the rain on my face; it is Seattle) and I will try to find some middle ground between PollyAnna and the darkness where I don't feel schizophrenic. I will take all of the necessary steps (make gratitude lists, meditate, deep breathing, take drugs, seek a counselor, blah blah blah) to figure my way through the mess and I'll figure it out. But this part of me is not going away.

I have to deal with this part of me so that I am prepared when it comes back again, because I am very ill prepared this time.

What a freaking disaster. Just when I think I'm at the end of the awful journey, just when I think I'm the most healed, I fall apart. Great.