Yes I’m re-using that picture. It makes me smile, deal with it.
My arm hair returned recently, along with a small but annoying case of acne. These are things I’d dealt with before chemo removed them both and replaced them with that sexy, hairless-cat look and hot flashes. Now they’re both back, and I’m doing what I do best – struggling to figure out the meaning of it all.
On one hand, it means that my body is continuing to heal and to rid itself of the toxins I willingly put into my system two years ago. My sudden intolerance to alcohol is another sign of that. It also means that the toxins I literally paid to have put into my body were so crazy that it’s taking more than two years to rid myself even this much of them. That’s kinda heavy.
The idea that my body is still healing makes me wonder about my heart and mind. Are they still healing too? My body might be cancer-free, but my mind will never be. I can’t even look at hot dogs anymore without wondering if eating one will bring the cancer back. I walk around feeling normal, then my arm brushes across my foob and feels how cold it is (they’re never warm, not even in a hot shower), and I remember that I’m not normal. Not even a little bit.
My mind of course jumps immediately to the thought that I have no interest in being normal, and that the path I was on was incredibly destructive and painful, blah blah blah. But at the end of the day, I’m never going to be able to think about making out with someone without specifically figuring out which moment will be right to tell that person that I don’t have nipples. It’s just always going to be there. And that’s not normal. But I have arm hair again. And acne. And as much as I wish acne at 40 wasn’t normal, it totally is.
I’m not sure which is scarier – being forever not normal, or getting back to normal.
I nearly wrote an entire post a few weeks ago called, “It’s Time To Stop Leaning On Cancer”. I feel like Howard from Big Bang Theory sometimes, when he returned from space and couldn’t stop talking about it. I totally relate to that. I can sneak my cancer story into just about any conversation, and I know it’s annoying – I annoy myself – but somehow it blurts out every time anyway. You could tell me a story about going to get coffee, and I’ll respond with a story about how all I got to drink the morning of my mastectomy was black coffee. Complain to me about a loose hair tickling your arm, and I’ll regale you with tales of the little tiny hairs that wound up all over the couch as mine fell out.
It’s incredibly obnoxious, I’m sure of it.
I have a fierce determination to remember the lessons I learned, and to stay true to my heart. I have inner wars with myself practically every day as I make decisions about my future and organize my to-do list. Am I following my heart? Am I following my heart too much? Am I being stupid and impractical? Am I being too practical and ignoring the lessons the Universe decided were so important, it delivered freaking cancer as a teacher? It’s as exhausting as it sounds, believe me. And feels completely necessary until I write it out like that.
My reaction to my arm hair returning makes me wonder, how many things am I doing or not doing based entirely on my dogged resolve to stay ‘not normal’? To keep me from settling, from being too comfortable? That’s kinda heavy too.
I’ve been hiding behind my self-help books. They’re familiar, safe, and yet still outside of the box. I can decorate all of my insecurities in the beautiful colors of advice. I can tell my story in such detail that you feel as though I’m telling you everything – you might even feel as though I’ve shared my soul with you. And on a lot of levels, I have. When I write those books, my heart sours with the thought of even one person benefiting from what I have to say. And the exercises in ‘Release It’ come as close to sharing my feelings as I’ll ever get within the confines of self-help. But for the most part, I dare you to piece out of any of those stories what my true feelings are about anything.
My mom used to talk about how I’ve always been willing to tell a stranger on a bus my entire life story – but I rarely tell even my best friends how I feel about any of it. If you want to hear about my dad’s illness I can go on for hours. I can even give you a detailed and ironically entertaining version of his last minutes. But damned if you’ll hear a shred of the actual pain, guilt and loss I felt. I can count on one hand…no, one finger the number of people who have witnessed the level of guilt and shame I feel about my son’s first few weeks on this earth. One.
Some of this comes from a lack of an emotional vocabulary, and really, how many people share that level of emotion with anyone? But it’s something I keep coming back to. And as I struggle with what’s next for me, I’m delving into the subject again. What’s next for me needs to be what scares me most. And out of everything out there, I’m pretty sure that showing people my true underbelly is what scares me most. Exploring my creative side – my truly creative side – is terrifying. Writing fiction has me running for the hills most days. Putting my short story out there for acquaintances to read was waaaaay more nerve-wracking than all of my self-help books combined. And I tend to be more okay with strangers reading it than I am with people who know me but don’t know me. Because after reading that, you kind of do. A little.
I’m working on it.
So here’s the question – can I live with both the normal and the not-normal? Can I accept my never-warm, nipple-less foobs and my returning arm hair? Can I find peace in doing some of the things I did before cancer, while also following my dreams and living my life in a way I’ll be proud of?
I sure as hell hope so.