Every night this week my heart had been racing and my mind foggy. My gut is in an angry medication induced state that is both unsettling and painful. At times the anxiousness is heavy it starts at my collar bones and fades into my chest where it rests heavy on my heart. The heaviness makes me feel as though I can’t breathe- it makes me want to hide – it makes me angry, frustrated, overwhelmed. It’s difficult to do anything. I tell myself it will pass – I do my best to push it aside, to set small goals, to create, to live. This time last year I wasn’t doing so well, it was the beginning of a long battle that I wasn’t sure I would win. So here I am, now faced with reality and the choices I need to make- still not sure I will win. How do I feel? I feel like there is lots of fucking pressure, I feel continuously weighed down, that I just can’t do enough, that I am letting everybody down.

What do you do, in those moments of quiet desperation? I imagine that we all have them. The moments when you look around and feel overwhelmed with the magnitude of the to-do’s in life. The moments when noises seem to loud, colors too bright, people too near. The moments when you are undecided, between so many possibilities, paralyzed into inaction. It’s about control. That’s no secret. I’ve written about it extensively before. I want some control- and I want a fucking break!

My body and mind are growing increasingly separate. But I’m having a much more difficult time sharing that with anyone. A piece of me has descended the winding staircase into crazy land and depression and I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back to the parlor to rejoin my guests for happy hour. The other part of me will not miss a happy hour- but my body is much too weary for the dance floor.

I’ve had a hard time writing- a difficult time expressing how I feel honestly. Everything feels to precarious, too uncertain. There’s nothing to hold on too. I want to be irreverent and take everything in stride. I want to have the strength that the women I see at the lodge have…so I am pretending to be someone I am not. I pretend I am not pissed off and angry that life is so unfair…and that I ache. Deep in my marrow… I wonder what the point is. Of any of it. The truth is I will most likely never be cured. So we try to manage my cancer with the treatment options available. Which means a ‘lifetime’ of chemo. That’s nearly like winning the lottery. It’s been hard to digest… It’s played a big part in my body/mind split recently. I’m okay with it- I mean it’s not like I can change it, eh? I go through moments of anger and sadness and “why me?” but there’s a lot of drugs out there- and who wants to live to be really old anyway. I’m not special…

My mind is still so confused. I’m dealing…because I learned a long time ago how to deal. But the voices, they never stop inside my head. I will never have what I wanted out of this life – but I will somehow find a way to make everyone think I was the happiest girl on earth. I always felt hidden and unheard and I now know it will always remain that way. For to show that I am someone else, to even one who claims (falsely) to want to see that person (at times) would upset the boundaries set forth by society, the books she read, the MHPs she consulted, to accommodate her life as it changed. It would blacken the beauty and quiet the laughter. She does not want that. It might keep her up at night- interrupt the happy. It saddens me that after all this time it feels this way- but I cannot change that. I cannot show someone what she doesn’t truly wish to see. She claims I try too hard? No, the girl you see comes easy~ to show you the ugly, pissed off at the world (unprofessional) ugly, abused, scared, girl…the one you can’t handle- haven’t been able to handle in 3 years – she is NOT like anyone else you’ve ever- ever treated (clearly!) so obviously there’s no”safe place” for her (that you used to say you ‘strove’ so hard to create- at some point it felt like you quit trying- I can sort of figure out when that point was…can you?) So let’s just pretend she doesn’t exist. You don’t respect that little bitch any more than I do. You keep your beauty and your simple *special* clients- she doesn’t exist, not to you, not anymore. She does inside of me- but only because I have no choice.

But I can make you laugh…Laughter, that is what we want- send in the clowns…

And as my friend Michelle says, “it’s going to be okay…because in our next lives- we will be cherished queens and live to be 100. At least that’s what I tell myself in moments like this.” so that’ll be good. And I look forward to it…