Written 2/24/15

February 24, 2015 I knew something was brewing yesterday. I did most of the usual things I do on a Monday, but not all. I did not realize then that I was on the final step of a journey from which I would not return. And now it is 4am on Tuesday, and finally, after not being able to use my words, my beloved words, to which I have always retreated, on which I have always depended, to build a wall between the part of me that was suffering, and reality, my old friends—words—which have waited for me at the doorway through which I passed overnight, words and I are reuniting. I think that now they will be what they have always been for me, but better, because the way I used them in the past will not come between us. No more walls, no more bricks, no more mortar to separate me from others, or from myself. No more standing off to one side to watch myself go through some unpleasantness that I would rather not claim as my own, no more watching others through a window, because “I do not really belong in that room.” During the night I crossed over the threshold into that room, and now I have reunited with the parts of myself that I have been disavowing for the last year. Today is the first anniversary of my bilateral radical mastectomy. Yesterday, I wept, and today I actually joined a League of women and some men who have not chosen this path, but who nevertheless will walk it as long as we are able. The words that keep running through my mind are “………and some have greatness thrust upon them…..” We, The League of People With Breast Cancer, have had Cancer, not greatness, thrust upon us. It is not something anyone chooses or would choose, but all the same, we are bound together. Some of us hide, as I have been doing for the past year, behind the wall of the ‘good patient’, doing all the ‘right’ things, and yet taking no active part in who I have become. As if being a “good girl” would make it all go away. As if, if I only tried harder, I would be like I used to be. Yes, I have been doing the support group thing, but until yesterday, I was not really a member—I was playing my usual role—participant, but not. Did they see me standing there in the doorway? Could they have known--I sure didn’t--that I had not been there all the months I had been attending? Could I really have been so arrogant to not want to embrace this clutch of courageous women, dealing with the fear and loathing of having Stage IV cancer? Because after all, I have read all the books, I have shown up at every appointment, on time and in good spirits, I have been the “good patient”, not bothering anyone with my terror, my aloneness, my isolation from myself. I do the exercises, I even embraced my baldness and wore hats rather than a wig. I have not gone back to my pre-chemo hair. I must be one of the realists, right? I am courageous, right? Not the sniveling coward I really am, unable to face reality. I found my lovely temporary tattoos, so I wouldn’t have to look at my scars—more pretending. I even sewed the pockets in my old bras, so that I would not have to wear those “orthopedic” bras that the shop lady got for my prostheses. The rub was, that I didn’t wear them. I convinced myself that I made a courageous choice when I walked around with my caved-in chest. At first I sewed blouses that were not as ‘revealing’ as t-shirts, but one would have to be blind to miss the fact that there was nothing under the place where boobs were supposed to be. So I went back to t-shirts and said to myself “damn the public, let them think what they may” but I never meant it. I was ‘The Me’ that I have always been, right? Slightly rebellious, always realistic, facing whatever needed to be faced, head on? No, not right. Very, very wrong. It is never right to be closed off from yourself, from your pain, from your fear. It is very, very wrong to close off the parts of yourself that want to cry and scream and curse the fates. Why be so civilized? So that I don’t disturb the status quo? So that I don’t bother anyone with how and what I’m feeling? So that I don’t scare the family? So that every little twinge and pain does not make me explode into a million shards of dread? And so that I can divorce myself from living in a constant state of abject terror which threatens to make me a drooling lunatic, and I can still go to the grocery store and the foot doctor without becoming a raving maniac? So happy anniversary, breast cancer. Today I become one again with ME. Today, I commit to all the things that come with being Me-With-Breast-Cancer. I have spent the last year despising myself, hating what I have become, refusing to acknowledge that I am a member of the League, like it or not. I worried that I was going to become one of those ‘professional cancer sufferers’, the pink ribbon ladies, the walkers in the “walk for the cure”. I dreaded becoming one of those people whose lives revolves around cancer. But my life does revolve around cancer and now always will. Today I stop worrying and start just living the best I can. The only thing that I can commit to today, is that I will embrace all the parts of me that need a hug. I will allow others to do things for me that are hard to do for myself, I will let myself be tired sometimes, and I will approach my coming PET scan with fear and loathing like any normal person would do, rather than hide behind the brave ‘oh this is nothing’ face. Today, I will commit to welcoming home all the parts of me that have been floating out there because I would not give them a place to land. Today, I will reunite as Jackie, warts and all, like it or not. Today I will not hold myself back from learning all that there is to learn from others I have met who have traveled and are traveling this road. I will embrace their knowledge and let it guide me through the roadblocks that are sure to be ahead. I will bask in their kindness and the love and respect they have shown me by sharing their most intimate experience with this sniveling bastard of a disease. I will let them be my guides and my most trusted friends in this battle against evil. I will treasure the hours we spend together helping each other, teaching each other and learn to have fun wherever it presents itself. This is my pledge on this anniversary that I never wanted. But here it is so I might as well embrace it and learn what there is to be learned, and just look at what is in front of me, rather than try to anticipate how I can put on a good face and whatever smile I can muster for the studio audience out there. I will be whole. I will be real. I will be me.