Happy Anniversary
Today marks the one year anniversary of those words “I’m so sorry, you have cancer.”
It was early afternoon on a sunny Tuesday and I entered the doctor’s room with a sense of smugness garnered from my perceived health that I had been building for almost 2 years.
I wasn’t shattered by the words but at the same time I was surprised and dumbfounded and as today has no real significance to anybody but myself so it was on that day 365 spins ago. As pain is a very personal thing and only you can experience it so was this. With pain you can attempt to create words to describe it to somebody else, my solution with this news was to fantasize about a grand and fabulous funeral that I would orchestrate before I died. I look back on that now with a smile on my face and a sense of “love” for myself.
The funeral didn’t come to be and it won’t for many years because I chose a different and a somewhat more sustainable path. I chose to continue to live, to understand what cancer is, to create a road out of the crisis that had temporarily consumed me.
I have written many words about what I did over the past year, how I felt, the obstacles, the journey, the frustration, the optimism and the power that beating my new enemy afforded me.
A year down the track I’m feeling pretty smug, happy with myself but still, I am under no illusions that life is now a constant creation that I have to earn, one that needs to be worked on every day, never letting my guard down or slacking off and leaving my circumstances to fate.
I now have a daily protocol. One that isn’t set in rock but one that nonetheless I subscribe to in a more than abstract manner. I’m a bit like an ageing car mechanic who knows that the 1952 classic needs work, care and love to keep going and if the right amount of tweaking is done it just might go better than it did back in the day.
I’m also very aware of the love that my inner circle have for me. Maybe all you need is to know is that they want you to stay and that they will give you whatever support they can.
All in all, this year has given me a greater appreciation and love for life and if I allow myself to get a bit objective to myself I believe that I have become a better person. I sure as hell don’t take each breath for granted and as such I get to experience the moments that make up my life far more fully.
This flicker of existence in the sea of foreverness, this unique composite of having a body, memories, aspirations, abilities, friends, family and loved ones, a sense of beauty, an opportunity to create …. all the things that make me ME is pretty cool and magical.
It matters to me and I am more than happy to continue for as long as my vehicle and sense of wonder is sustainable.
