Hey guys, welcome back. It’s been a bit. Lots of time has passed since we were last here. Time has marched on. The world has continued to turn. People are forging ahead with their lives and I guess I am too in my own way. I’ve continued to write but obviously haven’t posted. It’s weird what this kind of stuff does to our brains. Sometimes I feel like the same thought pings around inside my head for days, sometimes weeks at a time. And as that thought tink, tink, tinks around bouncing off the walls sometimes it collides with other thoughts or feelings or opinions. Usually this is occurring when the rest of the world is sleeping. Maybe it’s a thought I felt pretty secure about. Maybe it’s just something that sprang in to my mind a moment ago. Regardless, that obsessive thought that just won’t shake loose is going to smack square into these other poor unsuspecting thoughts and knock them for a loop.
I still don’t sleep. Honestly I think that with the number of nights of call that we took over so many years between the two of us it’s really no wonder. Non 24 is a reality for many people in medicine. Throw in a little trauma and poof, you’ve got an insomniac for life. Most nights I just can’t turn my brain off, the bing bong ping pong thoughts. Some nights I’ll get up and write the thoughts down which may or may not help with the whole sleep situation.
I guess the intention of the blog was to get some of these stories and thoughts out of there. To make room in my head for my life here in the after, my new life. More for me to write and get it out than for other people to read. But I’d also like to think people are reading. I’d like to think maybe it will help someone else in some small way. The last two I posted, the ones about our exit strategies, those two took a lot out of me. I mean, obviously they did. I don’t think anyone doubted that. Since I posted them though I’ve gone back and reread all of it. Honestly its all just so friggin sad, guys. I did get some feedback from a few people that they felt it was too sad to read. Just to be clear, these were people that I know love me and care about everything we went through. I get it, to sit down and read the sad parts all together are too much. I was there. I know.
The problem comes when I write about now though. I can’t even begin to explain all the feels that come with it when I read it back. Talk about full range of emotions. I mean, no joke guys I wrote a whole thing the other day about going to the movies by myself. What. The. Actual. Fuck. Is. That. Even. About. Seriously.
I’m going to try to sum it up in a nutshell for you and then we’ll circle back and see if this explains my daily conundrum. I had a busy week last week; family stuff, grandkids, car went to the garage, furnace issues. You get the idea. It’s good to be busy. Distracts you from the monsters. Then the weekend came and everything came to a stop. It’s funny that you don’t really notice how quiet the house is by yourself on the regular. But when its been full of noise and goings on, when it comes to a sudden stop, well that’s when the silence is deafening. It’s hard to settle back into. So by Sunday I decided that I should get myself out of the house and that the most benign way to interact with the world as an individual would be taking myself to a movie. I’ve never really had to do things by myself before now. I always had a partner or kids around to be my plus one, a buffer if you will. Now that I find myself here for this solo round though, well I suppose I’d better just start getting more comfortable here.
So we can just fast forward through it. I went. Woo Hoo, right? I went to see The Batman by the way and it was great. Paul Dano was a great villain and R Patz may have found a calling as the flat, emotionless appearing caped crusader. All joking aside, my anxiety was through the roof the whole time. But why? I don’t think it was the actual act of going to a movie alone. I think it’s that in the past whenever I’ve seen someone alone in public, a movie or a restaurant, wherever it may be, it always made me sad to think about why they might be alone. So I think that’s my why. In my mind at least, I think when people look at me alone they think it’s for a sad reason, that they feel bad or sad or whatever. Even if that’s the truth, it’s still hard to swallow.
But then…..wait for it, this is when it gets good. I go from feeling sad that I’m going to a movie alone, to feeling anxious about what people are thinking ( like, do they know I’m sad? and am I making them sad too?), literally to being angry and frustrated with myself. What is the big deal? People would kill for your life. People are going through so much worse than “going to a movie alone.” I wonder where the bad ass that I used to be went. The one that didn’t take any shit from anyone, didn’t care what people thought, thought she could face anything. Is she still in there? Did the glio kill her too? How annoyed is she with this current version of myself? Actually, I know the answer to the last one and it’s very, very annoyed. Which, as I write this makes me think that she is still in there somewhere. She may be lurking behind all the anxiety and insecurities. But I also feel her wanting to pop out and slap this weak-ass anxious bitch right into next week.
I know this is all part of the process, the process of turning into this new version of myself. I know it will take time. Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that. I know you have to go out and make the life you want. We talked about that before. There’s no guarantees that you get to keep it but you still have to build it. I did it once before and man, what a life Mark and I built together. Which leads to more questions. Am I happy with what I was able to carry out of that dumpster fire? Do I want to see what’s salvageable in the rubble? Or do I start building something from scratch?
I guess moving forward I’d like to share more of what’s going on with me now with the understanding that it may not be monumental goings on for most people but for me its the building of an entirely new life as an entirely new person. I’d like to mix in some stories of the things we went through to shed some light on glioblastoma and the wake of despair it leaves behind. I’d also like to share some stories about some of the cool stuff we did, like Grenada for example. There are a few pieces that I’ve written, pieces that I may or may not share. Pieces about thing to not say to someone with cancer or to their loved ones, pieces about my views on religion, ways to help people with terminal cancer, things like that. Maybe I can find a way to blend them in without making anyone feel called out or uncomfortable (see how I’m still constantly thinking about other’s feelings?)
Anyway, once again, thanks for reading. I seriously welcome any feedback. Let me know what you want to hear about, what made you roll your eyes at me, anything really. Let’s do this again really soon.