nearing the (ostensible) end of my treatment, i have been considering the possibility of celebrating my illness and how that would look. i notice there is a lot of language around f*ck c*ncer in the zeitgeist but i can’t help but feel, despite the suffering it has caused me, that i don’t strongly connect with this sentiment. for me, having cancer hasn’t felt like a fight. instead, it’s been a period of dredging up and settling, dredging up the sediment of my past and present and having it settle like flotsam on a pond.
i have been reflecting on the purpose of cancer, if it could, in fact, be something more than the random mutation of cells. if i am to believe that i am walking on a winding path set out by the divine patterning of an unfatomably complex universal consciousness, i am left to ask myself what meaning i can derive from my suffering. i have imagined making a banner that says, “thanks cancer.” when else in life do you get a six month long holiday where no-one gives you grief for being stoned all the time? yet, i won’t mince words, it’s been the worst vacation i’ve ever been on.
towards the end of my treatment, i stopped being able to communicate with others in my life. on top of the staggering nausea coming from the serious regimen of chemotherapy i was on, i developed complications from the line installed to deliver my medication, the last of which was a blood clot embedded deep in a major artery. who would have thought that the worst part of my illness would be this incidental detour that my body took, of it being so insulted by this foreign medical entity that it started a revolution. i felt like my arm was trying to turn itself inside out for nearly three weeks. my two exterior fingers remain numb, the pain flitting here and there, sometimes manifesting as a wavering memory of what it was like down there at the bottom of a well, looking upwards at a patch of sky and a life that seemed to exist in another time and place, at once real and yet also dreamlike, questioning if it had ever really existed, if i still exist, even now. the only thing that felt real was the pain. i wondered, had I ever existed outside of this pain or was it always like this? would i emerge from it again, would i find the strength to climb, to reach towards the light and a life that i only barely remembered?
when i was finally able to receive painkillers, they actually made me feel worse, reaching the crescendo of suffering as i projectile vomited with force at the wall of my bedroom, without the strength to even get up to take care of myself, i ruined a perfectly good towel and lay back down in my bed with sheets that hadn’t been changed in who even remembers how long with a body that smelled and felt wholly alien. I have described this period to a few people as living in an alien hellscape where crystalline tectonic plates drift, smashing into each other, creating a resonating vibration that felt so inhuman that it made every cell in my body thrum with violent nausea. it felt like the nausea came from a place hostile to the quiet warmth of my humanity, tearing through my body, remaking it into who knows what.
the topography of my body itself has changed. i feel smooth as a dolphin, which creates an eerie sensation whenever my hands brush up against my skin. its odd to run my hand across my leg and to feel like it isn’t my leg. it’s odd to run my fingers across my chest, where the tumour once was. the nerves were so damaged that i no longer have sensation there. the shape of my breastbone is transformed, now flatter and more fragile seeming than before. my posture, the way i hold myself, how my voice sounds, they’re all different. i have been spending time getting to know this person that i have become. i suppose you can’t really lay in bed being emptied out, stoned out of your mind for six months without having it change you.
still, despite it all i want to say “thanks cancer” as an acknowledgement of this process of stripping away. it reminds me of a time when i was hitchhiking in the wilds of quebec. it was probably somewhere around two in the morning and i was sitting by the side of the road with six new acquaintances on a stretch of empty highway when two cars pulled over some ways ahead. we had been so hopeless of ever getting a ride that we all collectively grabbed our bags and began to run. i was already exhausted and my bags were heavy but i had a sense that i couldn’t stop. i didn’t want to imagine what would happen if i stopped. i ran and i reached the limit of my energy but kept going beyond what i thought was possible. i ran even though i believed that i was done and when that limit passed, i ran some more. i caught up with the car in the distance. i ran because my life depended on it.
in the now, i have continued to live beyond the limits of my tolerance, beyond my capacity to process and deal with the discomfort and pain, beyond the limits of loneliness, beyond my tolerance for despair because my life has depended on it. i continued to show up to my appointments because underneath it all, i wanted to live; i value my life. i’m afraid to think about what would happen if i stopped.
yet, it takes its toll. the deep well of reserve that i have saved for those moments when my life is in peril feels empty and yet i continue to move, putting one foot in front of the other, breathing in and out.
i can only compare my emotional state right now to memories of my dad, driving on the highway in the winter when i was a child. i remember more than once, when our van would veer into a fishtail on the ice and he would maneuver through it as if it was nothing. i think he kind of liked it, the thrill of being able to do that trick at highway speeds, demonstrating his skill, tempting fate. deep down, i think he lived for these dangerous moments. when no one really values you, it can be nice to meet god in this way.
for myself, the danger and excitement of life always came in more subtle packaging. growing up in chaos as i have, the moments of the most thrilling risk have always come through wild emotional reckoning, those sweet moments where i stop coping and allow my shattered psyche to breathe. it doesn’t happen often. i don’t often have the luxury of a meltdown. i need to keep running because my life depends on it. i can’t cry right now because i have to survive. i have accepted the chaos of my life without much question, baring it well until the moment that someone asks me how i‘m doing. when i choose to tell them, it’s like driving on black ice. i sometimes think it’s safe to open up about how i am doing, but it can often be misconstrued. the other person doesn’t necessarily know how skilled i am at navigating. it looks like i’m out of control even though i have my hands firmly on the wheel. they don’t know that this is how i meet with god.
my emotional range is such that a cancer diagnosis did not feel outside of the norm. the pain has been extreme but not so far outside of what i had experienced before. i can tell even now that this will not be the defining suffering of my life. i am driving now like my dad, in a wild skid, terrified but thrilling, god save anyone along for the ride, but i have my hands firmly on the wheel. to think of what i have been through in the past six months makes me want to literally scream, but even so, it’s not so outside of the norm of my life and that is a fucking trip to realize.
my family has taken my diagnosis as a matter of course. it’s perhaps not even the most dramatic thing happening in our immediate circle right now, which itself is a little wild to think of. so, the question i am forced to ask myself, is how i am to make sense of and integrate this and other experiences within the context i am now in, within a sane and reasonable life. how terrifying the silence and stillness are in comparison to the comfort of the storm. when i was initially diagnosed, i wanted to say “thanks cancer” because it saved me from the sanity of my life. gainfully employed, settled, comfortable, how the hell does a person live like this?
the most instructive part of my illness has been being forced to accept my utter inability to achieve or produce anything. anything that had given my life meaning was being flayed, peeled off of me like layers of flesh. i couldn’t be the good little child, seeking validation through institutional credit; i could barely feed myself. i couldn’t remember anything, couldn’t even hold onto a line of thought. i could only feel and in this way, keep company with my dog. it felt like i was getting in contact with something beyond the story of my life. as i became closer with my dog, i began to learn how to simply exist without the comfort of progress. in essence, i became empty.
i think about this time now, as time spent among the gods. i was so indescribably sick that i could only begin to approach existence completely stoned out of my mind. i laid for hours, days, months, in the same position, unable to even read or focus on anything beyond the ticking moments moving forwards inch by inch. yet, despite watching so closely time crawling forward, move forward it did, and me with it, or whatever was left of me.
i don’t know if i am better yet. i did a scan today and will learn the results in a week. what i do know is that i am not the person i was before. i have been pried apart in the most interesting way. i don’t inhabit my body as i once did. it feels more a vessel than a prison, my suffering a sensation like many other, this moment much like other moments. i don’t feel a sense of the future beyond tomorrow. i wonder what it is that i need beyond a strawberry delicately held on my tongue, the warmth of a loving body next to me, the mid-afternoon sun as it filters through my window. i’m not happy, per se, but am aware of the turbulent shifts of emotion and sensation like clouds and rain, like sun, like winter and summer. how close is disassociation from equanimity?
it may be that the next phase of my life will be returning to what it means to simply be, without the overarching sense of chaos driving me from place to place. i want to say “thanks cancer” for forcibly holding me down like a wild animal as i struggled, to reveal to me the wisdom of stillness, of emptiness, of non-being. after suffering so much throughout my life and (in all honesty) wanting to die for as long as i can remember, very nearly dying felt so calm. if my lifelong depression taught me anything it’s that death is something to look forward to rather than something to fear (as dark as that may sound).
death and stillness are a lot alike. after the suffering, someday, we will all find a kind of stillness beyond anything we have ever known, better than sleeping in, better than that first coffee in the morning, better than falling in love. in nearly dying, i have finally witnessed what it was to live. i can wait for that relief now because i have finally found the present moment, staying still long enough to see its value. if only we can live through the moments of our lives finding sweetness in the in-between, in a plucked string, a song, the flavour of soup, the tender restfulness of sleep, it all builds up to an incredible gift waiting for all of us in the end, in the embrace of emptiness, of being spilled out among the stars, we may find peace. this is what i bring back with me from my despair and why i want to make a banner than says “thanks cancer” because i’m no longer afraid to die and thankfully, no longer afraid to live.
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