Looking Forward to Spring

I feel like I've had a million thoughts whirling in my head the last few days and now that I sit here to write, I can't think of anything to say. I guess I'll start with what brought this all on.

I've developed a really bad habit that only seems to be getting worse. When I was still working, I had a schedule down: I was always asleep by no later than 1am and most nights I was knocked out by midnight. In the beginning, I kept that routine but once the need to wake up early was gone, I slowly started staying up later, and later, and later. I finally plateaued at being asleep by 3am and up no later than 12pm. The only times I wake up early now are for chemo and PET scan mornings, when I'm too nervous to sleep in anyways. But now it's gotten really bad. The last couple of nights I've been struggling to fall asleep at freakin' 5/6 in the morning. I seriously turn off the lights and try to relax but can't. I'm tossing and turning for 2 hours before I finally fall asleep, which means that I can't seem to drag myself out of bed any earlier than 2pm (and that's me downplaying it somewhat). My day literally doesn't get started until like 3/4 in the afternoon. It's ridiculous. I'm turning into a freakin' vampire. At this point, what I need to do is force myself out of bed early, no matter how tired I am and even if I keep going to sleep late, making myself get up early until my body gets too tired to stay up late. It's just a bad habit I wanna break.

Anyways, so on one of these nights I'm up watching TV (I usually stay up watching Court TV, out of all things, but not this night cuz the cable was out) and US News and World Report was on talking about a NY Times article about young adults and cancer (Too Young for This: Facing Cancer Under 40: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/30/health/30canc.html?_r=1&oref=slogin). I know, crazy. So I'm sitting there and watching it and I realize..... huh, when I go to the hospital, I am the youngest person in the chemo room. My boyfriend sometimes jokes about me being the youngest person there but I never really thought about it seriously until right then and there. I've had nurses tell me, "You're too young to be dealing with this," but I always just assumed they said that because I also look young. Granted I'm 27 now, but I was 26 when I started. It's like, I feel old in the sense that 27 isn't that young but apparently it's too young for cancer.

And I think about, what if my life had taken a different path? What if I'd had kids? I'm lucky that I didn't have serious commitments when I started all this. I was single, child-less, and living at home. My boyfriend now joined my life when I had already started treatment so it's not like he had to suddenly deal with it, or think about if this was something he could handle. He knew coming into the relationship what was up. But imagine having to spring this on your spouse and kids? What about bills, rent, car payments? I didn't have any of that.

Watching the show reminded me, more than anything, of what I went through in the beginning. How scared and confused I had been. I cried a lot because I just couldn't believe that this had happened to me. And they interviewed this woman who had had breast cancer and she talked about how telling people had been hard because each time she had to go through the emotions all over again and I was like, yup, that's so true. It's not that I wanted to hide it, it's that I couldn't bear to repeat the story over and over, because each time it just became more and more true. I hated saying the word, even now, sometimes it's hard for me to say it because it's this big bad scary word. Cancer. Of course now I realize that the more that I talked about it, the more I kinda..... I don't even know how to say it...... the more I didn't feel as scared. The more people I let know, the more their love and support soothed me. It made me feel less alone. Now I can poke fun at it and recognize that I'm going to be fine.

So today I went and saw Little Children. I loved it because it really got me thinking. It's one of those movies about how one can feel disconnected from their life and how things in suburbia really aren't that perfect either. The basic plot of the movie is about a stay-at-home mom who has an affair with a stay-at-home dad in the suburbs one hot humid summer while a recently released sexual offender goes to live in the community. I could literally go everywhere with this movie but today, lets suffice it to say that among one of the many things that I walked away with is that life isn't perfect anywhere. I mean, even when things can look happy and great on the outside, on the inside, it's all fucked up.

So I'm sitting here thinking about me, thinking about cancer, thinking about people, and thinking about life. I'm thinking about how hard life can be sometimes, how imperfect. Why does life have to be about so much struggle? For love, for success, for wealth, for friendships, for family, for peace, for health, for equality, for happiness...... for some freakin' tranquility. We live to struggle for something. How many people live just to search for a connection...... I'm getting too deep now, reaching too far. What I was trying to get at, about life that is...... I think about how lucky I am in many different ways, even in such unlucky circumstances. And really, lets just get real, if it hadn't been this, it would've been something else. Because really, in the end, there is always going to be something else.

People lie, cheat, get sick, die, break-up, lose their jobs, etc. etc. all the time. We make so much drama when really, shit happens all the time. We all have our share of problems, we all have to learn how to deal with them. Life is hard, and the struggling and the searching, they never end. I try not to let things get me down and out because they're never going to stop happening (bad things that is). I've gotta find the happiness in the midst of all that.

It's funny because in the NY Times article, there's a quote a woman makes, about how one day she was this woman with long hair, mascara, and lowrider jeans and the next day she's Cancer Girl. I feel like that. One day I was the girl with the long hair, lowrider jeans, and vodka tonics, now I'm Cancer Girl. Well............

What else can I do? Nothing but get better I guess. But now I wonder, maybe when we're really old, like REALLY old........ maybe life stops being hard then, and all we're left with is the happy contented-ness......... actually no because old people bodies break down.......... nevermind............