Floating on

It's a weird day. I'm sort of counting down the days in my mind before Friday. I'm running through possible scenarios which helps me feel better until I hit a place where it's all bad, awful news, and then I rewind and start a new one.

I am watching Orange is the New Black and there are several scenes where Piper, the main character, is floating up and out of her body and something shifts inside her as she realizes what she's coping with. Her eyes are wide and her mouth sort of hangs open and her hands are limp at her sides and she walks along in a daze. (Maybe this is why I'm reading zombie stories again...) I totally feel this sort of shock and wonder and curiosity, and fortunately the gaps of that are large between the terrible fear of what is to come.

There are times when I see 'signs' that things will be okay. When I drove past that car that said Cancer Free Mom and Wife, that felt like a message. I mean, how random was that? I was reading an article completely unrelated to anything health related and she mentions delaying getting into a relationship because she was undergoing testing for cancer- and that after she found out she did not in fact have cancer, dived in. I thought, (how can you help yourself), maybe these are signs?

It reminds me of that joke:

There is a flood and some people are trapped on a rooftop. Some people go by in a boat and offer help and the family says, "Oh no, God will save us! We'll wait here." Other people come by to help in a helicopter, and it is the same response. "God will come for us and rescue us, but thank you anyway!"

The family dies, and when they get to heaven they ask God why he didn't help them. God replies, "I sent a boat and a helicopter, what more should I have done?"

It's a great joke and definitely has solid truth to it. Am I helping myself? Am I missing a helicopter? I'm letting those messages be the boats that I need to feel hopeful that maybe I am okay and that something easily fixed is causing all this ruckus. Or that, if I had to have some cancer, that maybe it is more easily treated with a good prognosis.

It's hard to sit here and have life be normal and at the same time if it's not, what else am I supposed to do? It's not like last time where everything felt so weird, out of place. I felt differently, and today I was wondering about that and realized that SO much has happened since early 2012 when I started this whole journey (cancer treatment, going to Uganda, my mother dying of an overdose), that I am changed, I am different, and my response will be different as a result.

I appreciate that I can always marvel at myself. :) Chalk one up for the easily amused!

In the meantime I'm trying not to be cranky. I'm tired all the time really, I go to bed so early now and wake up tired, tired all day- nap, still tired. I don't know if that's an emotional response but whatever, I'm working with it. I'm making some changes to my work load and just enjoying the periods of time when I can just be home, alone. It's quiet. No one is asking anything of me, that time is so precious.

My birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks. How weird is that? This time last year I was in Uganda. I miss it. The first anniversary of my mother's meaningless death is coming up in 12 days. Fall has become a weird season for me.

On we float... riding the waves that crest underneath us and hope to not topple over. So far, I'm hanging on.