For me that loss of altitude feels like an adrenaline rush in the middle of the teriyaki joint. It moves into a racing heart beat and an urge to laugh out loud at nothing, and then scream and claw my face. And laugh some more. I suddenly feel my fork in my fingers and suddenly feel the pebbles of rice in my mouth and it's like little tiny rocks. But that would be weird- to have rocks in your mouth, and that's okay, because I HAVE CANCER so nothing makes sense anymore. It's all weird. It's normal to be weird.
I get in my car and I'm driving down the road and I want music, music so loud that my ears are crying from it and I can't turn it up loud enough and I'm singing so loud and my window is open and suddenly this wail rises out of my stomach and out of my mouth and I cover my hands and I laugh because I am obviously losing my MIND and that's what crazy people do. I sing louder. I turn the music up more. My foot is on the pedal an the only thing I can do to ease this sense that I am going to physically explode right there on the highway, my body turning into a mist of ME, is to press on that pedal hard and feel the intense sensation of speeding down the highway with the music so loud and my voice so loud and cracking and the wail that wants to come out again.
I slow down and think, I should pull over, I should call someone, but that is just silly because I'm on the side of the highway and that would be ridiculous. So I keep driving to see how far I can make it before I lose my mind forever and ever and ever. How close to home will I get when the police find me, raving and screaming and scratching my face that I have cancer, I Have Cancer, I HAVE CANCER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's not fear, it's like... landing. It's not that I am afraid, because I'm not. It's more like, this information has been hovering around me in an aura and I've finally cracked and it's seeping in because that's all I can let it do. I can only let it seep in, because otherwise I have to accept that I have something growing in me that wants to kill me and that I can't just cut my own throat to get it out. It's not a sliver that can be handled with tape or tweezers.
I sing, and sing and sing until there's nothing left to sing, and I turn off the stereo and I listen to the sound of the world while I drive through it- the world that keeps going, even if I have cancer, and doesn't stop turning or changing or needing or giving. The world sounds so normal. How can that be?
Normal isn't a thing in and of itself, it's just what we think it is. This is going to become normal to you. It's not yet, but it will. And it's gonna feel really strange to think that it's normal, but that's what normal is about.
ReplyDelete"I sing, and sing and sing until there's nothing left to sing, and I turn off the stereo and I listen to the sound of the world while I drive through it- the world that keeps going, even if I have cancer, and doesn't stop turning or changing or needing or giving. The world sounds so normal. How can that be?"
ReplyDeleteThis. Isn't this really something?
"Something growing in my that wants to kill me." This is the best description of cancer I have heard. I'm sorry you are going through this. It's the ultimate violation to your body. I'll be glad for you when it's gone.
ReplyDelete