These are not the ____ you're looking for.

In my case, not the 'words' I'm looking for.

I've been struggling to wrap my mind around this cancer situation and how I feel about it. As I've documented, I go back and forth, struggling to feel that this is worthy of my worry and fears and concerns and sadness, goddess forbid, anyone's attention or sympathies!

A dear friend wrote me this morning, hearing my plight and gave me the correct word- a word that accurately labels the situation in a way that does not need justification or does not warrant compare. Crisis. This is a crisis for me, and in some ways it is small, and in other ways it is big, and it doesn't need to be any one thing, to be a crisis.

That feels like just the right word, and as I keep saying it over and over in my mind I feel such a sense of deep relief - I can accept the sympathies of my friends, I can accept the fears and worries from them too, and best of all, I don't have to justify or minimize my own.

So here it is.

Every time I think about myself accepting that I have cancer, that moment when it no longer feels like I'm talking about myself but that it feels very real that I'm talking about ME having cancer, I can only see myself losing my shit to such epic proportions that I must be sedated, strapped down, in the ER. I'm pretty sure that in my hysteria I will have scratched my throat to pieces because that is where this invader lives in my body.

Let me not forget to BLESS with GRATITUDE my thyroid that has been functioning so well for me all this time with cancer growing with in it- I have never had a problem with my thyroid function and I just want to send some love to this organ that is so resilient that it gives me its best every single day, despite being crowded and invaded. I don't think I've thought to send love to my body through this- I've only been terribly bewildered.

I don't hate the cancer, it just is what it is. I just want it out. Good for you for being cancer, and get the hell out of me.

While I'm stumbling around in the wilderness that is cancer, my compass is broken and I'm trying to remember what Survivorman said about the moss on the trees and which way is North, a friend just pointed out a really major reference point on the landscape and I can start to orient myself again. Thank you, Kelly. xoxo