Dark night of the soul

A bottle of whiskey.

A bottle of pills.

Hard to decide which one to partake of.

If I started with the pills, I would not have stopped.

So instead, two big glasses of whiskey barely took the edge off of the desire for the pills.

And it wasn't the end of things with the Filmmaker that drove me to it, although that was a teeny part of it.

It was just the sense of loss. Because he was the last thing I was hanging on to - us. Him. The comfort, the safety. And now that was gone.

And there was nothing left.

No one understands what cancer can take away from you. They want to but they can't possibly unless they've gone through it or dealt with someone who's gone through it.

First, you lose your balance. Nothing makes sense. There's too much information and you can't get your feet under you. You lose control of your life and cancer takes all of that away from you.

Then you lose your sense of self. Surgery, side effects, drugs, and all that shit just make you not recognize that person in the mirror. Exhaustion, terror, fear, nausea, scars, hair loss, and...and...and... Who am I? What am I? Where did I go?

You cannot do your job, no matter how you try, so you lose your professional self. You can lose your job. You can lose all sense of how to do your job. You lose the very things you've been building towards to create the life you want.

You lose everything that defines you as a woman. I was lucky enough to keep my breasts but there is a huge slash across one of them. I have no hair. Now, I have no eyebrows. And am counting the eyelashes as they fall.

And so many of us lose those we care about, whether they leave or we leave. I don't know if the Filmmaker left because of my illness. He said he doesn't think of me as being sick so maybe not. But to me, I still feel like cancer got in our way, because it's gotten in the way of everything.

But until the last few days, at least I had him to hang on to. The one last good thing in my life from before my diagnosis.

And now that's gone. And I am partially responsible for his being gone, as is he. And we left it as good as you can, vowing to be friends, vowing to always be in one another's life.

But I've heard that before. The Poet swore that and then he vanished. Others have made that promise and then vanished. And I'm sure the Filmmaker meant it when he said it but... Well, let's just say I won't hold my breath. Now that I'm not there, I'm sure he's put me neatly into a compartment and put a lock on that so he won't have to look at it again. And he'll smile when he sees me when I go back to teaching and he brings his brilliant daughter into class. And he'll say, hey, we should hang out. And I'll say, yeah, we should.

But we won't. Because they never do. It never happens. And I lose them and they never come back.

And he'll join them in that netherworld where they go when they don't come back.

And it's the last thing I had.

And now I'm back to one, back to nothing, back to empty.

And the choice between the bottles was difficult. 

Because I'm tired.

I'm tired of fighting. I'm tired of being brave and inspirational and a superwoman and all that bullshit friends put on you because they don't see you on the nights where you can't stop crying, where you can't get off the couch because, emotionally, you just can't go on.

I'm tired of going on.

Now, I don't want to die or kill myself or anything like that.

But Monday night, all I could think about was how I just wanted it all to go away. I just wanted to not be strong for a while. I just wanted to not feel the pain of letting the Filmmaker go and losing all the so-very-good. I just wanted to not have cancer and not think about cancer and not face chemo Thursday. I just wanted to shut everything down for a while to get some peace, to get some quiet. To just not have to be for a while.

But it does come down to choice. And I fought the choice that said, take the pills, you'll feel better because you just won't feel.

 And I got up and I dealt with the Filmmaker and I went on. I drew and I did the things I had to do. And I went to the treatment group at WeSPARK today and talked a bit about the dark night and the Filmmaker. And I pretended to be strong and good and solid, because I had to.  And I hung out with friends and I put on the brave face because I had to.

And I chose to go on. Because, eventually, you have to.

But I still don't want to. Because I can't face what else I can lose.

Maybe tomorrow, I'll find Wonder Woman again and put on the mask and the cape. And go on and be brave and be inspirational and be all that bullshit.

But today...