Peaceful heart

I had a hard lesson about my restless heart this week.

I ended up in the hospital.

Hello? Lesson needed in a serious way, I guess.

I finished radiation and "official" cancer treatment on January 22nd. I won't repeat how I felt because you can read my earlier blog, "And it's done", if you want to rehash it.

But I thought I would be completely done. Yes, the side effects will linger for a long time. My clavicle in particular is still pretty sensitive and achy. But at least the burns have healed and I'm not going in every day to get toasted. My left boob even is starting to look more normal. And little things like the neuropathy in my feet from chemo is starting to recede a bit and my hair is growing back. I have eyebrows again! And eyelashes! And my hair looks kinda groovy - salt and pepper and still very, very short. But people are always commenting on it, even if they don't know what I've gone through. Debating about growing it out. Beginning to feel like I'm putting all of this behind me, trying to find a new normal and figure out what my life is going to look like going forward.

Then my heart got in the way. Of course. Because it does that.

This time, it was literally my physical heart being difficult.

For apparently the past week or more, I have been experiencing my heart pounding in my chest like it's an alien trying to escape. I chalked it up to radiation side effects, because it can mess with your heart and lungs.

Well, Sunday night into Monday, it got significantly worse. I called my radiation oncologist, whose nurse got back to me almost eight hours later, and said there was nothing they could do for me, that it probably wasn't radiation-related and that I should either go see my regular doctor (which I don't have) or go to the emergency room. Then they suggested I call my regular oncologist because it could be chemo-related. Chemo ended at the beginning of November but whatever.

Called the regular oncologist. He said it's not chemo-related, it's probably radiation-related and there's nothing he could do for me. Call my regular doctor or go to the ER.

After much forehead-slapping from my friends, I finally went to the ER. Two nights, one day and a plethora of tests later, nothing showed up. Just my heart being irregular without cause. Not even enough to really show up on the tests. The one thing they did find is that my potassium is low and my electrolytes were low. Which apparently can cause all of this ridiculous heart pounding crap.

I got home yesterday and ended up chanting for a bit as I was also trying to face going to the Filmmaker's birthday party last night. Needless to say, I was a huge vortex of wickedly twisted emotions. I haven't really seen him since we broke up, other than briefly at the studio a couple of weeks ago. So I sat down to chant, to let go of things and put it all on the altar. I started off as I usually do, chanting for a peaceful heart to see him that night without agenda and without trying to make it be something it wasn't.

But the poignancy of chanting for a peaceful heart really struck me. I had just gone through this (albeit minor) issue with my heart being all over the place, something I have been trying to control emotionally for years. And now it had actually manifested itself physically. Of course, the two aren't tied together, but I couldn't help but marvel at the blatant point the universe was trying to make.

I need a peaceful heart.

In spades.

My heart suffers from being a victim of my head. When my head starts thinking, my heart starts thumping. Because my head enjoys being on the hamster wheel and trying to find as many ways to make me scared and nervous and afraid. It thrives when I'm all screwed up and chasing my emotional tail. My head loves nothing more than getting my heart going 100 miles an hour in a tailspin, wondering what's going on and how to feel. The white noise in my head sometimes is deafening.

And my heart gets restless and anxious because it's not my head. It doesn't have logic. It has feelings and emotions and love and pain and everything in between. It doesn't have the ability to sort through things. It just feels. Everything.

And in dealing with my actual physical racing heart over the past two days, I couldn't avoid the metaphor for my intangible heart.

And for both of them, I need to find peace.

For my physical heart, it should be a simple choice of eating better and getting better nutrition. My body has taken a beating since May with surgery and chemo and radiation and everything else. My diet has never been one to brag about and it's finally taking its toll on me. Despite having no appetite and not wanting to eat, I need to keep myself healthy and I need to feed my heart. That's easy.

My metaphorical heart, maybe not so easy.

I took a big step towards letting it heal last night. Went to the Filmmaker's birthday party at a local bar, with PJR in tow. PJR has been a godsend through treatment and never hesitated when I asked her to go with me, because I knew it was going to be hard.

My heart was prepared for hard. It put up walls and brick and mortar and wrapped itself in chrome and hid so it wouldn't have to feel when it saw him. My brain had convinced it that he wouldn't be the man I know he is. My brain wrote terrible stories about how this night was going to go. And my heart bought every word of it and almost convinced me not to go.

But I needed to go. My heart felt like it was going to say good-bye to him, to let him go from my life. Just kiss him, say "I miss you" and walk away forever. Because my brain convinced my heart that he was going to say good-bye and not be what he's always shown he is.

And I went. And it was exactly what it needed to be. We reconnected. He put his arm out for me and I still fit in there. He kept his arm there for a long time and it felt good to be back there, where I belonged. He was the man I knew he was.

We left after a short time, which was wise, I think. It was perfect.

On the way home, PJR said what I needed to hear - you mean something very important to him. That he's not going anywhere and that he cares for me. Sometimes, I can't see those things because my brain blinds my heart and it all gets muddy.

And so, this morning, I woke with my peaceful heart. I don't know where we go from here, but it makes me happy that I was able to look into his beautiful eyes and say - not good-bye - maybe hello, again. To maybe start over and see where we go from here.

And I got some perspective on why my heart panics and clings and doesn't understand how to do some things.

My family, of course.

I hate to keep harping on my family because they did the best they could. My parents both came from difficult circumstances and raised us the best they could. I appreciate how they tried to give us a better life than they had. That they wanted us to be happy, even though they may not have had the tools to do it in a way that would have maybe helped us all to be a bit healthier emotionally. But they did what they knew and they really gave us all a lot of good things, despite the bad they knew.

But that means my heart grew up learning that love is twisted and complicated and painful. It grew up being given love, only to have it yanked away with no explanation. Sometimes, love and rejection came in the same sentence. There was a lot of love dangled, but then mysteriously pulled away with no explanation. My heart was taught that it was never good enough to be truly loved. That someone was always better, someone always deserved it more than me.

It's so much more complicated than just that. But that's the main idea. I'm not good enough. No one is ever going to love me because I'm not good enough. And  there's no way someone is going to stick around after conflict, because I'm not worth it. They may seem like they are still there, they still care, but really, they don't. They're just being polite. I'm not enough.

Well, the Filmmaker again proved to be the exception to the rule. And coming home, I let go of some of that past and pulled my heart into the present. PJR and I had been talking about letting go of old habits when it comes to food and money and things like that. But I think last night, I let go of some emotional habits. I went there with no agenda. All I wanted was to let him know that I still cared, that I want to reach out to him and let him know he still means something to me. And I tried to go in without defining what that something is.

Of course, the romantic in me wanted him to see me and instantly fall back in love with me and sweep me up in his arms and take me home...

But what I got was exactly what I needed. Someone who showed me he still cares, no matter what we've gone through. That there are people who aren't going to push me away once our relationship changes and that maybe - just maybe - I am good enough to stay. 

I let go of my brain for a moment and just felt. Just let my heart feel and breathe. And for a moment, my heart was at peace. Without agenda, without interference of everyone I've ever known who has hurt me, without those voices in my head, I just led with my heart. I let my heart feel. I let it feel him and his affection. And I let my heart tell him I missed him.

And it felt good. And my heart felt at peace because it was allowed to feel. 

I cried all the way home out of a myriad of feelings. But in the end, there was peace.

And hopefully, my heart learned a lesson about not listening to my brain and that it's okay to feel what it feels. Even if it's hard. Even if it's complicated. Maybe it learned how to trust its feelings and that it's okay to express those feelings. Because if I don't express them, how will anyone know how I feel?

(Sorry, this blog post got away from me so I hope it makes sense.)

So today, I feel like I took a step forward into putting things behind me. Toward finding normal. Toward letting go of the pain and the hurt and the hard of this past year. I took a step forward to a healthier, happier, more peaceful heart and finally let go of some of the big stuff I've been carrying.

Will it stay this way? I'm not sure. My brain is already pulling last night apart and trying to stir things up. But my heart is not listening. Because it's at peace. And it knows that we don't need to re-examine and cross-examine and over-examine everything. It knows we can just be. Just enjoy. Just feel.

So for today, we're going to just feel...

I wish...

I wish I could make love with you one more time.

Feel your kiss, your hands, your mouth. Hear you laugh. 

Fall asleep wrapped up with you, whispering, talking, just being.

Wake up the same way. Sliding into your shoulder, feeling  your arm wrap around me and pull me close. 

I miss that. I miss you. 

I wish that I didn't, that I was over you.

But I guess I'm not.

And I would give anything...

for just one more night...

And it's done

I finished radiation today. Officially marks the end of my treatment for breast cancer. 

And I don't know how I feel.

Relief. It's over. Other than follow up appointments and the anti-estrogen pill I'll have to take for five years, it's done. No more planning my entire life around endless hours of treatment and wondering how I'm going to feel. Being afraid to make plans because I don't know how my energy is going to be. That'll hang around for a while because the fatigue doesn't immediately go away. And tonight, my collarbone is aching terribly and I tried to draw but couldn't because of the discomfort. But still. Relief. It's done. I can restart my life again.

Terrible sadness. I have lost so much over this past year. So many little things in my life. So many big things. So many intangible things. So many things I wish I could have back. School. The Filmmaker. My father. My health. A perfect, non-scarred, non-burned and bruised and battered breast, most of all. I am scarred forever, inside and out. And tonight, I don't know how to feel about that. Wishing the Filmmaker were still here, holding me. Wishing he could be... whatever. So much sadness right now.

Immediately followed by incredible gratitude. While he's not here with me, the Filmmaker was there when I needed what he had. And my friends have filled my life in so very many ways during all of this. I have never, ever felt so loved in all of my life than I do right now. And for someone who has never felt loved, despite two marriages and a family who claims to want to love me, I have never felt this loved. Friends. The amazing guys at Drink and Draw who treat me with incredible respect and affection. And every minute I got to spend with the Filmmaker. It all gives me hope that as I move into this new life (yet again), I  move forward with hope that this love will continue to fill the empty spaces I have always felt in my life. And that, even though it took me six years to find someone amazing like the Filmmaker, that maybe it won't take me that long to find someone else to fill the space he has left behind. Someone who will be what he could not be for me. Someone who could just love me. That's all. Just love me.

And then swing back to fear. Fear of losing the love that has surrounded me. As I get healthy, will I be standing here by myself, everyone having moved back to their lives and me, trying to get my feet under me. Fear of being alone in the next leg of this journey. That all this wonderfulness is fleeting. Fear that the Filmmaker was the last relationship I'll have. That that was as good as it gets - another almost. That I will never find that more that I deserve.

And the biggest fear. That I will be here again some day. That those little bastard cells are hiding somewhere, plotting to take over my body and render me even more incapacitated than I was this time around. I know how lucky I am to have had the "easy" time I have had with my treatment. It could have been so epically hard. And not that it was easy but it could have been so epically hard. I'm afraid that if it comes back, it will not be this "easy". That it will be all the horrible things I managed to avoid this time around. And that there will be so much more to lose. Because it never gets easier, if it comes back. I'm so afraid that this is not just one small hiccup in my life. That this could become my life. I've seen a dear friend go through this and she still is going through this. And my heart breaks as I watch her deal with such a scary future with grace and dignity. And I don't want to be her. I don't want to be someone who has to deal with this with grace and dignity again. 

Fear that I will only be me for the rest of my life. On one hand, I have learned that the hole in my life is not really there. I have learned that I am exactly who I need to be and I don't need to find something or someone to make me feel whole. My art does that. My writing does that. My friends and my life do that. But having had a glimpse of what something beautiful feels like with someone, I am so afraid I will never get to feel that again. Because who is going to want this warrior? This battered, beaten, wounded woman who is so fraught with imperfection and who is so possibly unfixable and broken that she can never be anything but the imperfect, fragile, battle-worn warrior that I am.

But yet, there's a strange sense of peace underneath all of this. And a weird sense of pride. I have survived this. I have taken everything that has been thrown at me and I'm still here. I have held on by the skin of my teeth. I have gritted those teeth and dug in and just put my head down and held on. It's weird to have people congratulate me on finishing treatment, like I've accomplished some spectacular thing. But I guess I have. 

I have survived. I have survived all of this. The loss, the joy, the fear, the pain, the love, the agony. I will survive returning to a "normal" life and getting things back in line. And I will survive if I find another almost, I think. And I will survive, however long, if this motherfucker of a disease returns and tries to eat my life again. 

It's funny, because people keep saying that this must have given me a new perspective on my life. And it didn't, really. I got the new perspective when I left my marriage in 2005. I chose the life I have now, a life that helped me survive this awful, devastating year. So while it didn't give me a new perspective, it did make me know that the life I have created is worth so very much. And it makes me even more grateful that I have made the choices I have made since that time. Because it has allowed me the life that I want to return to. The life I want to build upon after this unanticipated hiatus.

So...

Here we go. Join me on this new journey in my life and let's see where the road takes us from here.

Understanding Fear

I've been facing a lot of fear this year. Epic fear, actually, in every aspect of my life. 

Some of it's logical and understandable. Cancer creates gargantuan fear. Fear of the simplest things, fear of the biggest things. Fear of recurrence. Fear of death. Fear of life. Fear of never being the person you were before your diagnosis. Fear of never being loved. Just... fear.

And tonight, I took a deep look inside of the fear that lives... well... inside.

It started simply. I was thinking about the Filmmaker. I swore I would stop writing about him but he keeps leading me to things so... there you go. He's been posting a lot from a couple of events in Vegas so he's been on my mind. But this really isn't about him. He's just the antagonist, I guess.

Okay, this may be long and rambling so feel free to opt out now. Otherwise, I promise I will get to a point eventually.

 Since I walked away from the Filmmaker, I sometimes get a feeling of almost panic or desperation when I think of him. Some of it makes sense. I miss him. I wish I hadn't walked away from him. I wish we could have worked out. All that kind of stuff that one feels after a break-up. And he was so incredibly specal to me that it's been hard to let him go.

But underneath all of that is this deep-seated, inexplicable panic or fear or... I don't know how to describe it. If I could show you, it would be a reaching, grasping, wanting motion. Buried within that motion is such a deep, dark fear. And that's the fear I'm trying to understand.

In talking with the therapist at the cancer support center I've gone to, she helped me to see that if I can figure out what that grasping, desperate, crazy panic is, I can move past it and maybe really fill that hole that is currently occupied by that fear.

And tonight, as that throat-closing panic began to grow again as I thought about the Filmmaker and all the things I wished he would/could/want him to do, I decided to sit in that ugliness and fear and look deep inside of it.

Like Rose when she looked into the heart of the TARDIS. (Look it up.)

It was hard. I wanted to take the easy answer. It's because I want to be loved and he doesn't love me. I'm disappointed. I'm scared no one will ever love me because if he couldn't, who will? And how will I ever find someone so compatible.... etc., etc., etc. And all the while, I knew none of this was what was causing the panic.

When I pushed all the easy, simple possibilities aside, I finally looked into the fear and started to understand it.

Okay, let's see if I can explain this.

I've spent most of my life being shown that I mean nothing. That I am not important. That I don't deserve to be treated with respect or dignity. That I am not worthy of love of any kind. That I should just stand on the side and wait until I am noticed. I'm not supposed to rock the boat. I'm supposed to just take what I'm given and not expect anything more than that. I am worthless. I am stupid. I am nothing.

I've spent the last six and a half years trying to unlearn that. And I've succeeded in so many areas of my life. And I have come to be more capable of understanding that this is a crock of shit that has been fed to me. None of it intentionally. Well, maybe most of it not intentionally. But I learned it to my soul and I believed it.

And maybe the Filmmaker was the perfect transition and the perfect manifestation of this struggle.

On one hand, he was incredible and everything I wanted. I've struggled for love and struggled to be with someone who I didn't feel I had to change for. When I was with him, I felt safe and easy and perfect. I didn't feel like I was imperfect, even when I went through surgery and chemo and lost all my hair. He made me feel everything I wanted to feel from someone. I felt loved.

On the other hand, he was exactly what I knew, what I had been taught. His inability to acknowledge our relationship to his friends, to his children, made me feel unimportant, not good enough. Made me feel like I was standing on the side, waiting to be good enough for him to want to acknowledge. It made me feel less than and made me feel exactly the way I had felt all my life. It was comfortable. It was familiar.

And the longer we were together, the more I hoped the side of the relationship that was so new and so different from what I knew would grow and become something bigger than the other side. And the harder it became for me to sit with the other side. And the more it hurt that the situation felt so very familiar.

Choosing to walk away from him was the scariest thing I've ever done because it would have been easy to stay. Because it was familiar. Because I knew this.

But the part of me that has grown up through these past almost seven years knew that this familiar, comfortable feeling was not right for me. That if I stayed with him, I would simply end up the way I've always ended up in my life - feeling empty and worthless and numb. Not because he went out of his way to make me feel that way, but because I accepted his inability to acknowledge that we were something more.

And I realized tonight that the panic, the scary, the indescribable thing I feel when I think about him now really has nothing to do with him. It has to do with letting go of the familiar. It has to do with understanding that walking away from him put me in unfamiliar territory. Well, maybe not entirely unfamiliar. I left my ex for almost the same reason - it wasn't right. It was making me fee empty and nothing.

And to face the fact that I deserve more is the scariest thing I've ever felt because I've never felt that I deserve more. It's terrifying for me to acknowledge that I can say I deserve more. Because I have never been taught that I can ask for that. That I can even entertain the idea that I deserve more, when it comes to being loved.

My family did the best they could. My exes both did the best they could. And even the Filmmaker did the best he could.

But I finally accept tonight that I deserve more than the best they could. Because if I acknowledge that and if I say that out loud, then it means something. I don't know what. But it's so very scary for me to say I deserve more and that I want more. Because I see so many people around me who can't say that and who accept less than that I am afraid that it's wrong to say that that's what I want.

And it makes me scared that I will never find what I think I deserve. And I'm scared that I'm asking too much to say that I deserve more. That someone's going to say to me, are you crazy? You don't deserve more. You deserve exactly what you've had.

But tonight, I faced the fear of saying it out loud - I deserve more.

And that means acknowledging that while most of my relationship with the Filmmaker was incredible and amazing and exactly what I wanted, the rest of it made me less than. And I have to let that go in order to move forward to what I deserve. And that's scary because it feels like I can't miss the Filmmaker and that I can't mourn for what could have been. And it makes me want to hang on to him more because it's comfortable to feel that way.

But I have to face the fear and face that I don't want to feel that way anymore. I have to face the fear that I do actually deserve more and that I have to break this one last vestige of my past and really let go. Because once I let go of that awful, terribly, debilitating sense of being nothing, I will be in uncharted territory.Territory that hopefully will lead to something wonderful and amazing and exactly what I deserve. But between here and there, it will be waters full of unknown and fear and clouds and bears and sharks and all kinds of things I don't know. And I have to know that I've faced that unknown before and come out on the other side.

I faced the unknown of leaving my hometown and moving across the country.

I faced almost sixteen years of emotional abuse and walking away from that and rebuilding my life from scratch.

I faced breast cancer.

I can face this. I deserve to face this. And I deserve to accept the love that I want. 

Walking wounded

I sympathize with the zombies on "The Walking Dead". I feel like I've spent the last year shambling through my life, just trying to find somewhere quiet to rest. That's all the zombies want - somewhere quiet to rest. Oh, and brains. I can relate to that as well. I haven't felt like I've had a brain since March 9, when I got diagnosed with breast cancer.

Looking back over this past year, it's a blur. A blur of doctors and surgeons and research and information and non-information. Worries, both legitimate and not so much. Panic. Fear. Sadness. Anger.

And then nothing at all. Zombieland.

It's hard to even process now. I guess our brains go into zombie mode in order to deal with  so much awful. 

I've spent most of the last year just getting up and getting through. My art kept me going and made me feel alive. The relationship with the Filmmaker filled me with such light and pleasure. But then - back to zombieland.

Even now, going through radiation, which is nowhere near as bad as chemo, I'm still semi-zombie-like. I get up in the morning, put on clothes, grab my little talisman and go to radiation. I'm home very quickly - I'm gone maybe an hour total. But even this part of treatment zaps my energy and leaves me prone on the couch much of the time. I'm fighting exhaustion just sitting here at the coffee shop writing this but I didn't want to waste yet another day just laying on the couch.

I'm ready to de-zombie-fy. My last radiation treatment should be January 23 and then probably a month or so of tests and poking and prodding. And a new drug that I have to take for five years. But hopefully as I move into February, I will be less "Walking Dead" and more walking wounded.

It's funny because most of my wounds have been on the inside - emotional, personal, things no one really sees. Now, I wear my wounds like a warrior. The scar on my left breast and under my arm. The bright red tracks of radiation all over the left side of my body, looking like I forgot to wear sunscreen and spent two days on the beach. My 1/4 inch hair, mostly grey, still very thin and feeling kind of like rabbit fur. All my exterior wounds. 

But these wounds and this treatment has led me to one big discovery. The big wound, the big hole I have kept trying to fill for most of my life is a fallacy. It doesn't exist. I've dug a hole, wanting to fill it with unconditional love from somewhere else - family, men, marriages. But nothing has ever filled it. My therapist from the cancer center told me to look at that hole and see what it needs. And once I can figure that out, once I can find that inside of me, then I can help myself move on. Well, what it needed was me, giving myself the unconditional love I so crave.

Okay, now I've wandered from zombies into "Eat Pray Love", god help me. But that's the simple truth. And I got there without reading 200 self-help books. It only took cancer to get me to this point.

Let's see if I can tie this back to zombies.

I have shambled through so much of my life and my relationships numbly, trying to be whatever it is they want. Never looking to see the damage it's doing to me. 

And maybe now that I've learned that there isn't something missing, that I don't need someone's brains or love or whatever, maybe I can find my way back to human. Because what fills that hole is not exterior. It's my art. It's my heart. It's all the things I love about my life that I have brought to myself. I didn't need someone else to create this. I created it.

And I've dealt with my cancer alone, in many ways. I've had so many people be there for me and help me and I don't want to sound ungrateful. But no one was really there on the hardest nights, the hardest times. The times when I didn't think I could get through this. I lived through the darkest times A lesson that has been very hard for me.

So as this chapter of treatment comes to a close, maybe I can eventually escape Zombieland and find somewhere more akin to Oz.

Except without the damn flying monkeys. And wicked witch. And...

Damn...

This is me

Tonight, after stage managing a One Day Play (written, rehearsed and performed all within 24 hours), and celebrating the new year with my theater family, I am sitting at home, alone, and very happy… at this for this second.

Because right now, I know this is who I am. And I know who I am. And I adore who I am.

I am a warrior.

I am an artist.

I am a director.

I am a filmmaker.

I am a writer.

I am a girl.

I am a hard case.

I am a sentimental fool.

I am someone who loves deeply and passionately and wantonly.

I am a woman.

And I am more than enough. I am full and I am happy. I need nothing and no one tonight because I know exactly who I am and what I am.

And what I am is amazing.

And if I can’t find someone who can appreciate how amazing I am and if I can’t find someone who wants to share his amazing with me, then I’m fine just sitting here, by myself, being amazing.

Because, for once in my life, I don’t feel like I’m lacking in something, that I am somehow not good enough or strong enough or something enough.

I am enough. I am exactly who I need to be, right now, in this moment.

And I hope to carry this sense of me into the new year and beyond, to continue to build this beautiful, complicated, astonishing life I have built.

I can’t wait to see where I go next.