Emotional rescue

I’ve been rearranging my apartment this week because it’s cluttered and crowded and it needs it.

I moved my art table over to where I can sit at it and see the TV and where my back isn’t to the room. And my computer is part of that area and it all works very well. Made me very happy because my apartment has been chaos since I moved in. Never quite got it to where I wanted it to be. So I’m working on that.

I pulled out the vacuum to clean up the area where the table was because, well, it hasn’t really be vacuumed well since…

August 2, 2012.

The night I shaved my head.

A stupid vacuum brought me back there because suddenly, I could see the Filmmaker so carefully cleaning up all the hair we’d shaved off. Humming and sweet. And Tracy, making me laugh, keeping me entertained. And the Filmmaker, vacuuming, making sure he got every chunk of hair on the floor.

I didn’t cry much that night because there was so much love in the air. Tracy brought a ridiculous wig. And the Filmmaker… what can I say about him that I haven’t already said?

I don’t think I comprehended the loss then. I don’t think I could feel it then because it was so big. I was almost numb because so much had happened and so much was yet to happen. I cried a bit but Tracy and the Filmmaker made sure I felt only laughter and love that night.

But tonight, I feel everything I didn’t feel that night.

Because I’m on the other side of it. And I can see the trail of loss left behind.

And I know it’s part of moving on and moving past. Of letting go. Of releasing the pain into the universe for the universe to send it “to the trees”, as my friend’s baby girl says about things she wants to go away. “Send it to the trees”.

My hair has grown back quite nicely. And even as it was growing back, everyone said the gray suited me and commented on how great it looked. And I colored it back to black, just so I can feel like myself. And I look in the mirror now and I don’t see a cancer patient or even a cancer survivor. I see me. And that’s where I want to be – where I see me.

But for tonight, all I can see is that night. That moment when the Filmmaker cleaned up my hair. When a big part of me was taken away and left on the floor, to be sucked up into the vacuum bag. And which is probably still in the vacuum bag. I’ve never been a great housekeeper and am now just getting the energy back enough to clean on a regular basis.

I still have the little sprig of hair, the last piece the Filmmaker shaved off that night. He jokingly shaved it down to that little sprig and then hunted for a piece of ribbon and tied that ribbon to that sprig before he shaved it off. That lives in a little box on my shelf.

And then he vacuumed up the rest of my hair.

I know this probably doesn’t make sense but all I can see right now is him and the vacuum and my hair.

And all I can feel is the loss again – the loss of my life for almost a year, the loss of him and his beautiful everything that he was to me, the loss of so many things.

And I guess the only way to get through the loss is to grab the fucking vacuum and suck up the memory and let it go to the trees. And hang on to the good memories of that night – the love and the care and the beauty of that one sprig of hair left over. And just move through that night and leave it in the past, and tackle the next memory that bitch slaps me and brings me to my knees.

I do know that eventually, those memories won’t have any power. They will live in a past where I can see them with clarity and without excruciating pain.

But not tonight. Tonight, I will remember…