This whole year
Ok, it has only been a month long
BUT!
This whole year I’ve been down sick.
If I’m real, it started 2 years ago with the cancer diagnosis. Ever since the big news was handed to me, I struggled to choose my identity within the disease. How did I stay me in the middle of this overwhelming terrible malady?
I learned to rely on the person I had been all along. I choose to be a writer and this very piece is proof that I am what I am striving to be.
In my weariness I feel doubt. Am I really? What do this words amount to?
While I was at the bottom of the well of the cancer treatment, I work to maintain a veneer of the person I hoped I could still be.
Hanging on the edge with my fingernails while gravity got stronger and stronger, I did start taking shortcuts. I lay in bed and listened to easy books, I didn’t challenge my weary head with complicated things.
And
The malady is waning. I have a surgery on the 13th and another radioactive treatment at the end of March. Those are not trivial milestones to cross, but they are the last ones. My grasp is not tenuous anymore, it’s getting stronger and more secure every day.
Can I remember how to engage with big ideas again? My creative imagination needs to come out of hibernation.
Hmm. This is going to take some loosening up. I’ve gotten some habits I’ll need to upgrade. The road to beign a Sensei taught me that every small step matters. Pushing myself is worthwhile.
I’m falling back on some old tricks:
Pen and paper. I wrote most of this essay on notepaper in a three-ring binder. Almost half of what I wrote has been crossed out. In ink. Like my ancestors used to do.
It’s messy. I’m rusty and crusty and slow. And I’m willing to keep trying because I really want to get better.