because today I am just happy to be dealing with concrete things: getting my chemo scheduled, planning for child care, looking into the wig situation. A lovely woman I just met at Mishkan who recently finished her treatment is going to give me her $1,500 short brunette wig that looks an awful lot like my hair. What a blessing! But I need to get a blond one and also an auburn or burgundy one, too, so I'm asking around, checking out ebay, seeing how much my insurance will pay. If I have to go bald for goodness sake, I want to have a little fun with the situation. People at Mishkan know how I love to play around with wigs at Purim, so I'll just have to get into a Purim spirit every day until my hair grows back (have I told you I decided I'm going to let it grow long again after chemo? and if blond is popular, maybe I'll go blond?)
I'm having fun with the "breast cancer thang" when I can. Some days I'm not playful at all, I can have moments of being quite frightened, overwhelmed and down, but when I'm feeling like I am right now, able to let go and be non-attached, I'm 100% letting go and being non attached. And then I can do what I need to do and make plans and be efficient and have a bit of fun with it all.
And I am experiencing the way I've shifted and grown emotionally in just the last month or so. I am really getting good at just being concerned with my own feelings and knowing that everyone has the responsibility to take care of their own feelings: not my job. It sounds so simple and obvious, but I have often been a "caretaker" and am learning that that's just a role. I don't have to hold anyone else's emotional stuff and this realization is freeing. I have much more mental space to heal and to create and to live my life
like today dancing with Georgie in my dirty kitchen to Elvis Costello's "Pump it Up" and just making an ass of myself because it was so sweet and moving to watch how he anticipated me moving my arms up to the air each time the chorus came around and didn't take his eyes off me and was laughing hysterically and this is a child who is supposed to be difficult to engage.
So that's where I am now. Chemo begins May 1. I'm not scared about it; I'm ready.
(But know that tomorrow I may say the opposite of everything I'm expressing now...)
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I am really inspired by your writing. It seems as if the words flow right through you and onto the screen. I know there's effort/editing involved, etc. but a gift is a gift, and you've got it.
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