“…and we have reached cruising altitude.”
I’ve spent the past 2 months feeling like I was in a fog, not knowing what my next step was going to be. After having the epiphany of, “Hey! It might not be such a good idea to work in a cancer clinic after watching the most important person in your life die in one,” I was definitely spinning my wheels and feeling lost.
For some reason, that changed this weekend.
Now don’t get me wrong–I have no “master plan.” Things are always still subject to change with me. I’ve had my entire life turned upside down too many times to get attached to anything too strongly…
…but I’ve decided that I’m going to stay here, in Chapel Hill, for at least another 2-3 years, during which time, I will achieve one of two goals: I will either return to grad school at UNC or NC State, or I will work my way up through Whole Foods and move back to Hawaii. The practicalities are thus: I have several excellent universities in my backyard, and North Carolina is one of the least expensive states in the Union for higher education. Conversely, Whole Foods has four stores within a half-hour of Chapel Hill that are continually top performers for the company…so this area is a perfect place to work my way up. I’ve figured out that I’d have to be mid-to-upper level management (that’s a Team Leader or higher to all of you Whole Foodies out there) in order to afford the cost of living in Hawaii again…so for the next ten months, I’m going to do a lot more exploration and research into both avenues.
Whichever goal I choose, I am confident that I will achieve it here. Chapel Hill has been great to me. My recovery and reentry into life hasn’t been a smooth road…but I am a million times better than I ever dreamed I could be even six months ago.
This weekend, I went to a few low-key get-togethers for some coworkers…and sitting around shooting the shit, I realized that there are a lot of people here whom I think will be close friends for a long time. I am comfortable in my own skin here.
For someone who was afraid to leave the house a year ago, that is the biggest fucking achievement ever.
“This is your captain speaking. You’ll notice that I’ve turned off the ‘fasten seatbelt’ sign. Feel free to move about the cabin…”
…and move on with your life…
Posted by Pussy Galore @
8:11 pm |
So, I recently started running again after about a 2 year hiatus.
It is fabulous. I had forgotten how awesome “runner’s high” and the peace of mind that comes with it is…
I had been running before, and loving it. I had started marathon training right before Eric died. At the 3-month mark, I was up to 4 miles a day 4 times a week, taking anywhere from 50 minutes to an hour to finish (depending on soreness, weather, etc). I was going to run in the Honolulu Marathon in December of 2006 to raise money for the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society. Eric and I were going to go back to Hawaii for at least a week and visit our friends, hang out on our favorite beaches and trails, and just generally enjoy ourselves…
When he died, I stopped training altogether. I stopped doing everything. I essentially stopped living–I was in “survival mode” for over a year after he passed.
But now, I am finally in a good place mentally, and rebuilding myself physically, and I can’t help but think that Eric would be proud of me, his tough-as-nails babe.
I never thought that I would run again, and I’m already up to 2.5 miles in only my third week of training…
And so, I am committing to running a 5K sometime this spring/early summer for Eric. I’ve owed him this for a while.
I’m back, baby. I hope that you’re proud of me.
Posted by Pussy Galore @
12:38 pm |
So, I am now, for the first time in like 5 years, a card-carrying member at a local gym. It feels good to get that endorphin high every night, all sweaty and smiley with that warm ache in my muscles. I feel like I’m sweating out the last little bit of poison from the past two years, and it’s great.
HOWEVER, I’ve already lost 15 pounds (during the holiday season too!). I’m a bit puzzled as to how this happened. While I didn’t get nearly as bad as I have during holiday seasons in the past, the blues did hit this year and I ended up on a lovely little jag right after Thanksgiving with no sleep, little food and far too much alcohol. Apparently, whiskey equals weight loss. Who knew? All that I can say is, if this whole gym-and-eating-healthy thing doesn’t pan out, I’m writing a new diet book about the therapeutic benefits of Jim and Jack. You heard it here first.
As I think about my body, and how I’ve treated it or mistreated it over the course of the past three years (because the downhill spiral really began when Eric was diagnosed out in Hawaii), I think about toxicity of other kinds in my own life and in others.
What defines a good relationship? While Eric and I shared this deep, incredible, “one soul in two bodies” love, it is irrefutable that our relationship ended badly (through no fault of ours, of course, but *still*). I think about how his illness and death affected me, how I was in psychiatric treatment for months, how I was afraid to leave the house, how I became afraid to open up to anybody new at all…and think that ultimately, the relationship was a toxic one for me. I love Eric, I always will, and I don’t blame anybody for what happened. I guess that death and psychosis are just risks that you take when you decide to share your life with someone…
Are relationships by their very nature toxic?
I think of my friends, varied and marvelous and wonderful, who are all stressing about the opposite sex in one way or another. Even the married ones aren’t exempt. In fact, neither is this author–I’ve been opening up in major ways to someone with whom, for various reasons, there can and never will be any real connection. And I think of all of us, all amazing, warm, crazy humans who are all desperate to be seen through the flattering eyes of another who is in love with us. Why are we so compelled to act this way? Maybe, like the exercise, it’s our brain chemicals at work…just like my post-exercise endorphin rush, we’re all craving that next oxytocin hit. That’s the “love chemical,” the one that makes you feel all giddy when you’re around someone you like.
That’s it. We are all just junkies. I’ll raise a glass of whiskey to that. 
xo
A
ps. I blame the oxytocin for my current behavior aberrations, which have included listening to Fergie and drinking uber-girly drinks. Um, yeah. That’s my excuse for EVERYTHING out of character from here on out.
Posted by Pussy Galore @
11:09 pm |
From the Young Adult Cancer files, here’s one on why all cancer patients who have gone through puberty should be informed of fertility preservation techniques. It might be awkward to think about banking your 17-year-olds sperm or eggs, but if teens and young adults are at least made aware of the fact that their cancer treatment will most likely impact their chance of having a family later on in life, the awkward discussion will save a lot of heartache later on.
This was originally published at my old blog on 13 October 2005.
gestation
spent more “girl time” talking with one of my friends from college this evening.
most of it was spent discussing a mutual friend’s pregnancy, the first one of our group. the irony is supreme–the pregnancy was not planned and our friend was one of those rock-star types who managed to frequent most of the bars in the city and still keep her life together. the initial shock has subsided and she is happily anticipating the birth of her baby girl.
the pregnancy is doubly interesting for my phone buddy and i as it is our first vicarious experience of child-bearing. this was not our first exposure to pregnancy in our peer group (we both went to rural, mountain-town high schools–there were girls getting pregnant when we were in seventh grade); but it seems so much more real this time. we have come of the age where one is expected to settle down, start a family, and begin working on gray hair, expanding waistlines, and a mid-life crisis. being pregnant has lost the “after-school special” stigma and has become something that we are supposed to crave. phone buddy and i still aren’t so sure that we want to buy into the whole “home-on-a-treelined-street-with-picket-fence-and-dog-and-2.5-kids” modern american life, but as p.b. so sagely put it, “we’ll see how this one goes, and then we’ll decide if we want kids.”
maybe.
the whole conversation made me think of the phone call we got from the fertility clinic back in july. my amazing husband, in spite of the stresses of moving into our new apartment, putting up with me as i started my new job, etc. etc. decided to be a glutton for punishment and subjected himself to an 8 am spooge-in-a-cup session on the other side of dc. all for the off chance that we might decide we want to conceive someday after the transplant.
our previous oncologists had told us that the chance of us making biological babies was slim. at johns hopkins’ urging, we had decided to get tested anyway before he started to take the pre-meds for the transplant, “just in case” there were viable cells that we could save for later. we took this a bit too far and created a whole plan for our family-to-be, hinging to the false hope that the chemo hadn’t already rendered him sterile. before the results even came back, we had picked out a sperm bank, discussed how many years it would take for us to be ready to start a family (ie, how many years it would take to pay off the medical bills from the transplant), and even talked about possible names for the little bugger.
one 2-minute phone call was all it took to bring us back down to earth.
the good news = hubby wasn’t completely sterile.
the bad news = 80% of cells were immobile, 50% had deformed heads, which translates to the chance of his sperm making a healthy baby was a long shot. the fertility clinic recommended that the expense of banking his cells would not be a good investment. and there was a 99% chance that hubby would be completely sterile after the transplant.
the news shook us both up hard.
several months’ distance has allowed some contemplation though. hubby and i had never planned on kids. we were going to be the wild and crazy type that moved to a new interesting area every couple of years without regard to which school district we lived in. we were also planning on having disposable income and travelling a lot, neither of which comes easy when you’re a parent.
why are we mourning the loss of the child that we never had? is this yearning for a family an expectation that is programmed into us by society? is this just the next cool thing to do after you get married? worse yet, is this an extreme case of keeping up with the joneses?
25 and i already know that i will never experience the visceral production of a new life inside of my body. but 25, and we still have a whole world of choices in front of us.
why do i want so badly to be called “mommy”?
Posted by Pussy Galore @
12:00 pm |
A shopping center. On a bench
I sit in silence
A dark smudge on an otherwise brightly colored canvas.
Families bustle by,
Loudly arguing:
Stress over locating the “perfect” gift.
But little do they know
That perfection
Is the time spent with their loved ones.
My perfect gift is non-existent:
There is nothing
That I want more than to have my partner back.
Posted by Pussy Galore @
7:58 am |
I hate the holiday season.
The only purpose it serves anymore is to beget greed and stress.
It really makes me sick to see how so many people are focused on gourmet this and who-spent-the-most-money-on-that. The positivity is lost. Everyone gripes about spending time with their loved ones and instead is desperate to get back to contributing to the bottom line. Spend, spend, spend! It’s what the season is all about, right?
Black Friday and the holiday rush disgust me. Oh, and I am so tired of trying to sell people shit they don’t need. There has been more than one time I’ve felt like saying to someone, “Who the fuck cares if you even just eat goddamn ham sandwiches next Thursday!?!? Just be glad that you *can* eat. Be glad that you have people who care about you. Be glad that you can afford food. Be glad that you have a place to prepare your food.”
So many people don’t have good food. Or a house. Or a family.
And if I hear one more person bitch about not having the right fucking gourmet organic whatever, I may explode.
I was doing so well with the holidays–but I feel like the next week may well put me out of commission, at least mentally, for a while.
The commercialism makes me sick.
Posted by Pussy Galore @
3:32 pm |
