(Originally written in September of this year. Edited to post today.)
As I get ready to embark on the next stage of my life and there being a 4,000-kilometer expedition in front of me before getting there, I am inspired to expound on other stages in my life where I have already begun to piece out a story. It's therapeutic. Fun. And insofar that I am far less emotionally invested than I used to be, retrospection can be spun more positively. Old-fashioned conventions of writing, of time lines, of perfectly positioned punctuation WILL be tossed out the window.
On a side note, I have also thought about selling a large majority of my life story as fiction. I'm already sick of the one-question-begets-another cluster of assbackwardsness that is my life. And I mean, what's the point of putting a title on that story, extracting and sucking more (and hypothetical) sympathy when I have already had the experience of it being ignored, minimized, and slammed with antipathy? At least I won't have to rely on my imagination in order to come up with a good book. But I relent. I'm sure I couldn't even find a publisher. Not that I want to seriously go looking for one anyway, but I still have this retarded, deep-seeded wish in the far back dust traps of my mind that someone would pick it up.
But then I would probably just have one excuse or another for not wanting to work so hard on actually putting something together in the first place. Guess that's why I stick to my blog. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, in whatever order I deem to be in the mood for.
So then, where were we? Oh yes, I hadn't even started. And I was supposed to continue my post from yesterday, which I'm not doing after all. But like a good blogger person, I'll probably make a link from the continuation of yesterday's post to yesterday's post when I get around to it.
For today, though...
Rent.
And no, not the totally awesome musical with Adam Pascal and Idina Menzel (who played Elphaba, the witch, in "Wicked",) but the foreshadowing I referred to here (12th paragraph down, just before the asteriks and again 2nd to last paragraph.)
At the top of the switch-over, when I moved into the city after my living with friends flopped, I offered the aunt a small amount for rent. It wasn't much but at least it was something. I had done the same with my friends. By then my in-patient husband was getting his long-term disability paychecks and even though they didn't stretch far with an infant and a two-year old, at least we had something. My girls had what they needed and I was taking up space in their house, eating their food, and getting rides from them to the hospital. It seemed... fair.
But then...
End of January comes, beginning of February, something like that (yeah, not too long after the Christmas I was displaced--another entry coming soon to computer near you,) and the aunt pulls me aside and says, "well, hey, look, it's not quite enough. What you're giving me isn't covering enough." Vague like that. No details. In her squeaky, passive-aggressive smile, she doesn't explain. I don't ask. I just come to understand how maybe the near-four-hundred dollars for bigger-city living isn't a realistic number. And I trust her. I feel like she's family and I'm cheating her. And what do I know about the cost of living there? Nothing.
So I oblige. I don't think to check the newspaper to compare prices. I don't think to go on the Internet. And this is before the days of Kijiji. I don't think to do much of anything because my husband is sick with cancer in the hospital. I don't think about much else, at all, really, because it's already so much to be in this weird universe where I've lost control of my life, I'm trying to keep it together for my daughters, and security is a long-lost, foreign, far-away dream concept; and I am only 21 years old. My head is too full, I am perpetually in a state of alarm, and I just keep waiting for someone to have pity on me and be able to afford my leeching, or maybe even just know what to do.
But no. Next month, same thing. I don't even remember where the month went in terms of time, and here this woman is pulling me aside with a paper in her hand with figures on it. Somehow the rent goes up another chunk. Now I'm getting a little curious. We're talking over five hundred dollars now. In 2001.
I start to stew over it. My in-laws do nothing about it. What could they, do, right? They warned me not to move in with her in the first place. Husband comes out of the hospital for a short stint to get a change of scenery and in between chemo doses. He stays with us at the aunt's, and guess what? Yep, that's right, she ups the rent again.
By this point, it is costing me $680 to rent a small corner of her house. An enormous house that she and her husband got for cheap because they bought out someone's foreclosure. It doesn't cover my baby's foods, diapers, or formula. It doesn't cover any extras. This is just to live in a hole in the basement of her house.
One day, she comes home with arms loaded with loot from Michael's Craft Store. Another day, it's new HUGE television (before the days of HD.) Yet another day, it was a complete bedroom set for her youngest daughter.
I am now starting to see where all my husband's disability checks were going.
I am livid by the time I point it out to anyone who would listen.
Which is pretty much no one.
During my husband's stay with us and before going back into the hospital, he was with just enough presence of mind to agree with me about the maddening nature of all of it. I wanted to confront her about why she was charging me so much for rent. I wanted to know what she was figuring into the price of rent. And since she couldn't, for the love of God, give our young family a break, I wanted speak up and out loud.
But I was so filled with anger that I could hardly make sense of what was going on, much less what I wanted to do about it. It was a daily thing. No one seemed to clue into any part of the pain I was going through and to make matters worse, here was this aunt contributing to the injustices we were already suffering. I didn't even care about paying rent to earn my stay there nor paying a certain number as compared to the housing market around me, it's just that one or the other of the two choices would have at least yielded something more akin to freedom and the money that was being sucked from my pocket was sick money.
And freedom I did not get much of. I got lectured for one thing or another pretty much every other day. I never knew when I was going to be pulled aside for something, cornered about, or "suggested to." If it wasn't my bedtime--my bedtime for crying out loud! After bearing 2 children? Was she serious?--it was about cleaning the house, or about the way I cleaned it, it was about the way I disciplined (or did not discipline enough) my children or the way I did or did not talk about my emotions with her or "seemed" to be not understanding my situation. Oh, I understood it perfectly well, thank you.
Not to mention, again, no car, no job, no immigration status, no money of my own, no way to make a few bucks here or there. Trapped.
It was maddening all on its own to have been reduced from being my own person with a family and the husband's promising career to some kind of know-nothing, grunt-level, entry-level, belittled kid thing whose loosely-tied "family" status somehow enabled the aunt (or maybe entitled her?) to treat me like crap AND try to fake like she wasn't. But then paying big city rent for a shithole bedroom in her basement and cleaning her house and watching her daughters live comfortably spread out while I crammed myself and my two babies in the shithole bedroom was less than exciting. After months of trying to take it all in--the cancer, the aunt, the inlaws, the young motherhood, and immigration limbo--and nothing coming out, and this short off the heels of a year-old marriage, college with a baby, single motherhood, and no family around anywhere, I didn't know what end was up. It was like jamming a gig of information in 750 megabyte computer and the RAM is fried.
So I practically jumped at the idea of my mom buying me a plane ticket to hang with her for a month in Nevada. Of course it meant leaving my husband to deal with his lung surgery by himself (with his mom) and my mom would have to work and carry on her life while I was visiting, but I would be OUT of that place.
And I had received my mother in law's blessing. Respite came slowly in those days, and emotionally unintelligent people were slow to respond, but my mother in law's understanding of the situation (in addition to her own severe contempt of her brother and sister-in-law) helped relieve the guilt I had about going. By that point, it was May, the prognosis for my husband was looking better, and all the procedures his oncologist had promised were actually starting to be followed through on. I had had all I could stand of the situation. Had I stayed one second more, I might have had a psychotic break.
With what little sanity I thought I had left, I packed up everything I could carry, including two little girls, and made my way through the scary maze of customs to see my mom waiting at the port.
Showing posts with label cancer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cancer. Show all posts
28 December 2011
02 April 2011
Head wounds
"I can see that you bottle things up," she said. "You need to talk about things. You can't be a stuffer, like I am." I was facing the aunt on her couch, acutely aware of the mint green walls of her living room. It had been what, a day, a week since my girls and I plus our bags were dropped off here?
Hmm.
I wanted to make this work.
But I just couldn't shake my reservations about this woman. I looked at her and my eyes pleaded for someone to fall on, someone who could understand the hellish nightmare of uncertainty, injustice, confusion, and pending loss of a know-nothing, newbie immigrant.
Granted, I was only an American coming into Canada, but still. I had nothing. I had only been there a year with no status, no job, no provincial driver's license and it had been a year of major upheaval and transition--my husband's 2 other cancer episodes, moving five times with a toddler, a new baby, his just-barely-there new career, and all the post natal emotions which hadn't even subsided by this third diagnosis. There hadn't even been the time, much less the money, to start or pay for application of residency. So. To recap. I had no job, wouldn't have been allowed to work (immigration rules), and had no car with which to even escape. I relied totally and completely on everyone else.
And here I was. In the house of a stranger, wondering how I got there, how I got to that place in my life, no more assured of where I was than my own children. (I had been an independent woman before, hadn't I? I guess writing bad checks and scrambling to make ends me for me and my baby barely counted as independence, but it was hard to remember. It seemed like a lifetime ago.)
I looked at her. I was going to try this anyway. This getting-to-know-her thing. She was family albeit not the kind of family I knew. Maybe there was some value to us sitting there on that couch that winter day, her trying to get me to talk; and what did I know? Except for not to judge at first glance? But I was oblivious. Things? Stuff what things? I didn't even know what she was talking about, much less what I was thinking or processing.
I sputtered a response that somehow had nothing to do with my then-current state, something scattered and half thought out about the way I grew up. I think that's what she wanted to hear. I was able to pry into something more than just my current state. I waited for her response. This would be anecdotal or wise.
I don't remember what she said.
Whatever specifics that were exchanged, all I remember is being left with a feeling like she didn't understand what I was going through. I should have used that opportunity to tell her, to scream it maybe, "My life is a freaking nightmare and here's why!" I guess I just thought that she would be like every other basic compassionate, observe that I was young with two very young daughters, and put it together herself that being newly married and facing what our whole family was facing was terrible!
But maybe that is quite a lot of information to assume someone could know or put together. She at least knew that her nephew and I were newly married with a second child because she came to visit us back when the baby was born. That had only been 5 months prior. Hmm. The fact that she missed it just exhausted me more, and I at least sensed that she wasn't perceptive enough to be the person I should be talking to.
Then, just like that, I was beginning to feel like I was under a microscope. Instead of being relieved to find someone I could talk to, I just shut down (or realized that talking about my fears with this woman was just not going to happen,) and diffused her questions with lighthearted (if you could call it that) small talk, well-being of the in-laws, and... rent.
***
There seems to be a common theme in those times, and for several occasions and moments after. The way my brain was working. For all of the hard times I've had in my life, I've been able to look back now and understand that for what I was lacking in being able to acquire things/resources to make my life better, to help myself, it has been FAR less due to being wiser on this side of the fence than it is the compounded number of dramatic things to have happened in my life in those days, less than a year after having been behind the wheel of a rollover in August of 1999. My head was bashed around so bad that I was in ICU for three days with a concussion, and I've had to wonder just how much that head injury affected all/any of my abilities to process things in a logical fashion.
I have been hesitant and irritated to develop this theory too far. It doesn't speak to the choices I made, it doesn't excuse the shit decisions I've employed, and it wouldn't get me off the hook for anything. But I am curious just the same. A whole lot of unspoken, blurry time was spent searching for answers when I couldn't even recall the simplest exercises in memory (where I left my house key, my papers for school, even how the campus layout was from the year before) and then when my fog cleared--or what I thought was my fog clearing--my responses were always emotional, not always rational, and concentrating took on a whole new effort. I would get headaches from concentrating on something--the kind of pain I had after the accident.
Sometimes, even today, 12 years later, I will feel myself get dizzy from time to time. It's only slight, but it feels too familiar... I think that I would have made ridiculous jumps in conclusion for just about anything, but most especially when I was in a state of stress. Being the mom of two young girls, being young myself, and having a young husband in the hospital living with an aunt who upped the rent every month of our stay with her and threatened to call Child and Family Services on me when I couldn't fathom what or why out of thin air would qualify as stress.
It wasn't until I worked at the crusher of a local excavating company and had lots of time to journal, reflect, and otherwise beat myself up about stupid shit in my life that I actually felt such a clearing of my mind, I had to wonder if I snapped. Lucky for me, my snapping came in the form of realizing the world was opening up and I could match logic to emotion (a sweeping miracle for someone like me!) It was to be the beginning of being responsible for myself, rather than waiting for someone to come rescue me and live for me; and I was relieved for that. But it was extremely painful to take a look on my past with that puzzle piece in my hand and see with new understanding all that I could have done.
Hmm.
I wanted to make this work.
But I just couldn't shake my reservations about this woman. I looked at her and my eyes pleaded for someone to fall on, someone who could understand the hellish nightmare of uncertainty, injustice, confusion, and pending loss of a know-nothing, newbie immigrant.
Granted, I was only an American coming into Canada, but still. I had nothing. I had only been there a year with no status, no job, no provincial driver's license and it had been a year of major upheaval and transition--my husband's 2 other cancer episodes, moving five times with a toddler, a new baby, his just-barely-there new career, and all the post natal emotions which hadn't even subsided by this third diagnosis. There hadn't even been the time, much less the money, to start or pay for application of residency. So. To recap. I had no job, wouldn't have been allowed to work (immigration rules), and had no car with which to even escape. I relied totally and completely on everyone else.
And here I was. In the house of a stranger, wondering how I got there, how I got to that place in my life, no more assured of where I was than my own children. (I had been an independent woman before, hadn't I? I guess writing bad checks and scrambling to make ends me for me and my baby barely counted as independence, but it was hard to remember. It seemed like a lifetime ago.)
I looked at her. I was going to try this anyway. This getting-to-know-her thing. She was family albeit not the kind of family I knew. Maybe there was some value to us sitting there on that couch that winter day, her trying to get me to talk; and what did I know? Except for not to judge at first glance? But I was oblivious. Things? Stuff what things? I didn't even know what she was talking about, much less what I was thinking or processing.
I sputtered a response that somehow had nothing to do with my then-current state, something scattered and half thought out about the way I grew up. I think that's what she wanted to hear. I was able to pry into something more than just my current state. I waited for her response. This would be anecdotal or wise.
I don't remember what she said.
Whatever specifics that were exchanged, all I remember is being left with a feeling like she didn't understand what I was going through. I should have used that opportunity to tell her, to scream it maybe, "My life is a freaking nightmare and here's why!" I guess I just thought that she would be like every other basic compassionate, observe that I was young with two very young daughters, and put it together herself that being newly married and facing what our whole family was facing was terrible!
But maybe that is quite a lot of information to assume someone could know or put together. She at least knew that her nephew and I were newly married with a second child because she came to visit us back when the baby was born. That had only been 5 months prior. Hmm. The fact that she missed it just exhausted me more, and I at least sensed that she wasn't perceptive enough to be the person I should be talking to.
Then, just like that, I was beginning to feel like I was under a microscope. Instead of being relieved to find someone I could talk to, I just shut down (or realized that talking about my fears with this woman was just not going to happen,) and diffused her questions with lighthearted (if you could call it that) small talk, well-being of the in-laws, and... rent.
***
There seems to be a common theme in those times, and for several occasions and moments after. The way my brain was working. For all of the hard times I've had in my life, I've been able to look back now and understand that for what I was lacking in being able to acquire things/resources to make my life better, to help myself, it has been FAR less due to being wiser on this side of the fence than it is the compounded number of dramatic things to have happened in my life in those days, less than a year after having been behind the wheel of a rollover in August of 1999. My head was bashed around so bad that I was in ICU for three days with a concussion, and I've had to wonder just how much that head injury affected all/any of my abilities to process things in a logical fashion.
I have been hesitant and irritated to develop this theory too far. It doesn't speak to the choices I made, it doesn't excuse the shit decisions I've employed, and it wouldn't get me off the hook for anything. But I am curious just the same. A whole lot of unspoken, blurry time was spent searching for answers when I couldn't even recall the simplest exercises in memory (where I left my house key, my papers for school, even how the campus layout was from the year before) and then when my fog cleared--or what I thought was my fog clearing--my responses were always emotional, not always rational, and concentrating took on a whole new effort. I would get headaches from concentrating on something--the kind of pain I had after the accident.
Sometimes, even today, 12 years later, I will feel myself get dizzy from time to time. It's only slight, but it feels too familiar... I think that I would have made ridiculous jumps in conclusion for just about anything, but most especially when I was in a state of stress. Being the mom of two young girls, being young myself, and having a young husband in the hospital living with an aunt who upped the rent every month of our stay with her and threatened to call Child and Family Services on me when I couldn't fathom what or why out of thin air would qualify as stress.
It wasn't until I worked at the crusher of a local excavating company and had lots of time to journal, reflect, and otherwise beat myself up about stupid shit in my life that I actually felt such a clearing of my mind, I had to wonder if I snapped. Lucky for me, my snapping came in the form of realizing the world was opening up and I could match logic to emotion (a sweeping miracle for someone like me!) It was to be the beginning of being responsible for myself, rather than waiting for someone to come rescue me and live for me; and I was relieved for that. But it was extremely painful to take a look on my past with that puzzle piece in my hand and see with new understanding all that I could have done.
31 March 2011
The aunt
So when we got in, it was a bit of a whirlwind. My so-called, so-very-different-from-me friends were right behind me in the doorway with some of my belongings. I had my 5-month-old in one arm, a bag and my 2-year-old's hand in the other. I budged into the tiny entryway area, hesitant to track in snow or grit, encouraging my girls to go into the stranger's home. Both girls took one look at the woman in front of them, who was already wobbling toward us, not helping us with our things, and clung to me. My baby twisted in my arm, turning her head over my shoulder away from the woman she did not know, and clenching my jacket. Even my sociable, bubbly 2-year-old was wincing and finding protection behind my arm. The friends who had driven me two hours to get there were dropping my belongings at the door.
The flurry of activity and rush to get out of the January cold subsided momentarily. In the arrested moment, I couldn't dispel the feeling that washed over me that this was not going to be good. Small, needless talk was made. Whatever introductions and formalities were exchanged between the friends dropping me off and this aunt of my husband's were so fleeting and perfunctory that whatever hope of good there could have been from this new arrangement disappeared as quickly as we came in.
I feebly, desperately thanked my friends, the wife-and-husband duo I'd been living with for two months prior. My gratefulness for them bringing in my belongings was washed away in a moment of desperately wishing I could turn around and go back with them. But it was done and I knew it. We were here. Now. And it hadn't been working out between the three of us and our three kids (my two, their one), so here I was. I knew they were probably just relieved to get their house and life back; not have a living zombie of depressing emotions moping around in their house and the wife of a cancer victim to make their lives depressing. It still stung, though, when the moment for them to leave came and all of us stood in the entryway with nothing more to say and they left without pomp or circumstance. Nor telling emotion. The way they swept out of there made me wonder just how relieved they were to have me off their hands.
It was kind of a theme in my life. Needing way more emotional support than anyone could give. It made me realize that I asked too much of people. So instead of figuring out how I could fix that, which I neither had the time for or the patience (and that time in my life being when I needed someone to feel sorry for me the most,) I just balled it up and choked it down, just like every other injustice I'd learned to tolerate. I did it again just then, in that moment the door closed behind my friends, and I turned to the next endeavor. The aunt.
* * *
Did she welcome us? Smile? I don't remember. What I do remember is standing in that strange new doorway, feeling as alien and wanting to hide as my own children, praying and hoping that this would be a welcoming new start. A place to find refuge from the tsunami that was my life just then. I also remember the aunt, with her waddling gait and cold black eyes, who didn't give me a warm impression at all. If she was trying, it got lost the moment my 2-year-old started to whimper and the aunt dragged her away from me telling her to come into the house, forcing adjustment on my little girl, rather than waiting for her to warm up with my support.
I remember her taking the baby from my arms so I could take my shoes off, but when I finished and stood up--all of a minute--she was in front of me with my two children. The picture of this strange woman, who I'd only met once before then, with my children beside her, was an eerie snapshot of wrongness. The aunt looked almost... what was that look... defiant. Without being able to put it into words, I just knew it didn't feel right. I moved in towards my children to comfort them and take them back. It was a silly thought and I shook it out of my mind as I stepped further and further into this strange house, strange life, strange world to reassure my little ones that Mommy was right there. But it was just the thing that haunted me, an inaudible and undefined feeling: take them back. It was a ghost of a feeling that would stay with me for my duration there. What was that? What was that exchange? It was just another of many more gut feelings I'd learn to set aside. What else could I do with no landed immigrant status to get a job, no car, no money, none of my family around?
Not one to be easily defeated, I followed her to I don't remember where. Did she show me around first? Did she show me my room? Did we sit on the couch that day? It doesn't matter. I proverbially and literally tip toed around everyone in that house---the aunt, the uncle, their daughters, who were practically my age and remarkably normal in comparison--and tried desperately to keep a low profile so I could do what I was trying to do, and get out.
It wouldn't be that easy.
On top of everything else, and I mean EVERYTHING else, I was 21 years old. To everyone else around me, I was still just a know-nothing kid, which pissed me off. It worked against me in every way youth works against even the most level-headed, ambitious, qualified or intelligent person.
It is for this very reason alone, I digress, for why I can never and will never tell a young person that their opinions don't matter or wave off concerns I know, standing on this side of the age fence, they will outgrow with some dismissive, diminutive gesture or guffaw. Even when my ear has been bent by the same person for the same things ad nauseum and I get frustrated because I don't feel like they're doing anything for themselves to better their situation, I still shut up. I just listen. And then I try to ruffle up some inspiration with a tidbit for them or use my creative ability to offer a suggestion or two, based on the limits of their situation. (You'd be surprised about how giving someone something they can really chew on will actually enable them to see where the options are for themselves.) The fact is, you just don't know what their life is like. You can make intelligent assumptions, you can make belligerent ones, you can make generalizations, you can be as self-righteous or as concerned as you want to be, you can even be really good at understanding. But at the end of the day, you don't wear their shoes and you don't put your head to rest on their pillow. That deserves understanding.
The flurry of activity and rush to get out of the January cold subsided momentarily. In the arrested moment, I couldn't dispel the feeling that washed over me that this was not going to be good. Small, needless talk was made. Whatever introductions and formalities were exchanged between the friends dropping me off and this aunt of my husband's were so fleeting and perfunctory that whatever hope of good there could have been from this new arrangement disappeared as quickly as we came in.
I feebly, desperately thanked my friends, the wife-and-husband duo I'd been living with for two months prior. My gratefulness for them bringing in my belongings was washed away in a moment of desperately wishing I could turn around and go back with them. But it was done and I knew it. We were here. Now. And it hadn't been working out between the three of us and our three kids (my two, their one), so here I was. I knew they were probably just relieved to get their house and life back; not have a living zombie of depressing emotions moping around in their house and the wife of a cancer victim to make their lives depressing. It still stung, though, when the moment for them to leave came and all of us stood in the entryway with nothing more to say and they left without pomp or circumstance. Nor telling emotion. The way they swept out of there made me wonder just how relieved they were to have me off their hands.
It was kind of a theme in my life. Needing way more emotional support than anyone could give. It made me realize that I asked too much of people. So instead of figuring out how I could fix that, which I neither had the time for or the patience (and that time in my life being when I needed someone to feel sorry for me the most,) I just balled it up and choked it down, just like every other injustice I'd learned to tolerate. I did it again just then, in that moment the door closed behind my friends, and I turned to the next endeavor. The aunt.
* * *
Did she welcome us? Smile? I don't remember. What I do remember is standing in that strange new doorway, feeling as alien and wanting to hide as my own children, praying and hoping that this would be a welcoming new start. A place to find refuge from the tsunami that was my life just then. I also remember the aunt, with her waddling gait and cold black eyes, who didn't give me a warm impression at all. If she was trying, it got lost the moment my 2-year-old started to whimper and the aunt dragged her away from me telling her to come into the house, forcing adjustment on my little girl, rather than waiting for her to warm up with my support.
I remember her taking the baby from my arms so I could take my shoes off, but when I finished and stood up--all of a minute--she was in front of me with my two children. The picture of this strange woman, who I'd only met once before then, with my children beside her, was an eerie snapshot of wrongness. The aunt looked almost... what was that look... defiant. Without being able to put it into words, I just knew it didn't feel right. I moved in towards my children to comfort them and take them back. It was a silly thought and I shook it out of my mind as I stepped further and further into this strange house, strange life, strange world to reassure my little ones that Mommy was right there. But it was just the thing that haunted me, an inaudible and undefined feeling: take them back. It was a ghost of a feeling that would stay with me for my duration there. What was that? What was that exchange? It was just another of many more gut feelings I'd learn to set aside. What else could I do with no landed immigrant status to get a job, no car, no money, none of my family around?
Not one to be easily defeated, I followed her to I don't remember where. Did she show me around first? Did she show me my room? Did we sit on the couch that day? It doesn't matter. I proverbially and literally tip toed around everyone in that house---the aunt, the uncle, their daughters, who were practically my age and remarkably normal in comparison--and tried desperately to keep a low profile so I could do what I was trying to do, and get out.
It wouldn't be that easy.
On top of everything else, and I mean EVERYTHING else, I was 21 years old. To everyone else around me, I was still just a know-nothing kid, which pissed me off. It worked against me in every way youth works against even the most level-headed, ambitious, qualified or intelligent person.
It is for this very reason alone, I digress, for why I can never and will never tell a young person that their opinions don't matter or wave off concerns I know, standing on this side of the age fence, they will outgrow with some dismissive, diminutive gesture or guffaw. Even when my ear has been bent by the same person for the same things ad nauseum and I get frustrated because I don't feel like they're doing anything for themselves to better their situation, I still shut up. I just listen. And then I try to ruffle up some inspiration with a tidbit for them or use my creative ability to offer a suggestion or two, based on the limits of their situation. (You'd be surprised about how giving someone something they can really chew on will actually enable them to see where the options are for themselves.) The fact is, you just don't know what their life is like. You can make intelligent assumptions, you can make belligerent ones, you can make generalizations, you can be as self-righteous or as concerned as you want to be, you can even be really good at understanding. But at the end of the day, you don't wear their shoes and you don't put your head to rest on their pillow. That deserves understanding.
05 March 2011
A staggering moment of many
What was he thinking? Was he thinking it sucked to be sick again? Was he afraid for his life? Did he think about dying? Upset, shocked, defeated most definitely. Was he worried about his kids? His wife? (In that order?) Did the numbers cross his mind? Numbers like 30%, the pieces of paper that were electric and rent bills, days of life lived, 1 year of marriage, 6 months of remission cross the desktop of his mind in a flash before his eyes? It's no wonder I balled my eyes out listening to "Seasons of Love" at the broadway performance of "Rent" in the city less than a month after his hospital release. It was our first post-hospital date. F-- rights: Measure your life in love.
He was only 23. He turned 24 in the hospital. Following the news we received that one fateful night, we didn't talk much. Dialogue was refrained and minimal for the most part. Maybe because we knew there wasn't much that could be said. Maybe because we were too scared to. It's hard to say, even after all this time. A lot was exchanged through knowing looks and reading body language. For the words that were exchanged, it was tactical communication--make sure arrangements were made and that we knew of our own arrangements. That's all.
After leaving the northern town we hardly had time to attach to, the 8-hour ride a blur, we sat in the hospital admissions waiting area. My father-in-law was there, I think my mother-in-law, and our two children. I was still nursing at the time and wondered when the baby would get hungry while praying that I could keep my toddler occupied. By miracle and by grace, she didn't fuss once. At least I don't remember if she did. I think we waited around 4 hours to get through admissions.
The last time we were there was the prior week, being led through a series of halls and waiting rooms before the critical moment of seeing the doctor. For the first time in a long time, I didn't have my girls under my arms while my mother-in-law held them and we followed the nurse into an exam room. It is a room I will never forget.
There was no point in dramatics, no point in questioning. The look on the doctor's face said it all. I wanted answers. I was thinking about my girls in the waiting room, the maddening inconvenience of it all, my poor husband whose legs were dangling over the exam table, desperately needing to throw blame somewhere. I was feeling an absolute loss of control over every single facet of my life. I felt the swelling of heat and anger rise in my throat, the urge to cry and then to scream because no amount of purging would release the knot in my chest, which I would learn was not to go away for a very long time. I opened my mouth to start the barrage, but something of a feeble muttering fell out instead. I was so surprised to hear how weak my own voice sounded.
Being the daughter of a nurse, I knew a fair share of technical vocabulary, how not to be a pushover, and that it was important to ask questions, but it didn't make a very solid bravado. Words and numbers and procedures blurred together. The doctor had done this before. He delivered each stage without sugarcoating the facts but knew that it was not the time to let his years of having to tell patients and families the same devastating news steel his interior and be removed from compassion.
Consultation. Hmph. That's a word for going to the boutique and getting the girl behind the counter to give you make-up suggestions. That's a word you use when you are building a house and considering a loan. It's a word that suggests advice and a choice to follow or agree to that advice, or not. What we got was not advice. It was a professional, life-threatening ultimatum.
We would take the challenge. We would be a family no matter what. And I would show him that he made the right choice in a wife. I ignored the thought that made me think of the damning, cruel twist of it all--of being married so young, being acosted by life so hard, and wishing to flee. I hunkered down, I found my resolve, choked my tears, and braced myself for war. I would cry later. I had a husband who needed me.
He was only 23. He turned 24 in the hospital. Following the news we received that one fateful night, we didn't talk much. Dialogue was refrained and minimal for the most part. Maybe because we knew there wasn't much that could be said. Maybe because we were too scared to. It's hard to say, even after all this time. A lot was exchanged through knowing looks and reading body language. For the words that were exchanged, it was tactical communication--make sure arrangements were made and that we knew of our own arrangements. That's all.
After leaving the northern town we hardly had time to attach to, the 8-hour ride a blur, we sat in the hospital admissions waiting area. My father-in-law was there, I think my mother-in-law, and our two children. I was still nursing at the time and wondered when the baby would get hungry while praying that I could keep my toddler occupied. By miracle and by grace, she didn't fuss once. At least I don't remember if she did. I think we waited around 4 hours to get through admissions.
The last time we were there was the prior week, being led through a series of halls and waiting rooms before the critical moment of seeing the doctor. For the first time in a long time, I didn't have my girls under my arms while my mother-in-law held them and we followed the nurse into an exam room. It is a room I will never forget.
There was no point in dramatics, no point in questioning. The look on the doctor's face said it all. I wanted answers. I was thinking about my girls in the waiting room, the maddening inconvenience of it all, my poor husband whose legs were dangling over the exam table, desperately needing to throw blame somewhere. I was feeling an absolute loss of control over every single facet of my life. I felt the swelling of heat and anger rise in my throat, the urge to cry and then to scream because no amount of purging would release the knot in my chest, which I would learn was not to go away for a very long time. I opened my mouth to start the barrage, but something of a feeble muttering fell out instead. I was so surprised to hear how weak my own voice sounded.
Being the daughter of a nurse, I knew a fair share of technical vocabulary, how not to be a pushover, and that it was important to ask questions, but it didn't make a very solid bravado. Words and numbers and procedures blurred together. The doctor had done this before. He delivered each stage without sugarcoating the facts but knew that it was not the time to let his years of having to tell patients and families the same devastating news steel his interior and be removed from compassion.
Consultation. Hmph. That's a word for going to the boutique and getting the girl behind the counter to give you make-up suggestions. That's a word you use when you are building a house and considering a loan. It's a word that suggests advice and a choice to follow or agree to that advice, or not. What we got was not advice. It was a professional, life-threatening ultimatum.
We would take the challenge. We would be a family no matter what. And I would show him that he made the right choice in a wife. I ignored the thought that made me think of the damning, cruel twist of it all--of being married so young, being acosted by life so hard, and wishing to flee. I hunkered down, I found my resolve, choked my tears, and braced myself for war. I would cry later. I had a husband who needed me.
04 March 2011
The third time
Just a short time after the special area groups conference concluded and all the northern province teachers were back in class, the oncologist called. For the first time in our fledgling marriage, we were just getting settled into our first home, a small apartment. My husband's first year teaching school was off to a promising start. Our 18-month-old was adapting to being the older sister, and our baby girl was already displaying personality up the wazoo.
I came into the living room just in time to see his face change. I didn't know who was on the phone. A week had gone by since the conference and also his 6-month checkup. His doctor was in the city down south, but he had gotten his job in the north, so it became prudent to do both at the same time. I waited until he could talk.
I don't remember my exact reaction.
I just remember being angry. I remember crying. I remember there being a swirl, I couldn't get my thoughts together. I think I remember giving him a hug. I wanted to hold him more than anything.
I remember the fallen look on his face, the margin of defeat, as though a thief had just come and robbed him blind and then set his house on fire.
I remember storming back and forth, down the hall to the laundry room, making trips with our clothes, angrier every time I came back through our apartment door. It wasn't fair. I was angry. Hurt somehow. Confused. I tried to push my love through those screens to comfort my husband, give him support, but it was a thwarted, minimal endeavor when I just wanted to scream. I slammed the basket down harder every time I returned, throwing laundry into drawers or on the couch, some folded, some unfolded. Being a fairly health woman my whole life, I surprised myself by getting so worked up I felt major body ache while climbing into bed.
Then came the consultation, for which we had to travel back down south for, confirm the news with the oncologist, see a small presentation about the treatment and procedure they would do on my husband's cancer, and return home only to get hit with the reality that we would not be able to keep our apartment or even sublet it. At all. We had one week.
The treatment was to be in-hospital. Chemotherapies- yes, multiple -were going to be administered via a PICC line (what was that?) An autologus bone marrow transplant. T cells. Blood counts. IVs. Plasma. Visiting procedures. There was much information to take in. In the room where a few rectangle tables were pushed together to form a "U" in front of a television on a rollcart, the air was somber. All my mother-in-law and I could do was look at each other with a number bouncing off our heads: 30%. It was all the doctor could give us for success of cure. It was a number that hung in the air worse than second-hand smoke in a bar. We had a week to come back and get my husband moved into the cancer ward at Health Sciences.
Into people's basements, garages and school staffrooms went our stuff. All of our belongings were thrown into boxes. I could barely think straight. I hadn't even had time to think about post-partum anything, writing a budget for our new lives with new income, or get out of my poutine-eating, cookie-dough-eating slob self before being hurled into a world that meant entire uncertainty. Where would I live with my girls, what were the most important items to bring, what was I supposed to do? What would happen to our belongings? Why did I feel like we were refugees fleeing in fright?
My mother-in-law was not happy with my half-done packing job when she came up north to help us. The friends who ultimately agreed to take us in came to help, too. They also lived down south. After hundreds of trips up and down the stairs with boxes and furniture, a trip to the ER after my husband slipped on the stairs and busted a lamp into his palm, and a scoop of the girls, the place was empty.
I came into the living room just in time to see his face change. I didn't know who was on the phone. A week had gone by since the conference and also his 6-month checkup. His doctor was in the city down south, but he had gotten his job in the north, so it became prudent to do both at the same time. I waited until he could talk.
I don't remember my exact reaction.
I just remember being angry. I remember crying. I remember there being a swirl, I couldn't get my thoughts together. I think I remember giving him a hug. I wanted to hold him more than anything.
I remember the fallen look on his face, the margin of defeat, as though a thief had just come and robbed him blind and then set his house on fire.
I remember storming back and forth, down the hall to the laundry room, making trips with our clothes, angrier every time I came back through our apartment door. It wasn't fair. I was angry. Hurt somehow. Confused. I tried to push my love through those screens to comfort my husband, give him support, but it was a thwarted, minimal endeavor when I just wanted to scream. I slammed the basket down harder every time I returned, throwing laundry into drawers or on the couch, some folded, some unfolded. Being a fairly health woman my whole life, I surprised myself by getting so worked up I felt major body ache while climbing into bed.
Then came the consultation, for which we had to travel back down south for, confirm the news with the oncologist, see a small presentation about the treatment and procedure they would do on my husband's cancer, and return home only to get hit with the reality that we would not be able to keep our apartment or even sublet it. At all. We had one week.
The treatment was to be in-hospital. Chemotherapies- yes, multiple -were going to be administered via a PICC line (what was that?) An autologus bone marrow transplant. T cells. Blood counts. IVs. Plasma. Visiting procedures. There was much information to take in. In the room where a few rectangle tables were pushed together to form a "U" in front of a television on a rollcart, the air was somber. All my mother-in-law and I could do was look at each other with a number bouncing off our heads: 30%. It was all the doctor could give us for success of cure. It was a number that hung in the air worse than second-hand smoke in a bar. We had a week to come back and get my husband moved into the cancer ward at Health Sciences.
Into people's basements, garages and school staffrooms went our stuff. All of our belongings were thrown into boxes. I could barely think straight. I hadn't even had time to think about post-partum anything, writing a budget for our new lives with new income, or get out of my poutine-eating, cookie-dough-eating slob self before being hurled into a world that meant entire uncertainty. Where would I live with my girls, what were the most important items to bring, what was I supposed to do? What would happen to our belongings? Why did I feel like we were refugees fleeing in fright?
My mother-in-law was not happy with my half-done packing job when she came up north to help us. The friends who ultimately agreed to take us in came to help, too. They also lived down south. After hundreds of trips up and down the stairs with boxes and furniture, a trip to the ER after my husband slipped on the stairs and busted a lamp into his palm, and a scoop of the girls, the place was empty.
28 February 2011
The raw things
So it's like this. No one will hear this. No one will read it. And if they do, they probably wouldn't care. But that's okay. This needs to be told.
When I was 20 years old, I got married. I got married to a man who was a real sweetheart. But he got cancer. I didn't know him for very long before getting married, so him getting diagnosed was a real shock and an even bigger tragedy. I had planned to spend the entire rest of my life getting to know him, having fun exploring the nitty-gritty hardships, and feeling like it was in our power to overcome anything. I had not expected such a hard test so soon, though, that much I can say.
My daughter was 18 months old when we got married. When my husband was my boyfriend, he was so sweet with my daughter, talking with her, playing games with her, and even babysitting her for free when I had to go to work. I had already known a lot of stress in my life by then, having been a single mother who could not afford to pay rent, so finding someone who was caring and loving of both me and my daughter was not only soothing, it was all I needed for proof that surely this man must be the one. She even called him "daddy" before I was ready for it!
He wrote me a poem once, using words like "starry night" and admitted that he loved me and my daughter, because she was an extension of me. Somewhere in the eight months from date number one to our law office vows, he wrote this poem and said a lot of nice things to me, which I'm sure he meant, but those were the only memories we'd have to work from after cancer...
We had already been preparing to move to Canada at the same time we learned his cancer had come back. Yes, he had been sick with it once before, in the July of that eight-month stint we called "dating," but it had been operated on and removed. This time, instead of the remaining testicle, the cancer "metastasized" into his lung.
He was treated, went into remission for a few months, then got it again. Only this time, this very third and awful time, the diagnosis was bad and we had just had our second daughter (for he considered my girl his first.)
It was bad. It was so bad. I can't even tell you how bad it was. So bad that after he went into remission and we got to resume our lives, I cried for months without tears inside my chest. I never tore any boxes down, for fear of settling into our new apartment too much. But funny thing, just when I thought I'd get to tell my story, no one listened, so I just learned to shut up about it.
I learned to shut up about many things. I learned to shut up because I learned no one gave a shit about what you did, they only cared about how things were going in their own lives. So I trained myself to not think about the aunt that took advantage of us while living with her, the constant prison I was in having no immigration status, having no friends nearby, no family, no car, and absolutely fuckall to do or to resource while my husband was in the hospital; because, you see, all those things happened when he was in the hospital, and more. No one knew how much I was suffering because no one called me and I didn't call anyone.
But I was supposed to be strong. No place and no time to be a ninny. I've just kind of always had the sense to know people weren't listening anymore, and I've just about never been surrounded by the kinds of people who would listen. I knew they didn't exist. No one had the capacity to understand how scared I was, how nervous, how sad, angry, trapped, stressed (oh my sweet Lord stressed), lonely, isolated, unforgiven, pressured, forgotten, lost, and stupefied I was. I was just expected to do... what? I don't know. I was expected to do or be something that meant understanding no one in the world would be there for me or come to my aid; and if I wasn't, no one surely told me. I was too overwhelmed to think. I was overwhelmed to a screaming degree ALL. The. Time.
Between Cancer No.1 and Cancer No.2, we got engaged, were in a horrible automobile accident (rollover), got married, went to Nevada for Christmas, found out I was pregnant, and moved to Canada.
Between Cancer No.2 and Cancer No.3, we lived off of his two, minimum-wage jobs in his dad's house, found him a teaching job up north, had our baby, moved 800 kilometers north with a 2-week old infant and two year old toddler, and just barely settled into our shoddy apartment.
The amount of time between our first date and Cancer No.3: 1 year, 8 months
While my husband was in the hospital for No.3, I lived in two places back down south because we had to give up our apartment for his hospitalization. In the first, it was with friends who had grown tired of my presence there and offered to kick me out. In the second, it was with my mother-in-law's brother and wife, who stabbed me with raising my rent every month and tried threatening to get my children taken away, talking to everyone under the sun about it before talking to me. Turns out she was baby crazy and a 'little' mentally unstable, but I didn't know that. All I knew is that she lived in the same city where my husband was laying in hospital and offered to let me and my girls live there. I have forgiven her, but I never talked to her again.
While I was trying to suffer this aunt to remain close to the girls' daddy, I was also at the hospital every day, watching our daily mix of "Northern Exposure," "Three's Company," and "Golden Girls" while making him toast, helping him sit up, watching nurses fix his lines, asking questions, learning about stem cells and T cells, and trying to make his room as un-hospital-like as possible. Also things I did: wake up on the cot in the middle of the night to the sound of him cough-gurgle-puking; accompany him to the lower floors to make sure his pants stayed up in the halls; wash his soiled pants; sponge-bathe; clean his PIC line; hold his hand; bring the girls occassionally; meet his cancer friends; brave the death ward every day for four, very long months; and watch him sleep.
Do you know the color of a person's skin after being chemoed to death? Yellow. Sometimes bluish. Splotchy. Gray. It's the color of life going away. His eyes were so dark and sunken that with the loss of his eyelashes, I could see the whites of his eyes almost all around the whole eye. He looked liked this almost immediately and I was terrified. This was the man I married? What?
Between the house of the aunt and my days at the hospital, my life was hell. How did I get so irreversibly stuck in the bowels of life? I was filled with resentment and desperation more and more each day. Luckily, my girls made me laugh and smile. They kept me going. I had to keep it together for them.
Resuming our lives to some capacity (by which I mean being a family of four in a home and my husband resuming his teaching job,) involved transition of living with his dad for a few months to remain close to the hospital. He was not allowed to be outdoors very long and not allowed to breath or be around freshly cut lawns because asparallagus was a mold that came from cut grass and could get trapped in his freshly chemoed-to-shit lungs. He could not move around too much or he would risk opening the sutures of his freshly removed lung lobe (the upper part, about 20% of his lungs). There was no cuddling.
I waited for him to see that I was right beside him, that we could figure things out, that I stayed beside him the whole time, but he didn't say anything. I was hoping he could tell me before we got back up north how much I meant to him. But he didn't, and I figured it was because he was so ill. Poor guy. I didn't want to be making wifely demands for affection just yet.
I waited some more. I waited for him to look at me in some moment of stillness and quiet and utter grateful, sweet words of appreciation. Words that would melt all of the pain from the whispers off his lips, but I would wait until he was feeling better.
I would be waiting a long time.
One morning, after we did get back north, I was sitting on the floor with my daughters, playing with them, relieved to the point of tears, to be in my own home, with my own things, safe. But the relief was to be short lived, because after the school year started, my husband came home with a pulled groin muscle that actually turned into 5 more years of playing wait-and-see of crumbling, deteriorating bone joints.
Nobody I know understands what it's like to live with and 80-year-old 26-year-old. As the doctors struggled to diagnose and subsequently replace the joints, which were full of dead bone tissue and grinding together bone-against-bone due to the steroids he was given in-hospital, we had to deal with about a million doctor appointments, 1600 kilometers a pop (sometimes by car, mostly, thankfully, by plane), and having to "say good-bye to Daddy" every 3 weeks or so at the airport.
Some people know that. Some don't. But no one has an ever-lovin' clue of what my life consisted of after he was finally confined to a wheel chair in a town where there was no, absolutely none, handicap-friendly buildings; having to take the wheelchair out of the trunk and put it back in to go anywhere plus two small children in carseats; building the muscle to lift the chair with him in it to avoid potholes in parking lots; having to squeeze past people when you just don't want to intrude in busy places, tiny restaurants, church; taking out the trash, chopping the wood, carrying the groceries in, doing the heavy lifting, getting the tots in the house, plus all of the rest of the work women in isolated northern towns do: cooking, cleaning, washing, folding, sorting, checking over school work, putting the children (my precious, precious daughters) to bed, getting them to brush their teeth; and making the occassional batch of actual, real, homemade, from-scratch bread just to make the house smell good.
I just wanted to be appreciated by the man I loved. Before there was the realization that we, too, were crumbling from the inside out, I did more than just talk about loyalty and devotion. I lived it.
When I was 20 years old, I got married. I got married to a man who was a real sweetheart. But he got cancer. I didn't know him for very long before getting married, so him getting diagnosed was a real shock and an even bigger tragedy. I had planned to spend the entire rest of my life getting to know him, having fun exploring the nitty-gritty hardships, and feeling like it was in our power to overcome anything. I had not expected such a hard test so soon, though, that much I can say.
My daughter was 18 months old when we got married. When my husband was my boyfriend, he was so sweet with my daughter, talking with her, playing games with her, and even babysitting her for free when I had to go to work. I had already known a lot of stress in my life by then, having been a single mother who could not afford to pay rent, so finding someone who was caring and loving of both me and my daughter was not only soothing, it was all I needed for proof that surely this man must be the one. She even called him "daddy" before I was ready for it!
He wrote me a poem once, using words like "starry night" and admitted that he loved me and my daughter, because she was an extension of me. Somewhere in the eight months from date number one to our law office vows, he wrote this poem and said a lot of nice things to me, which I'm sure he meant, but those were the only memories we'd have to work from after cancer...
We had already been preparing to move to Canada at the same time we learned his cancer had come back. Yes, he had been sick with it once before, in the July of that eight-month stint we called "dating," but it had been operated on and removed. This time, instead of the remaining testicle, the cancer "metastasized" into his lung.
He was treated, went into remission for a few months, then got it again. Only this time, this very third and awful time, the diagnosis was bad and we had just had our second daughter (for he considered my girl his first.)
It was bad. It was so bad. I can't even tell you how bad it was. So bad that after he went into remission and we got to resume our lives, I cried for months without tears inside my chest. I never tore any boxes down, for fear of settling into our new apartment too much. But funny thing, just when I thought I'd get to tell my story, no one listened, so I just learned to shut up about it.
I learned to shut up about many things. I learned to shut up because I learned no one gave a shit about what you did, they only cared about how things were going in their own lives. So I trained myself to not think about the aunt that took advantage of us while living with her, the constant prison I was in having no immigration status, having no friends nearby, no family, no car, and absolutely fuckall to do or to resource while my husband was in the hospital; because, you see, all those things happened when he was in the hospital, and more. No one knew how much I was suffering because no one called me and I didn't call anyone.
But I was supposed to be strong. No place and no time to be a ninny. I've just kind of always had the sense to know people weren't listening anymore, and I've just about never been surrounded by the kinds of people who would listen. I knew they didn't exist. No one had the capacity to understand how scared I was, how nervous, how sad, angry, trapped, stressed (oh my sweet Lord stressed), lonely, isolated, unforgiven, pressured, forgotten, lost, and stupefied I was. I was just expected to do... what? I don't know. I was expected to do or be something that meant understanding no one in the world would be there for me or come to my aid; and if I wasn't, no one surely told me. I was too overwhelmed to think. I was overwhelmed to a screaming degree ALL. The. Time.
Between Cancer No.1 and Cancer No.2, we got engaged, were in a horrible automobile accident (rollover), got married, went to Nevada for Christmas, found out I was pregnant, and moved to Canada.
Between Cancer No.2 and Cancer No.3, we lived off of his two, minimum-wage jobs in his dad's house, found him a teaching job up north, had our baby, moved 800 kilometers north with a 2-week old infant and two year old toddler, and just barely settled into our shoddy apartment.
The amount of time between our first date and Cancer No.3: 1 year, 8 months
While my husband was in the hospital for No.3, I lived in two places back down south because we had to give up our apartment for his hospitalization. In the first, it was with friends who had grown tired of my presence there and offered to kick me out. In the second, it was with my mother-in-law's brother and wife, who stabbed me with raising my rent every month and tried threatening to get my children taken away, talking to everyone under the sun about it before talking to me. Turns out she was baby crazy and a 'little' mentally unstable, but I didn't know that. All I knew is that she lived in the same city where my husband was laying in hospital and offered to let me and my girls live there. I have forgiven her, but I never talked to her again.
While I was trying to suffer this aunt to remain close to the girls' daddy, I was also at the hospital every day, watching our daily mix of "Northern Exposure," "Three's Company," and "Golden Girls" while making him toast, helping him sit up, watching nurses fix his lines, asking questions, learning about stem cells and T cells, and trying to make his room as un-hospital-like as possible. Also things I did: wake up on the cot in the middle of the night to the sound of him cough-gurgle-puking; accompany him to the lower floors to make sure his pants stayed up in the halls; wash his soiled pants; sponge-bathe; clean his PIC line; hold his hand; bring the girls occassionally; meet his cancer friends; brave the death ward every day for four, very long months; and watch him sleep.
Do you know the color of a person's skin after being chemoed to death? Yellow. Sometimes bluish. Splotchy. Gray. It's the color of life going away. His eyes were so dark and sunken that with the loss of his eyelashes, I could see the whites of his eyes almost all around the whole eye. He looked liked this almost immediately and I was terrified. This was the man I married? What?
Between the house of the aunt and my days at the hospital, my life was hell. How did I get so irreversibly stuck in the bowels of life? I was filled with resentment and desperation more and more each day. Luckily, my girls made me laugh and smile. They kept me going. I had to keep it together for them.
Resuming our lives to some capacity (by which I mean being a family of four in a home and my husband resuming his teaching job,) involved transition of living with his dad for a few months to remain close to the hospital. He was not allowed to be outdoors very long and not allowed to breath or be around freshly cut lawns because asparallagus was a mold that came from cut grass and could get trapped in his freshly chemoed-to-shit lungs. He could not move around too much or he would risk opening the sutures of his freshly removed lung lobe (the upper part, about 20% of his lungs). There was no cuddling.
I waited for him to see that I was right beside him, that we could figure things out, that I stayed beside him the whole time, but he didn't say anything. I was hoping he could tell me before we got back up north how much I meant to him. But he didn't, and I figured it was because he was so ill. Poor guy. I didn't want to be making wifely demands for affection just yet.
I waited some more. I waited for him to look at me in some moment of stillness and quiet and utter grateful, sweet words of appreciation. Words that would melt all of the pain from the whispers off his lips, but I would wait until he was feeling better.
I would be waiting a long time.
One morning, after we did get back north, I was sitting on the floor with my daughters, playing with them, relieved to the point of tears, to be in my own home, with my own things, safe. But the relief was to be short lived, because after the school year started, my husband came home with a pulled groin muscle that actually turned into 5 more years of playing wait-and-see of crumbling, deteriorating bone joints.
Nobody I know understands what it's like to live with and 80-year-old 26-year-old. As the doctors struggled to diagnose and subsequently replace the joints, which were full of dead bone tissue and grinding together bone-against-bone due to the steroids he was given in-hospital, we had to deal with about a million doctor appointments, 1600 kilometers a pop (sometimes by car, mostly, thankfully, by plane), and having to "say good-bye to Daddy" every 3 weeks or so at the airport.
Some people know that. Some don't. But no one has an ever-lovin' clue of what my life consisted of after he was finally confined to a wheel chair in a town where there was no, absolutely none, handicap-friendly buildings; having to take the wheelchair out of the trunk and put it back in to go anywhere plus two small children in carseats; building the muscle to lift the chair with him in it to avoid potholes in parking lots; having to squeeze past people when you just don't want to intrude in busy places, tiny restaurants, church; taking out the trash, chopping the wood, carrying the groceries in, doing the heavy lifting, getting the tots in the house, plus all of the rest of the work women in isolated northern towns do: cooking, cleaning, washing, folding, sorting, checking over school work, putting the children (my precious, precious daughters) to bed, getting them to brush their teeth; and making the occassional batch of actual, real, homemade, from-scratch bread just to make the house smell good.
I just wanted to be appreciated by the man I loved. Before there was the realization that we, too, were crumbling from the inside out, I did more than just talk about loyalty and devotion. I lived it.
09 June 2009
2 years
I mean, when I was knee-deep and head-thick in the middle of machine beeps, vigilant nurses, IV bags, doctors, bedpans, and all that accompanied (too graphic to mention) my sick husband as I sat on the sidelines in the city, I just didn't know what to ... saythinkdo.
I knew early on that I should have been concerned with knowing what kind of chemos he was being intravenously fed, when to make him walk the halls, what his T cell counts were, how even unscented scents propelled his body upright with vomit--and I was aware--but all of that, every last detail, was being downloaded onto the brain with no capacity with which to store it.
Because, you see, I was on hyper-overload from everything the past two, four, ten years had thrown at me, the least being a realization to come and the most recent being the living situation with The Aunt. The realization being the responsibility I did not take for my feelings and my life up until then (and even later) and the situation with The Aunt being an atrociously soul-in-hell experience.
Between the least and the most of these milestones came naive, painfully green, young, single motherhood; one entire year of absolutely fruitless, emotional pandering to attempt to appease the relationship with the barely live-in father; a jam-compacted courtship that took a number of hits in only a few months before a quick engagement; a near-tragic rollover that put all of us in the hospital and ended in custodial fights by my parents over my youngest brother; a third year of university that began in almost total amnesia; our hasty law-office wedding; pregnancy number two; quitting school; moving to Canada; going one round of cancer; 6 months broke (and living with inlaws); getting Kyle's teaching job; and moving 8 hours away.
That was just a two-year period.
And then when Kyle got sick that year, I lived with this aunt the last four months of Kyle's hospital stay. I had been living with friends whose house we were crowding, so rather than rent an apartment, for which I had so closely come to putting a deposit on, I opted to move to the city and live with this aunt. An aunt who was so very hellbent on being "helpful" but instead ended up wanting control of everything that was going on, down to my computer usage.
So. I had no time to wrap my head around even one thing, look at it, swallow before moving on to the next big thing. And it was in that way that I sat in that hospital room every day, falling asleep to reruns of MacGuyver and Three's Company with Kyle.
I knew early on that I should have been concerned with knowing what kind of chemos he was being intravenously fed, when to make him walk the halls, what his T cell counts were, how even unscented scents propelled his body upright with vomit--and I was aware--but all of that, every last detail, was being downloaded onto the brain with no capacity with which to store it.
Because, you see, I was on hyper-overload from everything the past two, four, ten years had thrown at me, the least being a realization to come and the most recent being the living situation with The Aunt. The realization being the responsibility I did not take for my feelings and my life up until then (and even later) and the situation with The Aunt being an atrociously soul-in-hell experience.
Between the least and the most of these milestones came naive, painfully green, young, single motherhood; one entire year of absolutely fruitless, emotional pandering to attempt to appease the relationship with the barely live-in father; a jam-compacted courtship that took a number of hits in only a few months before a quick engagement; a near-tragic rollover that put all of us in the hospital and ended in custodial fights by my parents over my youngest brother; a third year of university that began in almost total amnesia; our hasty law-office wedding; pregnancy number two; quitting school; moving to Canada; going one round of cancer; 6 months broke (and living with inlaws); getting Kyle's teaching job; and moving 8 hours away.
That was just a two-year period.
And then when Kyle got sick that year, I lived with this aunt the last four months of Kyle's hospital stay. I had been living with friends whose house we were crowding, so rather than rent an apartment, for which I had so closely come to putting a deposit on, I opted to move to the city and live with this aunt. An aunt who was so very hellbent on being "helpful" but instead ended up wanting control of everything that was going on, down to my computer usage.
So. I had no time to wrap my head around even one thing, look at it, swallow before moving on to the next big thing. And it was in that way that I sat in that hospital room every day, falling asleep to reruns of MacGuyver and Three's Company with Kyle.
07 June 2009
Ten minutes
And there I was. In the exam room, waiting silently, looking at the white walls, apprehension so thick you could cut it with a knife, next to Kyle. Visits like these were starting to become altogether too common and I hated it. Just before the exam room, we had been waiting in a crammed little waiting room with all the other worried faces. Faces seemed to be everywhere, all pained with the same anxious look; lost sheep. So as soon as Kyle's name was called, I just tried to avoid their eyes altogether and canal past them while plopping my baby on my mother-in-law's lap and telling my two-year-old to stay with Grandma.
I was talking to Kyle tonight about this "first" hospital visit. The first of what would be many more to come, thus acquainting myself with the cancer ward walls of the Health Sciences Centre. Because I'm PMS-ing and highly introspective when that happens, I was thinking of this specific scene tonight. I was thinking what an awful way to start off a new marriage. I barely even knew myself, much less the yearling marriage that was taking a mighty hit, and was having a difficult time grabbing onto the previous years alone, without having to deal with this.
The doctor came in, sat down, changed his tone, and with the utmost professionalism, mapped out a course of plan against his diagnosis. The prognosis for cure pretty slim. Thirty percent. I wanted to shudder, to undo what was just done, take my babies and run. It wasn't even half-formed in my head to do so before shutting it down with a ridculous shake of the head. That was just impossible. Not my style. And highly irrelevant.
I was talking to Kyle tonight about this "first" hospital visit. The first of what would be many more to come, thus acquainting myself with the cancer ward walls of the Health Sciences Centre. Because I'm PMS-ing and highly introspective when that happens, I was thinking of this specific scene tonight. I was thinking what an awful way to start off a new marriage. I barely even knew myself, much less the yearling marriage that was taking a mighty hit, and was having a difficult time grabbing onto the previous years alone, without having to deal with this.
The doctor came in, sat down, changed his tone, and with the utmost professionalism, mapped out a course of plan against his diagnosis. The prognosis for cure pretty slim. Thirty percent. I wanted to shudder, to undo what was just done, take my babies and run. It wasn't even half-formed in my head to do so before shutting it down with a ridculous shake of the head. That was just impossible. Not my style. And highly irrelevant.
22 February 2009
So, let me fill in the story some more.
I am not a bitter woman. I don't really even believe I was bitter back then. I was just overwhelmed. It was the third time Kyle was in the thick of diagnosis and treatments for cancer. The girls were so little, the oldest was two, the youngest 6 months and I felt like I had so much to catch up on, catch up to, and couldn't do it. Always behind or ill-equipped or underpaid or young or all of those and doing what I had to out of blank necessity, rather than marked choice.
And then it came to be that the head of our household came under fate's fire, even before we had a chance to establish "a household." While you don't have a choice when that kind of thing happens to a family, there was another, entirely different span of life as a single mother I had just gotten out of to compound what emotions I already had about our current situation. Matters of an undefined sort, relating to years prior to getting married, cycled through the brain which I had not seperated, understood and resolved before jumping into marriage, moving out of the country, and facing expat life with a sick husband.
I am not a bitter woman. I don't really even believe I was bitter back then. I was just overwhelmed. It was the third time Kyle was in the thick of diagnosis and treatments for cancer. The girls were so little, the oldest was two, the youngest 6 months and I felt like I had so much to catch up on, catch up to, and couldn't do it. Always behind or ill-equipped or underpaid or young or all of those and doing what I had to out of blank necessity, rather than marked choice.
And then it came to be that the head of our household came under fate's fire, even before we had a chance to establish "a household." While you don't have a choice when that kind of thing happens to a family, there was another, entirely different span of life as a single mother I had just gotten out of to compound what emotions I already had about our current situation. Matters of an undefined sort, relating to years prior to getting married, cycled through the brain which I had not seperated, understood and resolved before jumping into marriage, moving out of the country, and facing expat life with a sick husband.
So there we were then, living as urban nomads between cities and people's homes, possessions literally stored in the garages, basements, and schools of people we had just met in order to answer to the demands of Kyle's prognosis. In the middle of that, I had decided to move in, against the wishes of my in-laws, with his aunt who had her own ideas of how to be helpful; and it just didn't go smoothly at all. In fact, it was the farthest thing from smooth OR amicable. It would eventually turn into something of a disaster in micro-epic proportions.
19 February 2009
I remember being SOOO angry at her every time I went down the stairs. If it wasn't for me being on the computer late at night, it was for the way I did the dishes or disciplined (or didn't discipline) my girls or borrowed hangers or cleaned the house or fed my then-6-month-old. I had HAD enough. Every. Single. Time. I did something, I heard about it.
She had missed the polo vaccine by a year. Her limping gait was painfully pulled to one side and she had the gall to wear shorts in April, which revealed gargantuan scars from multiple corrective surgeries. She waddled her way around everywhere she went, including a house she could barely maneuver in, and did her best to live the most normal life she could live and gaining everyone's sympathy doing it.
But she was the closest thing to the antichrist.
If she wasn't aimlessly waiting to find some weird, piddling chore for me to do or craft for her to make herself, she was rearranging her cupboards for the fifty-millionth time or eating Honeycomb cereal dry in a bowl. Think little old lady in the gingerbread house with OCD.
I am not making this up.
One night, she was so intensely into her rearranging that she fell off the stepstool she should have NEVER been on and laid passed out on the kitchen floor. I was thinking, good, she's dead, but her daughter's face was crumpled with fear at the sight of her mother, so we called an ambulance. Neither of us were about to lift her to the car ourselves. Especially when we would have had get my girls in the car along with a heavy, passed out woman.
In the hospital late that night, she cried to me with contrived quivering. She was "so" sorry and was I mad at her. Mad at her? MAD at her? For what? Falling off the stool? For using absolutely zero common sense to stay off it when she had problems balancing at the best of times? For making my life a living hell when my husband, HER nephew, was sick with cancer in the hospital? For making me drag my two little girls out of bed at that late hour? For scaring the bejeezus out of me when the last thing I wanted to do was give a shit? Hell yeah, I was!
But I just swallowed it. No, I said, I'm not mad and how could I be mad, it was just an accident.
But seriously. What was one more thing going to do? One more incident? Drama session? What MORE damage could possibly be done that hadn't been done by ONE more thing? What single thing could have caused any more discord, heartache, and resentment than there already was? I was beyond exhausted. Beyond seasoned. Beyond the flip out point. Beyond recognition of all things congnitive. I was fucked.
* * *
She was also the assistant director of an inner city-type daycare. The very same one that SHE suggested my girls went to during the day so that I could be at the hospital with Kyle. I really don't know how someone like her gets a job in that field. You can preach a love for kids all you want and then straddle a 6-month-old, whose poor neck can only take so much, on your decrepit hip. Or enforce spoon feeding. Or coloring. Or building with blocks. If the kid is disinterested, he's disinterested. You can't make him interested by continuing to shove that spoon, that toy, that crayon down their proverbial throats.
Somehow, I let this happen. I let myself believe that enrolling them there would at least provide them with some normalcy while I spent the day at the hospital. At least that's what I figure because it bothered me deeply to leave them there alone--"alone" as in, without me and yet, I did it anyway. It didn't feel right, but maybe that's because I just hated her. And I never hated anyone. I needed to know they would be well taken care of, I needed proof, and I just didn't trust her. The daycare worked, though. The girls got to spend the days surrounded by toys, activities, scheduled meals, naps, friends, and a staff that didn't necessarily always include her while I sat in a sterile hospital room with an alien husband watching re-runs of Three's Company, Northern Exposure, and MacGyver with him.
Plus she was allergic (allegedly allergic) to just about everything: nuts, milk, bananas, lotion, medical tape, sitting, standing, wool, cotton (I think; a few of those I just made up, but then so did she, so I guess we're even?), common sense. When she wasn't spending my $650/month rent payments on craft crap from Michael's, 32-inch television sets, new computers, bedroom sets for their daughter or more, she was "helping" me to the hospital, carrying my 6-month-old, head bobbing side-to-side to the erratic rhythm of her lopsided steps.
Everything about her dichotomous ways curdled my blood.
She had missed the polo vaccine by a year. Her limping gait was painfully pulled to one side and she had the gall to wear shorts in April, which revealed gargantuan scars from multiple corrective surgeries. She waddled her way around everywhere she went, including a house she could barely maneuver in, and did her best to live the most normal life she could live and gaining everyone's sympathy doing it.
But she was the closest thing to the antichrist.
If she wasn't aimlessly waiting to find some weird, piddling chore for me to do or craft for her to make herself, she was rearranging her cupboards for the fifty-millionth time or eating Honeycomb cereal dry in a bowl. Think little old lady in the gingerbread house with OCD.
I am not making this up.
One night, she was so intensely into her rearranging that she fell off the stepstool she should have NEVER been on and laid passed out on the kitchen floor. I was thinking, good, she's dead, but her daughter's face was crumpled with fear at the sight of her mother, so we called an ambulance. Neither of us were about to lift her to the car ourselves. Especially when we would have had get my girls in the car along with a heavy, passed out woman.
In the hospital late that night, she cried to me with contrived quivering. She was "so" sorry and was I mad at her. Mad at her? MAD at her? For what? Falling off the stool? For using absolutely zero common sense to stay off it when she had problems balancing at the best of times? For making my life a living hell when my husband, HER nephew, was sick with cancer in the hospital? For making me drag my two little girls out of bed at that late hour? For scaring the bejeezus out of me when the last thing I wanted to do was give a shit? Hell yeah, I was!
But I just swallowed it. No, I said, I'm not mad and how could I be mad, it was just an accident.
But seriously. What was one more thing going to do? One more incident? Drama session? What MORE damage could possibly be done that hadn't been done by ONE more thing? What single thing could have caused any more discord, heartache, and resentment than there already was? I was beyond exhausted. Beyond seasoned. Beyond the flip out point. Beyond recognition of all things congnitive. I was fucked.
* * *
She was also the assistant director of an inner city-type daycare. The very same one that SHE suggested my girls went to during the day so that I could be at the hospital with Kyle. I really don't know how someone like her gets a job in that field. You can preach a love for kids all you want and then straddle a 6-month-old, whose poor neck can only take so much, on your decrepit hip. Or enforce spoon feeding. Or coloring. Or building with blocks. If the kid is disinterested, he's disinterested. You can't make him interested by continuing to shove that spoon, that toy, that crayon down their proverbial throats.
Somehow, I let this happen. I let myself believe that enrolling them there would at least provide them with some normalcy while I spent the day at the hospital. At least that's what I figure because it bothered me deeply to leave them there alone--"alone" as in, without me and yet, I did it anyway. It didn't feel right, but maybe that's because I just hated her. And I never hated anyone. I needed to know they would be well taken care of, I needed proof, and I just didn't trust her. The daycare worked, though. The girls got to spend the days surrounded by toys, activities, scheduled meals, naps, friends, and a staff that didn't necessarily always include her while I sat in a sterile hospital room with an alien husband watching re-runs of Three's Company, Northern Exposure, and MacGyver with him.
Plus she was allergic (allegedly allergic) to just about everything: nuts, milk, bananas, lotion, medical tape, sitting, standing, wool, cotton (I think; a few of those I just made up, but then so did she, so I guess we're even?), common sense. When she wasn't spending my $650/month rent payments on craft crap from Michael's, 32-inch television sets, new computers, bedroom sets for their daughter or more, she was "helping" me to the hospital, carrying my 6-month-old, head bobbing side-to-side to the erratic rhythm of her lopsided steps.
Everything about her dichotomous ways curdled my blood.
18 February 2009
When I was 21, I walked into Kyle's hospital room by myself, ahead of the girls by either a few steps or my mother-in-law keeping them in the hall, and timidly approached the corner of the in-room bathroom wall, relieved to be near Kyle again.
The girls were little. Aurora was two and a half, Celia just 6 months old and still needing to be carried. We'd trekked the two hours it takes to get from where I was living with friends in Brandon to the city of Winnipeg, over to Health Sciences, parked in the parkade, baby brigade stuffed, into the elevator, up to D6 (cancer ward), down the hall, through the double doors that locked on one side until the other side was shut, and down the everlasting hall towards Kyle's room.
It was the second visit since moving him into the hospital. He was going to be staying there a whole long while the plans were to chemo the hell out of him and then do something-can't remember-something when he was something-something-better.
But nothing could prepare me for what I was about to see as my legs carried me around the corner and my husband, 24 and with a full, thick head of hair the last time I saw him, was bald as a baby's behind. His beard was gone, his eyebrows were gone, his moustache was gone, even his smile was gone, but it wasn't that which catapulted me forward and threw me backwards all at once. It was his eyes. They were stark and sunken and very, very wide. I realized his eyelashes were gone, too, and it made his eyes look very, very bulging and very unfamiliar.
I didn't want to react. I didn't want him to see my face or feel my reaction or read negativity or feel inadequate in any way, even though it was spurning. This could not have been my husband. Did I step into the wrong room? I would have looked back to check, except if it hadn't been, Linda wouldn't have been outside the door. I was in absolute shock. I wasn't repulsed, but I had fleetingly wished I could do the moment over, wished someone would have told me what I was going to see. He looked at me with strange eyes and for having been an eye-girl my whole life, this was deeply unnerving. I wanted to cry.
But I didn't. In a flash and without them fully forming in my mind, thoughts of how could I have-- what if he doesn-- look at him!-- married-- really??-- how can we-- how are we-- is there-- what if this doesn't-- how can you-- crossed my mind. I had no idea, no creative way, no place to think of something more concrete, more positive or a way to deal with what I had just seen, what I was still seeing, this situation, the unbelievable course our lives were taking, and the whole unknown of Kyle's outcome--when and if he'd heal, if he would live, what kind of state or quality of life he'd have if he did survive all of that, all of what had already made him...
...that starkly hairless.
I didn't even know that I didn't know which thoughts exactly I was having. But without any sense of acceptance or bracing myself, I went to the next moment. This is how my life went in those days. One dramatic moment to the next, no time to chew, digest, accept and move on in between. No chance to heal or completely grow (or at least grow more than just a mere fraction) from one thing life flung at me to the next and I was just so, so young and the furthest thing from being an "old soul."
* * *
I just did what I had to. A lot of where I'd been in my life before this was a culmination of results directly related to choices I had made. And while that seems obvious, it wasn't to me. Rather than see the bigger picture for what it was and where I needed to go while doing for myself, I just made these partitioned decisions, out of those specific moments, thinking of immediate consequences, those solo sections of time, and from an emotional place; and when I did think of the future, it was with removed, idealistic, and marginal concept from where to perceive or relate to some unreachable, unknown future date.
As I discover (remember) more of my childhood over time and as I listen to Enigma's "Return To Innocence" right now and wonder how it ALL... just ever... went so wrong.... I put it together. I recall the rollover we were in where I suffered a major concussion. To this day I don't know the extent of damage, but it bothers me that don't know. It bothers me that I was in ICU for three days, but released without full report. Hell, I would have taken a partial report. I don't know what the doctors told Kyle, my mom, my dad. Anyway, I have major difficulty in remembering these things, remembering things I've learned time and again, and I think it's just me, but then I talk to Kyle and he says I was never that way before the accident.
So. It begs the question which lobes were affected and what do each lobe of the brain control? Is this why I am having such difficulty keeping a hold of the things I have learned? Is there any relation to this head trauma--trauma I thought I'd healed from--and these weird jostlings of memory?
For some reason, there is just this entire seperate chunk of remembering my childhood, hearing and seeing things that remind me of if and remembering things I have long forgotten, and the entire seperate chunks of my life after leaving home, having a child so young, the accident, cancer, even moving to Canada without so much as a second thought, and all the transitional agonies in between. Why do I feel so at odds with myself in these fleeting moments? It is embarrassing to move on, go through the stages of moving on, feeling resolved and then regressing back to those, as though I've never put the issue away.
It's just all so confusing. Even as I write this, my brain is wanting to go off in a million directions. There's gotta be a reason for this, for thinking here, there, then back over here, then over there, and back again. After a while, a gal starts to realize that not even female hardwiring can make a brain jump around like that and remember odd memories that may or may not even be memories, just dreams, or random thoughts.
*Sigh. It's time to get ready for work now.
The girls were little. Aurora was two and a half, Celia just 6 months old and still needing to be carried. We'd trekked the two hours it takes to get from where I was living with friends in Brandon to the city of Winnipeg, over to Health Sciences, parked in the parkade, baby brigade stuffed, into the elevator, up to D6 (cancer ward), down the hall, through the double doors that locked on one side until the other side was shut, and down the everlasting hall towards Kyle's room.
It was the second visit since moving him into the hospital. He was going to be staying there a whole long while the plans were to chemo the hell out of him and then do something-can't remember-something when he was something-something-better.
But nothing could prepare me for what I was about to see as my legs carried me around the corner and my husband, 24 and with a full, thick head of hair the last time I saw him, was bald as a baby's behind. His beard was gone, his eyebrows were gone, his moustache was gone, even his smile was gone, but it wasn't that which catapulted me forward and threw me backwards all at once. It was his eyes. They were stark and sunken and very, very wide. I realized his eyelashes were gone, too, and it made his eyes look very, very bulging and very unfamiliar.
I didn't want to react. I didn't want him to see my face or feel my reaction or read negativity or feel inadequate in any way, even though it was spurning. This could not have been my husband. Did I step into the wrong room? I would have looked back to check, except if it hadn't been, Linda wouldn't have been outside the door. I was in absolute shock. I wasn't repulsed, but I had fleetingly wished I could do the moment over, wished someone would have told me what I was going to see. He looked at me with strange eyes and for having been an eye-girl my whole life, this was deeply unnerving. I wanted to cry.
But I didn't. In a flash and without them fully forming in my mind, thoughts of how could I have-- what if he doesn-- look at him!-- married-- really??-- how can we-- how are we-- is there-- what if this doesn't-- how can you-- crossed my mind. I had no idea, no creative way, no place to think of something more concrete, more positive or a way to deal with what I had just seen, what I was still seeing, this situation, the unbelievable course our lives were taking, and the whole unknown of Kyle's outcome--when and if he'd heal, if he would live, what kind of state or quality of life he'd have if he did survive all of that, all of what had already made him...
...that starkly hairless.
I didn't even know that I didn't know which thoughts exactly I was having. But without any sense of acceptance or bracing myself, I went to the next moment. This is how my life went in those days. One dramatic moment to the next, no time to chew, digest, accept and move on in between. No chance to heal or completely grow (or at least grow more than just a mere fraction) from one thing life flung at me to the next and I was just so, so young and the furthest thing from being an "old soul."
* * *
I just did what I had to. A lot of where I'd been in my life before this was a culmination of results directly related to choices I had made. And while that seems obvious, it wasn't to me. Rather than see the bigger picture for what it was and where I needed to go while doing for myself, I just made these partitioned decisions, out of those specific moments, thinking of immediate consequences, those solo sections of time, and from an emotional place; and when I did think of the future, it was with removed, idealistic, and marginal concept from where to perceive or relate to some unreachable, unknown future date.
As I discover (remember) more of my childhood over time and as I listen to Enigma's "Return To Innocence" right now and wonder how it ALL... just ever... went so wrong.... I put it together. I recall the rollover we were in where I suffered a major concussion. To this day I don't know the extent of damage, but it bothers me that don't know. It bothers me that I was in ICU for three days, but released without full report. Hell, I would have taken a partial report. I don't know what the doctors told Kyle, my mom, my dad. Anyway, I have major difficulty in remembering these things, remembering things I've learned time and again, and I think it's just me, but then I talk to Kyle and he says I was never that way before the accident.
So. It begs the question which lobes were affected and what do each lobe of the brain control? Is this why I am having such difficulty keeping a hold of the things I have learned? Is there any relation to this head trauma--trauma I thought I'd healed from--and these weird jostlings of memory?
For some reason, there is just this entire seperate chunk of remembering my childhood, hearing and seeing things that remind me of if and remembering things I have long forgotten, and the entire seperate chunks of my life after leaving home, having a child so young, the accident, cancer, even moving to Canada without so much as a second thought, and all the transitional agonies in between. Why do I feel so at odds with myself in these fleeting moments? It is embarrassing to move on, go through the stages of moving on, feeling resolved and then regressing back to those, as though I've never put the issue away.
It's just all so confusing. Even as I write this, my brain is wanting to go off in a million directions. There's gotta be a reason for this, for thinking here, there, then back over here, then over there, and back again. After a while, a gal starts to realize that not even female hardwiring can make a brain jump around like that and remember odd memories that may or may not even be memories, just dreams, or random thoughts.
*Sigh. It's time to get ready for work now.
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