That makes it pretty real while also making it quite unreal. Why must everything be wrapped in simultaneous paradox these days? I'm accepting it while in denial. It's real while unreal. I'm calm but I'm freaking out. Jeez, whoever said having cancer at 29 is easy must've been doing it better than me. Oh wait. No one ever said that. Never mind.
I was at my cousin Melitta's 35th birthday party last weekend, a birthday party that modern medicine never anticipated because she "wasn't supposed to" live to 35. When she was diagnosed with primary pulmonary hypertension at age 19, they gave her 2 years tops. 16 years and a double-lung transplant later, she's proven them all wrong and become the longest-living survivor of PPH. But I digress... at her birthday party, a song came blaring out of my uncle's stereo that struck a chord with me (no pun intended). It's a song that meant a lot to us back when it came out in 1996, when she was on oxygen and had a portable pump injecting her with medicine 24/7 despite being only 22 years old. The song is Alanis Morrisette's "Hand in My Pocket" and it had meaning to us because of the line "I'm sick but I'm pretty". It was Melitta's mantra for quite some time, especially after we went to the concert at Red Rocks and they were selling bumper stickers with that exact line on it. Last weekend, the song came on and I experienced a jolting juxtaposition: the line applies to me now, not her. She's perfectly healthy, albeit with a suppressed immune system, and is now my support system instead of the other way around. I'm sick. Holy shit. I'm sick. That's such a foreign concept to me that my brain can hardly compute the data.
Incidentally, tying this back to the beginning of this mental meandering, the whole last stanza of that song is full of paradoxical states of being that truly apply to me these days. Behold:
I'm free but I'm focused.
I'm green but I'm wise.
I'm hard but I'm friendly, baby.
I'm sad but I'm laughing.
I'm brave but I'm chickenshit.
I'm sick but I'm pretty, baby.
And what it all boils down to
Is that no one's really got it figured out just yet...
I've got one hand in my pocket and the other one is constantly on Facebook... reaching out... looking for and basking in your love and support, while dreading and accepting the passing of my last 10 days with my sweater bunnies.
2 comments:
Fucking Bubes!!!
Amber, you've always reminded me of Alanis, and I still think of you every time I hear her. Could those lyrics be any more applicable right now?! No way! It tops the applicable scale!
I had a musical moment today, that relates to this in so many ways. We were at a meeting that our principal has every year before school. But its unlike any meeting you've ever been to. Its called Barn Day and it takes place in Evergreen in the Hiwan Homestead in the middle of a gigantic meadow filled with wildflowers. She cooks all of us breakfast and lunch, and its always delicious. At these extraordinary meetings, she inspires us and gets us focused for the school year. And she always has a song for us. This year it was "Where the Streets Have No Name." Of course, this is one of my top songs ever of all time, but she put it into a different context. She said the reason she chose it is because we are teaching kids who are on a road with no name right now. The world is changing and evolving so fast that the jobs they will probably get don't even exist right now. So our mission is to have faith in our capicity to deal with change in an uncertain future. And those lyrics also apply to you and our aunts!:
I want to run
I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside
I want to reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name
I want to feel, sunlight on my face
See that dust cloud disappear without a trace
I want to take shelter from the poison rain
Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
Were still building
Then burning down love, burning down love
And when I go there
I go there with you...
(its all I can do)
The crazy thing is that my Principal, Linda, also was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a single masectomy in June. So here are all these women that I love and care so deeply for, you, auntie Karyn and auntie Jan, and Linda, all put in this frightening position. Its not a place I can understand, but I go there with you, and its all I can do. Good luck and God speed on this journey, and lets have another music blasting way too loud party again soon!
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