Dark out here but there’s a light on somewhere
Sometimes when it rains it doesn’t just pour, it tsunamis.
Hell of a couple two weeks. Fortunately, weathering/withstanding is something I am very practiced at. The fact that I can do a three and one half minute plank is less about muscles and more about the ability to push past pain.
Life has been having its way with me again. Loss, progression and what feels like betrayal.
There is someone I love dearly. Have, from the moment I first set eyes on them. Longer, really.
Someone I would walk through fire for. Someone I would eat shit and die for. Someone who chose this week of all weeks to hurt me in a way that is beyond comprehension. Someone I must finally walk away from.
I had an abusive childhood. Certain aspects of my marriage as well. One might assume this has made me more sensitive to emotional pain. In reality, it has set my threshold higher. A useful trait, as it turns out. But it also means that I have to self monitor. Just like my neuropathic feet, it is necessary to keep a close eye on my heart.
At the moment, that organ’s a bit bruised, as is my liver. Too much of one thing has led to too much of another. Time to back off on that as well.
Last night I had an edible. My sons were both here and we were watching a horror movie when the power went out. Oddly, the little closet gallery across the hall from my loft was yet lit and we gathered there with our neighbors. It was a bit of a party atmosphere and I was having fun taking photos when I noticed that the wall was the only thing holding me up so I crept off to bed.
I love the way cannabis lets my mind simply unspool. It feels like a big brain massage as my thoughts do the leading and I simply follow. Once I was asleep my dreams were extraordinarily vivd and at one point I thought there was a man kneeling at the foot of my bed. He was in distress, arms flailing, and I realized he was struggling to breathe. I wasn’t sure if he was choking or if, like me, he had something deep in his lung that could not be dislodged. Nonetheless I leapt into action, (literally) as I began to pound the air/his back in my sleep. It was frightening but also a reminder that bystander is never my natural mode; I will always act. And if I’m drowning and you are too, I shall do my damnedest to save us both. However, if in doing so, you attempt to pull us both under, I will eventually make for shore alone.
Such is my will to survive.
life and breath: outliving lung cancer 