fear, relief, conspiracies
Good Morning. Last night was rough. Lots of shuddering and sobbing and unraveling. Like my friend A was saying, in an emergency you just kick into gear and you deal. You get yourself out of the burning building, you grab the kid from in front of the speeding truck. It’s later, with smoke in your hair and your heart racing when you know everyone’s safe and that you’re safe (or safer), that you can break down. Well, hello, aftermath.
Aftermath looks like: forgetting to take my medicines until the day is almost over. My apartment being a big mess. Assignments being really hard to complete, much less do with any sense of intelligence or humor. Not drinking enough water. Feeling clingy and mean and scared. Exhaustion. Spooling out visions of the future that might serve me better than the present: Writing books, making lots of money, being really healthy, having a house in the country, teaching, worrying less, self-loving more.
Today looks like: finishing some work for work. Maybe looking at foldable bikes with T. Going to the final day of the Gates. Seeing the Oscars from a TV that gets full reception. See? That sounds okay. Safe-ish. No injections or tests or “treatments.”
Now that I’m out of the burning house, though, how much responsibility do I have in seeing that other people don’t get burned in it? More people than ever are getting lymphoma: My dangerous web research says it’s now the fifth most common cancer. Why? How much do we have to thank our lobbied politicians? The plastics companies? And down here: the people who lied to us after 9/11? And what, possibly, can an effective response be? It all seems so vast. Certainly, yes, a conspiracy that values money over health; cost-cutting, convenience-addicted denial over people-caring reality. “Rocket fuel in breast milk” (a headline from last week) kinda says it all.
Hm. Anyway. I know I sound like a bag of giggles, but if anyone wants to have lunch this week (any day but Tuesday), that’d be great. I need to get out of here a little bit. Ah, and I don’t think I mentioned, the other bit of news my doctor doled out the other day: the likelihood of my becoming a big fatty now. He said most people end chemo and gain a “significant” amount of weight. He said I have to be really careful. So much for the skinny jeans.
But if you have lunch with me I promise to be less bitter than I sound here. It’d just be nice to see you.
