Unsquinched but uncalm
My brain was in a squinch there for a while. It read too many lymphoma statistics (bad internet) and it freaked about possible sterility and every time it looked at my hands (which are different now – discolored knuckles (a common chemo symptom), numb fingertips (natch), and blotchy skin) it was reminded that this is not an ordinary day in Kansas.
I’m not sure how it unsquinched. I had a dream that I was flat. My front was stuck to my back, pancake style, and I was trying to get some space inside, peel my sticky organs off each other. I used a bellows like for a fireplace and a crowbar when that didn’t work. I got a little bit of air in, a little bit of space. Not quite enough, but a little.
While I was squinching I was also beating myself up. For not working enough, for being procrastinatey, lazy, not vigorous enough about healing, not productive enough or nutritious enough. My shrink said to stop. She said that it’s okay that I couldn’t quite get myself unflat, inflated again. She also said that I need to keep looking at what this is about. That it might take years to learn what this disease is about for me.
A self-help author I interviewed today brought up the “morphic field,” which I guess, is kind of like an aura. She said if someone is trying to lose weight but hasn’t cleared their morphic field of all the reasons they overeat – childhood trauma, fears, yada – then they will continue to struggle with the weight because they haven’t gotten at the root cause of the excessive eating.
This was so visual; I pictured a fat person with ghosts and memories floating in a cluttered plasma around them. And I wonder, of course, how to clear my morphic field of cancer. Or if this is even a relevant comparison. But say it is. Say there is some reason that I got this particular cancer, a subtype that usually affects 60-year-old men. Say there is something poetically, spiritually relevant in the fact that I have a disease of the system that is supposed to protect the body from disease. A meta-cancer. Then what? How do I go about tracking and banishing so this stays gone? If I am being asked to do something how am I supposed to know what it is?
Anne Lamott says when god isn’t being cryptic she’s being really obvious. Well, if god reads blogs I’d like some gentle clarification. You got my attention with the lightening bolt: Now can you help me read the ashes?
Other than that. Getting tested on Tuesday. They’re putting me in the big machines and seeing if it’s gone, or mostly gone. I went to Brooklyn last night, (a huge deal, I was terrified – not of outer-boroughness, but it felt like an expedition, a big adventure, one made possible only by my purple superhero boots; T says half the power of a superhero lies in the outfit. He is wise) holding tight to T’s hand as we went down underground, which is much dirtier than I remember (I’ve been living a cab existence). And took the F train to Bergen Street and had dinner at Viola, which was good and cheap. And went to Vegas to wish A happy birthday. They had sparkly blue walls and a silver tin ceiling. I felt skinny and vulnerable and bald even with a hat.
