Mary, In Case I Never Get To Tell You In Person

Mary, in case I never get to tell you in person,
I love you.

Yes.  I know those are strong words.

Yes.  I mean them.

I didn't know, that first day sitting across from you
with my registration card scribbled and crossed out
and scribbled over again in front of me
having our "meet and greet your first year advisor" moment,
the sound of the quad being mowed,
and the smell of Maine sun on autumn leaves
floating in through the open window
over the voices of students walking in front of Gibson
through it's halls, up its stairs, punctuated by
the sound of the double doors sucking open
and clapping shut,
the muted strains of tubas and clarinets
playing scales in practice rooms
and pianos being played in the offices next door
as hopefuls auditioned for the scholarship
for private music lessons,
the implications of our meeting.

I had no way of knowing how lucky I was,
of how over the next four and a half years
we would go from being student and teacher
to daughter and mother--
that I would go from wearing my Sunday best
and sitting stiffly upright, and talking about how
I was really more serious about biology,
to sprawled in your office sipping tea,
and bemoaning how I really wish I could pursue music,
or hunched over the keyboard hidden behind the door
with frazzled hair, clothed in shapeless sweat pants,
biting a pencil trying to "listen to where your ears
are telling you to go, the secondary dominance
wants to resolve to--Lydia,
you have quite a good pair of ears on you,
it's rather a matter of you trusting them,"
or meekly bowing my head as you
pushed over my final paper and saying,
"I think you know that--quite frankly--
this is shit, so, take until noon Thursday to rewrite it,"
(Oh, the patience you exercised!)
or laughing when you critiqued my piano performance as,
"at times a bit like starting a chainsaw,"
to designing costumes and sets for
Mozart's 'The Magic Flute' set in the jungle
while eating cookies in your kitchen.
I grew, from the cocky and ignorant
to the insecure and embarrassed,
to the humbled, yet hungry to always pursue
knowledge and beauty,
and found my voice to say,
"I don't know, but I want to know,
and I am not ashamed to say it,
or pursue it."

I never would have
found my way
into the arms of our counselors,
and learned that therapy was not only something
to not be ashamed of
but to seek out--and that mental health was possible
even for someone has tragically a mess as me,
had you not listened to me sob through
half-baked sentences about how overwhelmed
my 18 year-old-self was
and passed me tissue after tissue like some
comedically pathetic Warner Brother's cartoon set
till we were both swimming in Kleenex,
and it was they who would keep me from
attempting self-harm again,
and help me climb my way out of depression
again, and again, and again
a thousand miles from home,

or gotten clothes in time for
winter in Maine, the fall of my last semester
when my father had been hospitalized
and I had spent my summer earnings
driving 15 miles each way every day
to hospice when gas was $6 a gallon,
watching him slowly waste away
and come to Bowdoin with only enough money
for either books or pants but not both,
and you acquired money not just for pants
but for a plane ticket home for the funeral,
and convinced me to go, saying,
"Sometimes, it's more important to say good-bye
when the relationship with the deceased
was filled with conflict,
than if the relationship was loving,"
which were words that helped me
more than any words of condolence.

I remember the first time you answered my
rambling e-mails about a concept I didn't understand
at 1:30 in the morning,
and then, when I responded with another question
again, a fully formed, logical response at 2:00,
and then, to my chagrin
to find you at the pool in the lane next to me
doing laps before breakfast,
at which point I grumbled to my roommate
as we hastily shoved yogurt and granola into our mouths
on the way to class:
"I think she's actually a machine--
I mean, really, when does she sleep?"
(the mystery of which, I have not yet solved)
and you would still find time to have a lunch date with me.
This after you pulled me aside, saying,
"Sometimes you're on point, and sometimes
you're just off in outer space.
I think you need more sleep than 3 hours a night."
What is your secret!
It was not a rare occurrence--
there are threads upon threads of
conversations we've carried at all hours of the day.
(It can't just be coffee.
Perhaps you have cloned yourself
and the woman I know as Mary Hunter
is actually a hive mind of Mary Hunters.
I have no other explanation,
except perhaps you are immortal.)

I recall the quiet victory smile on your face
when I finally decided to surrender myself
to the joy of my life,
to solely study music,
as if you knew I would always come back around,
and the enthusiasm with which you clapped
at my performance,
at my glee,
at my bliss.
And every time I sit with my students
and pencil in tonal analysis,
and chid them, and praise them in both attempts and successes
I am transported back into your office,
and your voice saying, "Yes!  That's right, you've got it."

I cannot explain to you how
hearing these words on my last day at Bowdoin:
"Lydia, I am so proud of you for graduating.
I have seen students
face less personal turmoil and challenges
than you and quit,"
has been the highest form of compliment,
from a person I most admire.
I cannot express how much it means
to hear from you
even all these years after,
and to make plans to see each other again.

And finding your supporting wings,
and unfailing faith,
reaching across the distance and
lifting me again this last year.
You have been, relentlessly,
my cheerleader,
rallying the troops--
if there was ever a way to quantify
how much I am loved--
a fact that had escaped me until this year--
it was how quickly #LydiaNation
came to my aid when you called.
I cried in the first few moments,
was astounded in the next few hours,
and lay, completely overwhelmed
in the days to come,
and understood for the first time in my life
that I am truly, deeply loved.

In these times, when I look back,
I marvel at my many blessings and am grateful
that I had the privilege
of being guided by you through college
and supported on the wobbly legs
of young adulthood--
that as a child from little means with no connections,
I would have a chance to have a teacher
who would so impact who I am today,
and inspire in me to do the same for those to come.
I owe you a great deal--
there are not enough
and will never be enough "thank you's"
to thank you, Mary Hunter.

Thank you.

December 17, 2015--Happy Birthday To Me

"Lydia!" Dr. Adab called from the double doors. "Wait.  Your PET scan results came in."

Immediately the scales began tipping back and forth in my mind.  Fast results, could be good or bad, he's not walking fast, so I guess that's good, but Dr. Adab always loped that way in his ever so composed stroll, like he didn't have a care in the world.  He had a summer lovin', ne'er a care in the world, boyish smile that you see on children when they wake up excited for a new day of adventure.  My mom was absolutely enamored with his smile.  It was surrounded by dark, coarse stubble, and topped with brown eyes that twinkled, just the way one might describe in a work of fiction.  I never understood what it meant to have twinkling eyes until I met Dr. Adab, and I never understood how he could smile as if he were having an ice cream with you on the beach when he spent every day delivering life shattering, soul crushing, drown yourself in an avalanche of uncontrollable terror kind of news to patient after patient.  Even when he was telling me I had a rare form of cancer that would kill me in the next few months without treatment, he had a closed lipped smile that kind of just barely turned up at the edges to show me that even though my life was about to forever change, he was in my corner.  I was familiar with that smile, as it had graced my face while standing next to a doctor delivering bad news.  It's the condolence "I'm sorry, but this isn't quite the end so hang in there" smile.  But just now, as he called for me, standing in slacks and leather shoes and a button down shirt, with a tie, half windsor and a little off center (it was always a little off center like he didn't quite have enough time in the morning to look in the mirror), and a stethoscope strung over his neck, he wasn't smiling.  He was gazing out the windows with a purposely distant look on his face as he stepped to the side, off an empty corridor.

'Oh my God, that's the bad news face.  No, if it was the bad news face he'd be making eye contact.  If it was good news, why doesn't he just say so?' my mind hissed.  'Because HIPAA, stupid.  He can't shout it in the halls even if it is good news.  Shut up, shut up, everybody shut up!'

"Oh my God," I wanted to yell.  "Don't do that doctor silence thing.  Just tell me!"

All of this in the 4 seconds it took me to reach him.

"That was fast," I said, tightly, as if controlling my voice could brace me for the impact that was surely coming in a emotional Mack Truck T-bone wrapped delivery.

"Yes, the doctor found the results and interpreted them..."

I could feel the spot between my eyebrows furrowing as he stepped closer and bent his head down, speaking quietly within a foot from my face.

"...  They were negative."  Then, a full grin, with raised shoulders as he reached for me, and then laughter.

I blinked.  'What?  WHAT?  YAS!'  And I fist pumped, elbow to my hip, and then hugged my doctor. Over his shoulder I could see an entire waiting room full of pale, sickly patients looking through the entryway at us, longing and desperation and apathy etched onto their faces.

"Happy Holidays," he said into the fuzzy new hair on my head.

"Happy Holidays," I said breathlessly.

It wasn't until I was in my garage reaching into my car trunk to pick up the grocery bags five hours later, having gone grocery shopping and cooked soup for my cousin who had had 14 of his teeth pulled preemptively for his 10 rounds of chemo and radiation for nasopharyngeal carcinoma, that I suddenly began to shake, the little quiet laugh that comes as small puffs of air out of your nose, when something from hours ago strikes you as funny.  To my surprise tears began to fill my eyes.  It wasn't until then I was finally able to comprehend the feeling I had inside.  It was relief, of course, that there was "no evidence of disease" (the technical, legal way of saying "we don't see any cancer anymore, but it could still be there, but we're pretty sure it's not, please don't sue us if we're wrong"), but there was relief of a different flavor, too.

I was relieved I would not have to decide today whether or not I was going to go through with killing myself.

You see, while everyone in my family was looking forward to today to see if I would have to keep undergoing treatment, I knew that today I had to stop living in denial.  For the past three weeks, I've been training myself to walk, taking farther and farther agonizing trips under the guise of "exercise," because I had to make sure I could make it to Lehigh and Touhy on the tracks where the rush hour express blasted through at 60 miles an hour just under 3 miles from my house between the Shell, and the Starbucks where I had spent almost every weekend in the last two years studying to become a nurse.  I would stand there, looking at the lone headlight in the distance growing in size, feeling the low growling of the car engines around me, listening to the clanging of the crossing signal, feeling the vibrations of the train as it grew nearer, listen for the horn, listening to the pebbles begin to clatter in their beds, until the roar, too painful to listen to so that I would have to stick my fingers in my ears as the train thundered by, whipping wet leaves up in its wake, training myself to not be afraid, training myself to stay still, because one day, perhaps today, I would have to lay down and will myself not to give in to flight.

This is the truth I couldn't speak out loud for fear someone would tell someone and I would end up on suicide watch on a locked ward until the cancer killed me because people wouldn't understand that for me, for once in my life I didn't have a lack of norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, or GABA.  For once in my life, it wasn't about stopping the pain, rather it was about the decision to control the one thing I could control: the time, place, and method of my death--which, by the way, was designed so that no one but me would ever be blamed for killing me.

The truth of the matter is, I would never be able to say goodbye if that were the case, because someone would start crying, and my love for the people in my life would be greater than my love for myself, and I would break.  I would buckle under that guilt, and I would not be able to lay down, and I would keep fighting a battle I know my body could not win, and I would die slowly, in agony, wasting away, because I am too weak to stand my ground against love.  (And yes, I know that even though there's this reprieve today, there's also the nagging fact that today really marks the first day of an arbitrary 5 year mark where 80% of my kind of cancer survivor have a recurrence and I may have to revisit this scenario again.  I swear to God, do NOT call the boys with the straightjackets!)

So today, when I found out that I don't have cancer anymore, it wasn't joy that overwhelmed me at first--it was relief that I don't have to make that choice yet.  It was relief that I didn't have to see if I had the willpower to stick with my choice--that for at least right now I don't have to see whether or not I'm strong enough to lay down and stop fighting.

And that, for however many days I stay in remission, is the biggest relief of all.

You Told Me A Preacher Went to San Bernardino

You told me a preacher went to San Bernardino after the shootings
and spoke to the stunned crowd already bewildered and heartbroken
about how Jesus Christ is the Savior--
just believe in the Lord and you will be saved--
just as preachers do all around the world filled with terrified, traumatized souls
who had the veil of blissful obliviousness rent from their eyelids
by barrel bombs and bullets and sarin and chlorine gas,
dizzy from spinning into the black void of the unpredictable future,
and they cried "Yes" and were baptized into faith
"...and it was a glorious testament to God's power..."
you said with your eyes enlarged in religious fervor,
"...that so many were saved..."
And listening I wanted to scream:
Don't you know that you have sown the seeds of dogma
into the field of ignorance and oversimplicity,
that will bloom into the flowers of ego and self-righteousness and fanaticism,
which will bear the fruit of hatred and discrimination
that permeates the present time with vitriol
by capitalizing on fear?
Don't you know that you have given your children
the tools to refuse reasoning, to refute science,
to excuse purposeful self-sedation,
to cling to mythology, under the warm blanket of false security?
"...and they were saved in time, too, because
if you look from January of just this year, the birthing pangs are coming
closer and closer together--every day there is violence..."
"There has always been violence every day,"
I retort, "we were simply deaf and blind to it."
"No, but God is coming back in this age," you insisted.
And I knew not whether to cry or to laugh,
or to do both, for in my mind
I could imagine the Jews awaiting their Messiah
while suffering in slavery in Egypt
and then in Babylon
in constant fear of dying
and certain that they were experiencing birthing pangs
and the early disciples awaiting the return of their King
under the upheaval of Tiberius' murder
and Claudius' wars
and Nero's reign of terror
on and on and on
through all the conflicts of the centuries
to WWII's slaughtering of 80 million people
and Vietnam's senselessness
and the idiocy of Bush in Iraq.
There have been wars and "birthing pangs"
since there have been man walking the face of the earth
and He has not returned
because He will never return
because He is not real.
What you admire is the nature of uneducated, unenlightened man,
following the beliefs of a faith that was established
when the majority of humans believed that shooting stars
were messages from the gods foretelling destruction,
reenacting the history of man since the dawn of mankind
(that when there are two groups of humans
one will subjugate the other and adopt the false idea of superiority
and believe that God, or the gods, are surely for them,
love them,
care for them,
will save them,
and created a New Jerusalem, Olam Ha-Ba, or Jannah for those who suffer.
How else can a person who cannot accept that
bad things just happen because science and probabilities
justify the shit that is this world being doused upon his head
with the rising of the sun?
No, it is easier to believe that there is a God who has a purpose
for the terrifying chaos, and that the end is not really the end
for the saved and the chosen,
because as surely as Christians teach that they are the Chosen Ones,
so do the Muslims, and the Jews.
Each faith believes they are the true believers--
the only commonality is that there is a powerful God
and an eternal future for the saved ones,
because it is less terrifying than admitting there is no one there to save you
and you must do the best you can
with the time you have, and live with the choices you make
in your own multiverse powerlessness.
Responsibility for your actions is terrifying,
and arbitrary time limits are even more petrifying,
so we shove the blame onto an imaginary omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient deity--
ask yourself how many queens and kings, emperors, presidents
have justified sending subjects to their death,
embroiling yet another generation in terror and bitterness, and said,
"We will win this war for surely God is with us."
Or how many mothers have said, when their child has lost life or limb,
"God must have a reason.")
What you praise when terrified people surrender themselves
to the idea of a higher being rescuing them
is not the return of God.
What you praise is the abandonment of logic
and the destruction of the hope for the next generation
to live an ethical, self-aware, and meaningful life
with the clarity of science
and reason
and empathy
and compassion.

The Thing About Life

The thing about life is
we're all walking around with timers
ticking down inside of us.
Usually, they're silent and faceless--
it's easy to forget
they're counting down.
You always imagine you have
enough seconds to last you
80, 90 years,
and then the timer will dial to zero
when you're warm in your bed
surrounded by family,
maybe at night after Thanksgiving dinner,
when your belly is full of
red wine and honey glazed ham.
Even if once in a while you'll have the macabre thought
"I might get hit by a bus tomorrow,"
but by dinnertime
you'll have forgotten your resolution
to live life well,
and gone back to watching reruns of
The Walking Dead.
But when you know
that the cancer inside of you has an 80% chance
of coming back
and killing you in the next 5 years--
maybe it'll be 2 years
or 2 months
or 5 years and 1 day--
the ticking becomes audible.
You still don't have the timer face.
You just walk around,
listening to the life
tick tick ticking out of you,
trying to not
let the uncertainty paralyze you,
trying to not
flinch with every jarring advance of the second hand,
trying to not
lose your mind,
as you fight the instinct
to walk around with your eyes squeezed shut,
bracing for the impact with death,
because any second could be your last.

The Thing About Strength

"I wish I had your inner strength
to deal with everything you've had to
this last year."
My friend said this last night.
The thing about strength is
it doesn't exist.
Yes, we qualify strength--
muscles
mettle
mental endurance
yet no amount of strength
can overpower
the ocean
the fire
the plague
or cancer.
I have learned that
life decides when to kill us,
dragging us to the edge,
letting us scramble back.
Each time we think
in our egotistical, ignorant way
that we defeated it,
that we beat it into submission,
that we had a choice in the matter,
that we had any control whatsoever,
Life is laughing,
swirling a glass of cabernet.
Life has no respect for who you are
or what you have done
or what you hope to do
or could do in the future.
She does not cooperate.
It is the greatest fallacy
that we tell ourselves
we are strong enough
or fast enough
or smart enough
because you can't outrun
something that is .0004 microns
or something that spontaneously
grows inside of you, out of you, made from you.

To All the Nursing Students

To all the nursing students I wish to say

try to contain your glee

at the prospect of flushing

your first

or second

or third

or any IV

I know you are excited to hold

in your hands for the first time the IV tubing

because now you feel like a real nurse 

and your brain is ticking through

the list of bulletpoints

all of the steps for a flawless first run

because you will double check

and triple check in your head

and that IV will purr and drip perfectly

You are here to learn and execute procedures perfectly

So let me educate you that the stop-start 

technique for flushing a central line with 10cc's of saline

is hell on earth for me.  

It does not taste "salty" or "like saline"

it tastes like you zested the bitter white rind of a lemon 

and served it with four ounces of Windex

shaken not stirred.

And I am already so sick of life

the medical shows like House, and Critical, and The Knick that used to

amuse me so in the past are unbearable for me now.

In the end, when it is the worst I just

cannot think or fight or reason,

which is why when you are a nurse you are an advocate

and that doesn't mean just being loud--

which, let me tell you, 

you all need to shut the fuck up when you are charting or giving report, and 

yes, I am talking to you, night shift,

your sick, exhausted, nauseated, in agony patients are trying to will themselves to hang on 10 more seconds.

Nobody cares about your problems--

your patient already had 99 of them

and you do not need to be the 100th--

please! 

Advocacy does not mean being loud.

It does not mean ask, "What do you need?"

it means you best know what your patient needs

It means anticipate

that maybe right after chemo infusion 

your patient may be calling you because of nausea so run

do not walk.

I know you're tired, shit, I am more tired than you, but I'm still here, so

use your brain.

Solve the problem before it becomes a problem.

Try to put yourself into my shoes.

You see me here heaving do you not?

Perhaps instead of asking "Do you need another basin?"

run for whatever 

PRN antiemetic anxiolytics you got on hand

and if you don't have anything else 

call the doctor and tell them to order something

and for fuck sake

make it IV-push.

These are the worst days of my life,

knuckles white in agony,

thrashing in the bed

in so much pain you cannot form a thought

and you are part of this 

and I will remember your face forever,

so try, try to imagine what it's like to be me, and try to move heaven and earth for me

because you might be me, 

and I may be you one day,

and you'd want me to do that for you.

To All the People Who Have Said

To all the people who have said

You are so

brave

incredibly strong

inspiring

I wonder what you would think

if you could see me now

viciously sniffing back snot

wiping tears with displaced malevolence 

towel stuffed between teeth to muffle the cries

sitting on the edge of the tub 

shaking

shaking

just can't stop shaking

like a dog, cowering 

staring at the porcelain pit

fighting the ball of fear-or is it vomit-

and rocking to silence the voices in my head

like prayers on a rosary

I don't want to do this

You have to

I can't

You must

Get it together

Please, don't make me

I cannot do this

One

More

Time

I Have Now Met Death

I have now met death six times by my count in 28 years.

First, while still in the womb,
my mother, sweating with fever
that climbed from the dry cradle inside her
through the vein that fed me,
to the arteries into her body,
and threatened to engulf us both.

Second, cowering under a car,
face ground into the oil stained cement,
chassis digging into my back,
as men threw their bodies at each other
in the name of pride.
We were so scared, Carina and I,
that one of them would realize there were two
little girls listening to them beat each other around us.

Third, as a child, feeling for the first time
the sting of rejection of a body of peers
who turned crayons into scalpels
and words into knives--
who shamed me for the first time
and brought me into the knowledge
that body image is a thing, and fat shaming is a power
more strong than the cells in my brain,
or the sweetness of my heart.
I twisted the two ends of a beach towel,

head in the loop
until my face turned candy red, then purple,
and my mother happened upon me,
and I turned and mouthed: "Look, Mommy,"
then let go and cried.

The fourth, I was 18, and stupidly, ignorantly
let a man rip out my heart.
I think I've always been a little stunted because of that,
like a tree with two limbs, where there clearly should be three.
Luckily, I had been indoctrinated enough
to think suicide was a sin,
so I tried to find someone to kill me in the
dangerous backwoods of sweet, sleepy Brunswick, Maine.
It was my saving grace.  Thank...God.
The only thing that shocks me now,
is how little I feel for a man who once meant so much to me.

The fifth was when I was 20
and drank myself so deep into the bottle
I almost never came out again,

because I realized I had spent my whole life
training for an unattainable dream.

That night my poor room mate sat with me
head by my chest, praying I'd breathe just one more time.

The sixth, was when the chemo they said
was my only hope for survival--the one that
doesn't have strong side effects on the majority of patients--
nearly killed me, nearly wrung me dry
like a water skin in a parched man's hands

so I can confidently say that I am
less so afraid of dying
more so simply not quite sated with living,
not because death is not permanent
or terrifying
or unknown
but because I am 28

and yes, that is a lot younger than many
but it is not younger than most.
This is true throughout history,
this is true, even in my own city,
my country, my world,
people more deserving than me
and less deserving than me--

people who haven't lived long enough to deserve anything--
are dying--and that is just time.

And it brings me a sense of balance,
if not a sense of peace or complete freedom from disquiet,
that I am no more special than any other being
to have walked this earth,
that the mutation inside of me is a part of nature's law to evolve
and that I am just a dot on a parabola that shifts
with the demands of an evolutionary process we have defied.
Who am I to escape what others have not,
who am I to be spared the terrors of
the plagues, the droughts, the wars,
to have been born in my time and my circumstance?
Had I any choice or any power that

I be spared those sufferings
and the sufferings to come as surely as our sun shines?
I would count myself blessed.
So Death, come, kiss me, and take me, or not.
I do not fear your coming,
but if I have any say,
I would like to drink a while longer

while we sit together.

A King's Thoughts (for my friend, Larry)

There are days when I forget I have cancer,
when I forget the crippling power
of the unknown variables freed from the shroud of ignorance,
and begin to move forward,
days when I forget that my best laid plans
are nothing but chaff spilled from a child's hands
awaiting the next strong gust,
days when the competitive edge in me gnaws
at my restraints, ears flicking at the passage of time,
straining to be released.
And then there are days like this:
to hear your cancer has resurfaced,
after what you have done, in spite of the statistic
one percent survival--
to hear a man so full of love and laughter,
kindness, gentleness,
an embrace sure as a stallion's neck,
has not slipped the bridle of this cursed disease.
This is how the early rulers
must have felt looking over the plains
sprawled out before their kingdoms,
at the glowing dots of beacon fires
lighting one, by one, slowly, each brighter than the last,
the time lapse between each flame reducing,
and then all at once, the mountainside
bursting aflame, leading straight to the gates,
the last a scorching inferno exploding
in oil and dry kindling,
bearing the news that an ally,
after much battle,
is near overrun
and calls for aid.
It must have still'd even the bravest heart,
to know even as one has prepared,
stored, trained, envisioned--
even as one strived to break free the divination,
that even as one's fallow land has,
after much transudation and lamentation,
ripened with burgeoning wheat,
another's nation is smoldering under the razing of its land.
They must have looked upon
labor of their fields,
upon the stones of their fortitudes,
doubled the guard,
donned their armor,
steeled the fear piercing their viscera,
while praying that the plea was not
an omen.

To Believe in God: the Christian Chapter

To believe in God is audacious and impudent. 
It is a purposeful, conscious decision to live in blindness.  
Furthermore,
for a human to believe that his God 
is the right God and the only God 
is to embrace bigotry and intolerance
and to revel in elitism shrouded in false humility.
For the idea of God is war with humanity.

Alexander

Brother of my soul,
you are the sweetest of us, the gentlest,
the strongest and the kindest.
I thank the fates that brought us together,
speaking secrets in the dark between sips of petrichor.
It pains me to write this for you.

We've never been one for words--
only actions--it is the force that drives our bones.
And when we can no longer mend with science, or time, or love
we close our eyes and open our arms to embrace inevitability,
and can feel nothing at all,
and everything all at once.
It is our nature.
It is Nature.

Today we breached the inevitability of life,
not lessened by foreknowledge.
It's a bitter syzygy, the truth that as the son reaches his zenith,
his senior must descend.
All I could do for you was hold on to the thin
invisible thread of anguish connecting across thousands of miles,
as you wept in your car, uttering the words across the salty deltas of your face,
words your father spoke to you about your wedding day,  "I'll be there either way,"
and remember when I once cried similarly,
clinging to your voice on the other side of this country telling me to
"Breathe, Lydia, breathe."

You can't die.
Please don't die.
I'm not ready yet.
I will never be ready.
How many children have pleaded with parents
for the one thing that cannot be given?
And how many parents have said
to the child--"That won't be for a long while."
and then to the teen--"We all die one day."
and to the man--"That's not up to me?"

Oh, my brother,
I want to crawl through the phone lines
to you and hold you--but I can't.
I want to lie to you and tell you,
that it will all be okay--but I won't.
The only thing I can do
is to exist with you in silence
driving out into the night, in the twisting
dipping, heaving paths between the moss covered pines.
Hurtling through time, up the contours of our lives,
hoping the next turn holds anything but devastation--
none can slow time--
peering out through the glass as the
night engulfs us in sonder.

Being Brave

What does it mean to be brave?

Is it the steel of nerve, 

the calm of the knight as his squire straps on his armor?

The breath whooshing out 

as the swimmer takes her mark?

Perhaps it is going to take a board exam

even if you never feel ready,

or taking the blow from a man 

three times your size and standing up again.

But tomorrow it is none of those things--

it is not war paint, or chants, 

great speeches, or montages. 

There will be no shaky fingers, or quivering lips, no rapid breaths or anticipation, or rising swell of courage

and will that breaks into a howl of bloodlust. 

There is no fighting, 

no kicking of ass.  No.  

I have fought this fight before,

and I know there is no winning.

Tomorrow will come punishing floods,

Unforgiving and unrelenting, 

pouring into my body and into my bones.

And even with my best preparation 

it will pound and tear through me until 

I lay limp, 

my being shaken out of me 

like flour through a sieve.

I know this, as I lay down tonight,

and I will rise to meet it,

to survive it in the morning.

March 30, 2013

What it feels like to live with cyclothymia--to be read aloud

I know it’s here.  I do not know from where it came though we have met before once.  That time it cut out my heart and left me for dead.  It did not know my secret.  (I do not need my heart to live.)  Now I am older so I know it is here.  It already flooded my world up to my waist.  It climbs quickly, silently, disguised as other things--school, work, seasonal affective disorder.  If I could just work harder, work faster--but I can't, there's smoke pouring from my brain, singing my eyebrows.  I push my hands out and feel them sink into the ooze.  It carries me—suspended—there is no surface.  That burn up my nostrils into my mind, down my throat into my chest.  I am there forever.  I will lose consciousness soon.  I don’t know why but I brace my hands on my knees and begin to cry.

And then it’s gone and all I know in the end is that I've wrestled with something primitive and primordial and I did not lose though I did not win.  It’s not so impressive in the light.  We laying there, me and this thing that is older than time itself, exhausted, bruised, bloodied, covered in the muck and mire and shit of the night, helplessly bare in the gray morning, painfully gulping thin air.  I do not know its name or its face—it is always changing. 

We look at the handprints on each other's necks, hating each other, but without enough strength to do anything--not even to glare--knowing at the same time that it's the most intimate interaction we've ever had.  I close my eyes to rest and then remember it’s still there so I open them again, slowly, as if the very motion of opening my eyelids is in itself a lover's recognition, a salute to a worthy opponent.  The beast knows this, and it needs reprieve too, so it gathers itself, like tar reverse flowing back into the abyss of my being, taking with it every disgusting, perverse, mutated part of my world.  My face, my neck, the insides of my ears are raw and burning from the salty delta that overflowed from inside my skull.  I am too tired to clean myself so I lay there, miserable, in the nowhere in-between state. 

Sleep comes, stealing inside of me while I lay there too weak to fight.  The siren is silent.  There is no one left to sound it.  And sleep smiles at me, a smile that says she loves me more than anyone else, so even though I find her repulsive (that cloying, annoying, persistent, pathetically dull wench that I normally deflect), I close my eyes and let her touch me.  She is second best.  She will never awe and set my mind on fire, but she is there.  She is persistent.  She is consistent.  She is gentle. She takes off my armor, kisses my wounds, and feeds me numbing draft.  “Numbing draft?” I think, “Silly girl.  I cannot find my feelings.”  “I know,” she says, “I know.”  Unthanked wench.  I owe her.  More than that, I need her.  I know she will keep me safe, so I let her kiss me.  I let her cover me with her body, and as she draws her arms close around my shoulders I wrap myself in the comforting knowledge that I am still alive and I will stay alive till the next time we meet and make fierce battle again.

Phuong

If you ever have to choose between
saving the world or saving me,
save the world.

It is winter 2007, and the dorm is quiet
as we lay in bed in that transient hour
when the college has ground to a stop,
for one precious hour before the gears churn again,
like a coal train engine in the yard, groaning
to a halt with steam mingling with the mist.
It is the only time we have for each other
when philosophy and esoteric percolations
bubble up from the depths of muddled academia.
Time to think, when our brains have finally
stopped gasping for time, and we can think
about if we can live with our lives--

If we are still becoming the people we hoped to.
We are lucky to have this hour while
the halls are split by gashes of light under
doors and spilling around curtains by scattered students
frantically toiling into the night.

Uh huh, she says, half-asleep, tucked under my arm.

And if you have to choose between
saving you or saving me,
save yourself.
I know it's a little macabre, but just in case
I want you to know,
this is what I want you to do--
I don't want to die, but I am ready--
you're not.  I've got God.  I'm saved.  You're not.
Does that make sense?

Yeah.  It does, she says, slightly more awake.

I wish you knew God--

Babe, no offense, but, I've seen
how you've struggled with your god,
and I never want to know him.
I can't understand why your god would let
the things that have happened to you, happen to you.
Does that make sense?

Yeah.  It does, I say.

It is summer 2015, and the execution date is set.
I lay next to her, listening to her gently snore.
I am different now, older, slower,
living without that borderline mania
that forced me to attack all things in life with rabid ferocity
until I collapsed--
And I have completely--
now I simply shuffle
from battle to battle.
My limbs betray me--
they shake with fatigue--
My mind is not as quick or sharp,
although its depth has increased.
And my heart, my heart races with disease,
instead of the strong, slow, steady beat of youth.

I say softly, nose against nose,
When I am gone, save yourself.

David

Isn't it strange that one would grieve less for hair 

than one did for a childhood love, 

and fear death less than living?
It took me three years before I realized
I was confusing an opportunity to gain life experience
with a soul mate.

Day 15

They tell you that your hair will "thin."
They don't know when it will happen, but it will.
It doesn't for two weeks, and you think you're clear
you think you have time.
You think maybe you might finally be the exception.

Then it begins, slightly at first
a few extra strands in the hair catch.
You wake up and there is a carpet of hair
across your pillow, across the sheets
down your chest and back.

No one tells you how,
even though you thought yourself prepared,
when every move you make sends strands
pouring like fresh mowed grass off of your body--
and even if you don't, you feel each strand as it comes loose
with a little tingle, root giving away under the sagging tension,
and falls, spontaneously, like leaves on a still autumn morning,
brushing your skin, mocking you with gentle tickles,
like a fingernail drawn, barely touching you,
a reminder, as they shed without ceasing,
at your helplessness--
and when you finally do get up,
the gathered layer rustles off you as if you were Rip Van Winkle,
waking up from under 19 years of leaves--

You will hyperventilate.
You will not know if it is better to lay statuesque,
and hope that maybe there will be something left tomorrow,
or to rip it all out like plucking a chicken,
and pray it won't be patchy,
pray you won't be left with a few stubborn strands--
dry branches off a dead tree, hollow to the core.

When you finally are brave enough
to shower, the hair will cling between your fingers.
You will be stuck in this endless cycle of
rinsing your hair, and rinsing your hands.
It will be caught on your neck,
stick in the soap on your face, under your breasts,
cling to your legs, you bend to clean them,
what hair you have left falls into your eyes,
you push it back, stand up, look at your hand,
and there is hair between your fingers again.

No one told you that you will
walk the edge of hysteria trying to clean the tub,
after sobbing silently into the shower stream
until the hot water ran cold, and you gave up
on ever picking the stray strands off your body.
They didn't tell you, it embeds in your wash cloth,
and circles the drain catcher like a fur collar.

And when you finally step
out of the tub onto the tile,
the only thing protecting you from yourself
is the veil of steam
and condensation on the mirror.

Washing My Hair

Washing My Hair

Washing my hair the night before

my first chemo treatment--

I dip my hair below the faucet, upside down

and let the water run from nape over

short tresses, waving like kelp between rocks at low tide

chopped short with disregard mere months before

as mere annoyance, to save time for studies.

My mother is crying, tears dripping 

into the suds as she kneads the soap into my scalp

as she did when I was young and had been foolhardy

jumping off the stairs and into a cast.

It is just hair.  I tell her.  It is just hair,

and yet it is so much more.

They are the strands of my life, 

days, minutes, seconds

lives that could be, futures that could have been

dying from the roots, coming loose from their beds, unborn

slipping through my fingers

with only the hope that some may

have the opportunity to spring up in their place.

2:12 a.m.

Staring at my Word cursor.
Human Resources.
End of a chapter.
Leaving my first adult job.
How to compose a resignation letter?
One to my boss--one to HR?
Empty my locker.
Have to get my stethoscope back.
Have to return my keys.

Must complete before Monday.

I'm terrified.

Motherhood, Love, and the Ethics of Bearing Life

In 6 hours I'm getting up to go to a fertility clinic for a consult on egg banking options before I start chemotherapy. The clinic is at UIC--where I hope(d) to complete my BSN.  I wonder what it will feel like to walk on the campus, imagine an alternate life where I'm not sick, not thinking about surviving to the new year, facing questions about the viability of my haploids, how committed I was to cutting open my abdomen and scooping out an ovary on the off chance that I decide to have a child of my own one day.  Is it even  ethical or moral to have a relationship with anyone, to get married, or what about not doing either but having a child anyway, when I know the risks of relapse are so high, and the survival rates so low?

Dear Reader:

I remember watching "A Walk to Remember" in high school and thinking to myself: "God, a movie about a girl dying from cancer--how cliche." (Ok fine, I totally bawled my eyes out. It was high school. There were hormones and Shane West. Come on, give me a break.) Yet here I am, writing about myself.

I have cancer.

I have Peripheral T-Cell Lymphoma with "immunohistochemical stains that show the infiltrate is positive for CD3, CD4, CD5, CD7, and CD8, but negative for CD30, CD138, CD34, CD56, TDT, and in-situ hybridization for EBV are negative" to be exact. This probably doesn't mean much to the non-medical person, but basically, it's rare, so there isn't a lot of research on treatment because there aren't large populations to test on. Because of this, doctors use traditional treatments for other cancers--kind of a "Do you have a better idea? No? Ok then." situation. This means the survival rate is pretty slim even with optimal conditions.

I know all these things--I'm a nurse, I'm practical. It's almost my job to be a pessimist so that I can anticipate the worst case scenario. Some people think this is negative chi. I think that anticipating the worst helps me to prepare for what my patients--or in this case, I and the people in my life--may need.

I get the numbers are bad. So, if this blog suddenly stops, I guess you know what that means, but until then, who needs a Shane West? I'll build my own fucking telescope.

Love,

Lydia