Thoughts that occur when you're silently sobbing into your towel in your dark bathroom at 3 in the morning because it seemed like the most practical place to allow yourself to feel feelings because you're just too damn tired to hostage negotiate with the Thelma and Louise bullshit that is your limbic system and adrenals any longer:

I cry way too much in this bathroom.  It's cliche, really.

Why does my nose run when I cry?  Then it gets stuffy.  It seems rather inconvenient since I need oxygen. 

God.  Why do feelings always happen at 3 am?  It's damn inconsiderate. They should happen at a more civilized time of day, like 8 pm.

Is it over yet?  Ain't nobody got time for this shit.

Maybe I'll be able to sleep soon. Goddamn tomorrow is going to be a long day. I guess technically tomorrow  is actually today.

Sometimes On Nights Like This

Sometimes on nights like this

months into remission

when your thoughts swirl around death

in ever tightening circles,

like pennies circling the funnel exhibit,

you can feel the hysteria clawing up 

your ribs and into your throat

pumping your lungs

until you hold your breath to keep

from passing out

or screaming incoherently 

at the shadows

as you pace the length of your house

listening to the sound of your loved ones snoring

and imagining

the silence in their absence

and all the clothes and books and furniture

and things that mean nothing to you now

but everything once they are gone--

the clothes that you could never wear

or books you cannot read because they're in a language you never learned

or a faith you do not believe

or the coffee table you abhor but tolerate because they like it,

or are simply too frugal to give up,

or the knitting needles you don't know how to work,

or the paints you don't know how to use,

or the house plants you don't know how to care for--

you think of those things in a stranger's hands,

or on another person's body,

in someone else's home,

or sitting on the curb waiting to be scavenged

or shipped to the dump--

you imagine the sound of empty hangers swinging in an empty closet,

the operator's voice when you cancel their phone line, their subscriptions,

their credit cards,

as you slowly erase everything that is them,

and close the door to their empty bedroom, filled with their smell and the ghost of their voice,

trying to rehearse what you will say

to tell people they're gone,

and have to bear their sorrow

and their sympathies,

and their loss,

when all you want to do is lay down 

and scream and kick

and die with them,

so you don't have to feel what you're feeling,

and you are glad, so glad, that tomorrow there is work, 

mind numbing

soul numbing

route, formulaic

work,

and you don't--no, you won't

have the time or the energy to think about what's worse: losing the person you love

or leaving them behind to bear all of this

without you. 

A Lump

A lump.

It wasn't there in August
when I told the doctor it was back.
He looked at me and said, with a semi-tolerant,
humoring you expression,
"Those symptoms are diffuse and could be anything.
I don't want to expose you to more radiation unless we're sure
it's something
so, let me know if you have night sweats."
I couldn't prove it,
but all of those initial symptoms were back.
Heart palpitations,
dry mouth,
fatigue.
Constantly sick.  Cold after cold after cold.
Every weekend, in bed, sick.
The kind of fatigue you get from working a job and going to school
non stop for five, six years.
And the weird, sporadic, transient moments of nausea.

It wasn't there last week.
I sure.  I was sick
and when I get sick I get a lot of lumps
over my neck
and I have to cling to the fact that I have
a cough and a sneeze
and a throbbing head and sinuses.

But not today.

Today, it's just a lump.
No cold symptoms.

It's funny how everything stops.

Last night, I raced up and down the halls
pushing my cart, laden with over a hundred twenty pounds
of pills, elixirs, creams, gels, nebulizers, patches, tube feedings,
needles, IV's, drops, powders...
bell of my stethoscope bouncing across my chest
as I jogged from patient to patient.
Deal with an irate family member.
Comfort a crying coworker.
Assist my CNA.
Send another on break.
Tell another to take a breath.
Give a hug.
Every person I dismiss,
every staff member that breaks down
means more tasks I pick up.
But it's okay, I've got stout legs
and a strong back
and a steel will.

I was a desk worker
switchboard operator
floor nurse
wound care specialist
lab requisitioner
transportation coordinator
pharmacy hounder
customer service agent
garbage woman
snack fetcher
feed you dinner
professional butt wiper
transferrer
translator-mimer
tissue holder
tucking in bed-er
jokster
comforter
limit setting authority figure
find the channel for the Cubs game
absorb all your complaints abuses
and fluff your pillow afterwards
body woman
with a nursing degree.

And I did it for twenty patients
that I have to cycle through every two hours.

"That girl can hustle," I hear a patient say as I leave the room.

With every click, and every scribble
I think to myself:
"Down.  Keep pace.  Faster."
Chasing the yellow boxes before they turn to red
like a screen full of LATE!
Fast, fast, barely think, no mistakes, don't breathe
don't sit, don't pee, don't drink, don't eat--
hurry
tick
hurry
tick
hurry

until this morning.

I find a lump.
And I'm not sick.

I mean, I am, clearly.
But I'm not sick from a cold.

My brain is already computing.
Assessing, assessing.
Weighing the statistics.
Who do I tell?  Should I tell?
Why is this damn doctor not picking up?
What if I'm wrong?  (I'm not wrong.)
Do I quit my job?
What about insurance?  How does that even work now?
What a joke.  The copayments alone for chemo would send me--
I can't think about that.
I was supposed to start school next month.
Damn, I just ordered a liter of shampoo--such a waste
I'll be bald shortly from the chemo I'm sure.
Do I want to do that?
God, the time--there isn't enough time.
There isn't enough time to think.
To spend all that time in a hospital.
Again.
To see those same nurses' faces.
To hear them whispering.
To listen to them tell me to be positive.
I don't want to tell my brothers again
and hear grown men cry
again
and watch my mother shuffle around
in a haze of religion capped sorrow
waiting for her God to save me
again.
I don't want to tell Phuong that I'm dying
again.
I don't want to tell my piano students
that their teacher is going to be bald
again.

I am angry.
The first time I wasn't angry.  I was scared.
Then I was accepting.
But this time, I'm fucking angry.
Couldn't even have a goddamn year or remission?
It makes no sense, but I want to yell
at the coworkers yesterday
who asked me if I had children
or was married
and when I said no, patted me and said,
"It's okay, it will happen.  You have time."
"You won't get cancer again.  You can't think like that."
"I believe that God has a whole life in store for you."
I want to flip them the bird and yell,
"Where's your God now, motherfuckers!"
Even when winning actually means losing.

And now I'm measuring how
to balance what I know in my gut
and order the things in my life
And all I want to do is lay back
and live my life as slowly as possible.
Because I know there isn't much time.
It's a familiar feeling.
It's a waste of energy that I need to think.
Pack it away.  You can cry later.
You can be pissed later.
Or never.
Fight first.
Run first.
Race time.  First.

I don't know what to do.
Maybe I'll just stand here for a minute.
Like how I do, sometimes at work,
when all I want to do is sit down,
so I do a wall squat in front of my cart.
Take a moment.
Tick, tick, tick...
Okay, break's over.
Get back in the race.

Oh there's my phone ringing with an area code
from Hammond, Indiana.
Stupid school.  Calling to ask why I haven't registered for classes yet.
Don't they know?  There isn't enough time.

Come Monday, I'll be back at work again.
Until I have enough lumps
to convince this doctor
to inject me with radioactive isotopes and stuff me in a tube
where all I have to do is lay still
and let the seconds go by
to tell me what I already know.

Live Long and Prosper

"You have such a great attitude."
"I don't know how you can be so optimistic."
"I could never be as brave as you."
"You are the strongest person I know."

I always thought it was odd for people to say these things to me while I was going through chemotherapy.  I have never believed myself to be anything but terrified during the whole process.  In fact the only thing that terrified me more was the feeling of terror itself.  The feeling of overwhelming unpredictability--the complete uncertainty of everything was paralyzing.  The only way I could cope with it was by ignoring it completely.

I actually had people become indignant at my apparent blase attitude regarding my own mortality.  I couldn't explain all of this.  I can only explain why I chose to actively work against my own consciousness.  I never want to feel that feeling ever again.

;

;

I'd been wanting to get a tattoo for some time now
but never did,
for one reason or another--who knows?
I oscillate between passionately wanting one
and thinking it's the dumbest idea.
A friend suggested I get a tattoo of a semicolon.
It's supposed to mean that I didn't choose to end my life
that I didn't put a period at the end of the sentence
that is my existence.
Choose life.
I laughed and said:
"I don't know if I subscribe to that school of thought."
thinking, the whole time
about how I still have this plan
to kill myself should it become necessary.

This is my new norm.
Cancer changed me fundamentally.
The person I've become--
I don't know her,
I don't even recognize when she's taken over my mouth--
I space out and when I've returned
the people around me have lost interest--
all have this look of pity and discomfort.

I realize I've turned into this self-absorbed, 

waxing, maudlin,

walking container of self-pity

until you can smell it oozing from my pores--

this is too heavy--
I close my mouth and scrabble for something uplifting.
There isn't.

This is my truth and it is

the only thing I have to offer at the moment.

What a downer.  Mood killer.

Give that chick a wide berth.

I keep waiting for that feeling of relief--
that feeling of regaining my life
of joy
of victory--
that feeling that I've beat cancer.
But it never comes.

Every month that ticks by
I think: "One month closer to when
this cancer comes back
and I have to do this shit all over again
--maybe.  Or maybe there's nothing to do
and I'll have to think about the train tracks again."

And every step I try to move forward
school, career, dating
I think to myself: "What's the point?"
School means more debt,
that those who survive me will have to carry.
Dating means disclosing that
I'm a time-bomb.  Maybe.
How do you live with that uncertainty?

And when someone points out that
no one else knows when their time will come
I just want to punch them in the face.
"It's not the fucking same!" I want to scream.
It's just an abstract idea for you.
For me, every cold I get--
every blood test--
every time I go to bed late after coming home from work
late, working for the insurance that doesn't seem to cover enough
and my heart races from fatigue
or my mouth is dry
or I feel hot, or wake up sweating
I think, "It's back.  It's back.  God, it's back."

It's living with fear every day.
Living with no hope.  Every day.
Living with nothing to look forward to.
No money to do those things of enjoyment.
Every day.
Trapped.  Just trapped.

Having cancer didn't build me up.
It stripped me of what was left of me.
I stripped me of joy, of hope
of thinking about the future
or planning.

It's like addiction
or depression.
Every time you think you're better
your life is trampled.
You can't make plans because your disease
is just laughing at you.
And every time, you're humiliated
by how you've gotten nowhere.
Your body failed you.
Again.
And again.
And again.
You have to carry it forever.
You have to fight forever.
You stop smiling.
Everyone else is laughing and drinking
and getting married
and having kids
and buying houses
and hosting parties
traveling on their dream vacations
even just working and being fulfilled
and you're just trying
to get through to the next minute
without drowning in the uncertainty.

All I see is Mother Nature.
The things that used to take my breath away
with beauty and power
I now bow to, in awe--not the awe of worship and love
but the awe one feels when you know
you're in the presence of something that can snuff you out
in a millisecond, and nothing you do can change that.
Raze all of your hopes and dreams and plans.
You are powerless.

I used to look at the stars and marvel

at how enormous the galaxy was.

It gave me comfort that no matter how overwhelming my life was 

no matter how terrible it felt

I was just a tiny speck on a tiny blue marble in a millisecond of time.

I used to feel comforted in my insignificance.

And now I just want to scream "Fuck you!

Why?  I don't feel lucky to have been born.

I don't feel appreciative for the chance to exist when none of the other potential

combinations of gametes never came to fruition

I didn't fucking ask for this, but You brought me here--to what?

Fuck me again?

To shove my face in my own insignificance?

Fuck you!"

And when you pause

to draw breath--your tantrum has left you breathless--you get this sense that 

Mother Nature is staring into your eyes
and unmoved by your passionate outburst 

and you're just

fucked.
She doesn't care about giving people hope.
She just is.
She's just the raw power of evolution,

this world of clumps of stardust, pressed together

to millions of degrees, so hot she glowed white with molten lava.

Her waters were here when the surface of the earth was only a Miller-Urey experiment, transmuting water

methane, ammonia, hydrogen

into organic compounds.

And she will be here far after humans are gone,

when our last monuments have long been defeated

by her rain, and wind

and all that is left of us are our teeth.

The earth spinning without you,
taunting you
You are not fit for survival.

How do you go back to living like you did before?
Mitigate this feeling of insignificance?
Why bother?  Why even get a tattoo?
In the end, it's just ink on a corpse.

I Stayed My Hand on a Dandelion

I stayed my hand on a dandelion--
those posing infestations that leave brown streaks
on shirts
and overtake gardens one property at a time
until whole blocks suffocate in their white fluff.
(I behead them with vengeful satisfaction.)
I stayed my hand because atop the next one
there was a bee
with orange globes of pollen bulging
like two bitty balloons on her legs.
I'm surprised she could still fly.
"Silly thing," I thought, "don't you know
dandelions don't need you to pollenate?"
But this is the first time I've seen a bee,
so I stayed my hand, in hopes that one day
if my actions seem to others
wretched or of little value,
or the work I give goes unthanked,
someone will stay their hand from uprooting it
if for nothing else than the fact that I
am such an unordinary sigh, and let me have
my dandelion

The Problem With Believing in the Return of God

The problem with believing in the return of God

hinging on the end of the present earth

is that it permits complacency.
It allows you

to throw up your hands when things seem impossible.
It distracts you with the superficial--feeding the poor,
helping the sick--
you spend your life cursing and
vainly hacking at the growth above the ground,
while ignoring the roots.

When you say: "Thank God the Lord is coming back."

It takes away the weight of your responsibility 

To society,

To participate in society,

To try to make the world a better place,

Because you believe you are not of this world

And that this world must end

You have no investment in laboring to preserve it

Or to improve it.