I’m angry.
Things went all ‘silent violence’ at our house today. There is no one reason why. I suppose it’s a collection of things. Evan doesn’t process his feelings with words and I don’t process them without them, so here we are, at a common impasse where we’re both giving each other what we need for the other but not for ourselves. On our more capable days we can, but not today. Not at this moment.
We’re probably just hungry. And tired. And over it. SO over it. We know our fatal mistake. We watched it happen in slow motion. So predictable this place we are now that it makes me even angrier because it feels like a shitty horror movie where the soon-to-be gored just mosey down the bloody stairs to the basement to investigate the echoing voices of ghosts girl/animal/alien. Making me angrier still is that I also have all the tools to unravel it back but I just…can’t.
The fatal mistake? Having expectations. This week marks halfway through treatment assuming it continues to work. Leaving the hospital Wednesday, we expected to have sunshine coming out of our asses to be home and to begin planning for the future. Instead, I just felt sick and sick of complaining about, writing about, answering questions about being sick. Everywhere I look today I see limits - no travel adventures, no public spaces, no energy to get off the couch, no regular sleep or creative energy, no standing in the sunshine without getting a weird rash all over my body. I want to, I know all the hacks and handy tools to find the good in this, but every corner I look around I’m met with more anger. Since anger is demanding my full attention, I’m going to give it its moment to rage.
Surely one cannot be furious while in a hammock…right?
Things I’m angry about today:
That I’ve put 20+ years into meditation, yoga, journaling, massage, studying the wisdom of others, giving myself Goggin’s-style pep talks, and I’m still learning the same lessons
Doing all those things AND being a (mostly) vegan grass-fed organic granola-eating life optimizer who always tips 20%, pays her taxes, returns the rogue carts at the grocery store, de-escalates furious retail customers for a living, saves for retirement, pets all the neighborhood animals, and still gets cancer at 40
Being so entitled to think morality can be placed on some BS hierarchical scale and because I do all the things in the above two bullet points that I somehow should be saved from suffering
Evan’s life has been put on hold and I have no way to help him navigate this as I don’t know what I’m doing either. That there is not enough energy from others given to him. That he is misunderstood and underappreciated and some of his friends bailed on him in this but he’ll never say anything to them. That I want him to go off and do his thing but I also feel anxiety when he is away. That it’s not fair for him either.
People are just walking around complaining about their dopy co-workers or steep lumber prices or not getting the best service at the airport on their way to their luxury vacation
I’ll never catch up on thank you notes or art projects
The stand-up desk I’m writing this on that we spend too much money on has never worked and I don’t know how to fix it and their website gives me no answers (and that now I sound like the people who complain about their luxury vacation. sigh)
Evan just came back from Home Depot and we had a mini chat about the backyard edging project. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Yeah,” I said quietly, “just writing, working through some things.” In writing this, the steely edge of the anger is gone and will soften more as the day goes on. We will talk later, laughter will return so will hope and gratitude and all those things I couldn’t access while enraged.
It will be the instinct of others when I share I’m angry to try and save me or offer distractions from it, especially the women in my life.** Don’t. Anger works as a power washer for my heart, blasting away the stuckness by demanding I look at the ugly things I don’t otherwise give myself permission to. There is a time for water, for flowing conversation and contemplation between partners and self, and a time for fire when it all gets burned down hot and quick. (insert phoenix rising from the ashes metaphor here)
I recorded this less than 24-hours before learning I most likely have cancer. On one hand, I could point out the drastic swing in life perspectives and on the other, I still strongly stand by my opinions in this video. Suck it craisins.