Surfer Girl

I got some great results yesterday. In fact I was told that I looked great physically on the outside and the inside; my colonoscopy revealed that I am almost healed. On the one hand it's great. I am out of the woods. But on the other hand, it isn't my body that healed itself. It was the drugs. Our agressive tactics worked. But the word 'healed' is really a misnomer; I am not healed. This is a chronic illness that only has one cure, removal of the entire large intestine. Nobody advised cutting back or completely ceasing the fun drugs that I am currently taking. But for the first time in months, I woke up today craving coffee and I took out my old friend, my Mr. Coffee coffee-maker that's been in hiding since August and made a pot of coffee, encouraging. I missed it. And I missed wanting it. Mornings felt weird without either my desire for coffee or actually having coffee. I wanted coffee viagra. It's been strange to have completely different likes and dislikes and habits and needs for the past three months. And I just got one back.
But I am confused. I don't know how to feel about these 'great' results besides taking solace in the fact that I have a great doctor who got me out of the woods. But I still don't know what the rest of my life will be like. Will it ever be back to where it was before this happened? Is remission in my future? It didn't seem very likely at the last 'state of the union' meeting between my doctor, my dad and I. At that meeting we discussed my three long term life options, none of which appealed to me. And after the horror and hell and insanity of the past three months, could I be ever the person I was before this happen. After this wake-up call. I'm afraid I'll be forever looking over my shoulder and paranoid about every slight pain or minor physical abnormality I experience. This is a hollow victory if it even is a victory.

So I leave for Mexico today. I am going back to the same place I went last year a week before my 29th birthday conveniently a wedged right between the time Illinois got married and my grandmother went into the hospital. On the plane I wrote:


"I am trying to let go of the sadness, resentment, anger, bitterness, victim feelings, heartache, despair, betrayal. I want to shrug it all off and live without. Now the next question is who am I without that. That's been who I am what I've done my identity above all to myself for the past ten months. It will be difficult to change who I perceive myself to be and scary to go out into the world expecting life and business as usual instead of the worst, most tragic things to happen to me. A challenge. I don't want anymore. I want to sit back and relax. I am out of energy. I am out of fight. I want life to be like the ocean. Waves coming in and out regularly, soothingly. Expectantly. Normally. I want the ebbs and flows of a regular life to return to me. I want this tug in my heart to go away. I want to to live in the present and no longer in in the past. I want. I want. I want."


I can't say I achieved "normalcy" in the past year since then but I have let go of all of the crippling, defeatist feelings that characterized where I was last year. I am in the present tense and not living in the past nor through the victim filter. My identity to myself has changed. I have accepted that I am not in control yet I continue to box on bobbing and weaving my way through this new set of challenges, still hoping for the regularity of waves coming in and coming out but knowing that there are devastating tsunamis and even waves are not always predictable like clockwork. And when life is predictable you stop really living; life is on auto-pilot and you cease noticing and reacting and absorbing. It is when life's circumstances take you out of your norm that you get a chance to actually live. That's when you are most aware. You get the chance to strut your stuff and use your tools and show yourself what you've got. That's called surfing I think. Maybe I'll try some of that this week.