My rant for the year, because you should only be allowed one or less: I grew up in a patriarchal religious home and the antidote to feeling hopeless has always been to be as self deprecating as possible and let others speak their truths without speaking mine so that they felt comfortable around me. If I accomplished something amazing, it was notably not as good as it could have been and how embarrassing for me! Love was to be admitted only in moments of catastrophe. When boys fell in love with me it was, Wow, how nice of them! Then cancer because of COURSE you got cancer--you drink gallons of Diet Coke and youre fat and you must not be right with God! Then lots of I could NEVER lose my hair and go through chemo! As if cancer and the inevitable physical changes that come with it are reserved for those of us who tend to humility while those more vain are kept from such terrible things like the scars that run up my back and breast like carvings, or the space on my chest where my port was, still painful to the touch all this time later. How ridiculous that any of these things occurred or that I continue to believe I am undeserving and under educated and unaccomplished or that I have always kept the majority of my diagnoses from family and friends because I didnt want to interrupt their lives. Then, Kenya died and I was slammed into a new space. There is no reason Kenya is gone and Im not. We had the same cancer, the same prognosis and the same lifestyle. And we believed all the same things that had been taught to us. While every part of my being is gutted and leveled by the loss of her, I am thankful for the new way Im able to view the world. Im not going to listen to people who cry through sermons and religious songs but who continually make the choices to live opposed to basic human kindness. Im not going to enable other peoples bad behavior simply because Im afraid theyll be mad at me or take it out on the people I love and I regret that I did it for so long. What I am going to do is be thankful and loving of the life I have and the being that I am. I am thankful for my beautiful face with its over exaggerated expressions and my amazing body that knows how to beat cancer like its my job and my mind that earned a masters degree and my heart that loves everyone even when thy dont reciprocate. Im not searching for anything; I am content my life is more amazing than I could have wished for. I am thankful for the life Ive already lived because, as Jim Harrison reminds us, that IS our life. Thank you, my beautiful Kenya for giving me this new life. Thank you for your final letter, thank you for living your life with true sacrifice, loyalty, kindness and with the most amazing mind Ive ever met. I love you Kenny and I love the light you left on behind you.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 23:23:37 +0000
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