The Play that is My Life

I haven’t cried since December. I’m assuming I cried sometime in December, though I can’t be sure. What I do know, I have not cried since my diagnosis a few days before Christmas, 2017. I am by no means in denial. I know my diagnosis. I know my odds. Yet somehow, I have detached myself and feel as if I am watching what I call the play that is my life. I hear and comprehend what the doctors and nurses tell me. I follow instructions. And even now, in remission, I dutifully go have my bloodwork done every other week and receive clinical trial maintenance treatment. I am even hesitant to go out of town for fear of missing a treatment or screwing up the schedule. For a long time I thought this all was positive. It kept me rational, objective. I would read about other women in similar situations who found themselves sobbing uncontrollably and I thought, I’m so glad that’s not me. I am facing this thing clear-eyed and forcefully. Crying and becoming emotional would keep me from focusing. Now I’m not so sure. I met a wonderful young woman not long ago at a couples’ retreat for women with gynecological cancers and their spouses. Bethany was outspoken, honest and funny. She was facing a very terrible diagnosis with optimism. I thought of all the women there, her situation was most dire. She had a rare, incurable cancer. I was not wrong. Today would have been Bethany’s 34th birthday, but she died yesterday. I am heartbroken. I worry about her incredibly kind, devoted husband. But I have not cried. Believe me, I would like to. I feel sick, depressed and maybe a little hopeless. My eyes fill up, but no tears flow. I know I need to talk to a professional, but I’m having a hard time finding one. The Hopkins website is impossible to navigate, and referrals I have gotten don’t seem, at least on paper, to be a good fit. In my gut I know I am going to be okay. I will get past this. Maybe I need to watch a tear-jerker movie. I need something to break the dam. I am feeling very much out of place, but I don’t know what or where my place is. Treatment took up six months of my life and while no doubt a lot of it made me sick, perhaps I miss my scheduled, regimented life. I didn’t have time or energy to think about much, if anything, else. Not crying is a symptom of my ennui. My time at the shelter is meaningful, but I realize I need something else. I know for sure I am listening to far too much news, and that in itself is quite depressing. A lot of times writing here helps me come to some answers and direction. Not today. I still am in a limbo of a sort, but perhaps it will send me in a better direction. And a good cry.

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