Every year for the last 24 years I have used my birthday as an opportunity to reflect back on an experience that loomed large in my personal biography: my diagnosis with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma on the day of my 23rd birthday. (You can read past blog entries about it here, here, here and here.) It has been a good practice, a cyclically occurring opportunity to ever more deeply appreciate and commit to the hard-won lessons and transformations that that moment birthed for me, and to the person I’ve become. I’ve also used it as an opportunity to enthusiastically remind myself that I am still here, and that no matter how chaotic or tragic life sometimes feels, it beats the alternative. Life is complicated, yes (and it grows ever more so as I age); but it is good and I am glad to be still around to appreciate it.
Ah, but this year is a particularly complicated and emotionally-mixed birthday. I can’t celebrate my “still here, fuck you cancer!” anniversary with the complete, 100% positive feeling of victory that I used to...because here I am again, dealing with cancer (and not even close to done with this phase yet). And it’s a bigger threat this time: the treatments will not be so easy to get through, and the overall narrative feels like it has escalated closer to pessimism (because the second time you have cancer you are in a different story than “I had it once and I beat it”). There is a more urgent sense of existential angst and fear of the unknown that is back again now after having finally been beaten back by decades of watching the cancer experience slowly recede in the rearview mirror. It’s scarier than I remember. In fact I think this is the most consistently anxious and scared I’ve ever been. I'm trying to stay emotionally open and "keep it 100", but it's both difficult and humbling.
In addition, this particular birthday marks a sort of last hurrah or farewell to my “normal” life for a while, since I start chemo treatments tomorrow and that is going to be a tough row to hoe for a while (not to mention the recovery from the double mastectomy to follow). So it was important to me to celebrate as fully and joyfully as possible by doing as many of the things I love as possible. I’m happy to report that I was pretty successful at that celebrating stuff...successful enough to have delayed writing this blog post for close to a week. I ate delicious food with people I adore, I got all dressed up in fabulous outfits (twice!) and played amongst the art with friends at the Edwardian Ball, I saw amazing acrobatics and listened to excellent music, I talked and laughed and processed with my peeps. It was as good as a birthday gets...and possibly even a little more sweet than usual given the knowledge that it represented an ending of sorts.
But now the birthday is over, the celebratory excitement fading away into noise like the last notes of a pop song being talked over by an obnoxious DJ. And I find myself finally with enough space to think through what those hard-won lessons from past birthday reflections mean to me today, right now, facing cancer again and feeling slightly less confident about the outcome. Am I still convinced that cancer can be a gift? (Yes. Albeit a gift no one wants.) Have my priorities clarified again, like I wanted? (Yes. But there’s more going on and more at stake now so it’s more complicated to prioritize in a linear fashion.) Did I take my good health for granted? (Yes. Dammit, yes. It’s so hard not to.) Am I still brave and strong, tempered by my trip through the valley of fire? (Yes. In fact, it does me definite good to remind myself of that here on the eve of starting my chemo treatments.) Are other people still scared of illness, and occasionally having difficulty responding to me in the way that I’d prefer? (Of course. And I still have compassion for that.) Am I still unafraid of dying? (Mostly...but see above re: things being harder now that there’s more at stake.)
There are other lessons, but I’m finding myself particularly caught up again in this one tonight:
Sometimes you just have to (literally or metaphorically) lie there and breathe. Nothing else is expected of you; nothing else is needed. Movement will resume in good time.
And so will hair, and so will energy; so will art and optimism, helpfulness and good works. All things will return, God willing and the creek don’t rise. Even though I’m still in the middle of the learning, I sincerely believe that I’ll still be reflecting on those past lessons and any new lessons learned this time around for the next 20-something years.