I am, I take, I feel, I want

I am a woman - 39 years old.

I take with me on this journey, wisdom from tears and pain

I feel that there is a greater meaning to life and love than meets the eye

I want to find the answers but know instinctively that they come from within


comfort
comfort


chicken soup
rainy days
a warm bed
and love

comfort
comfort


growing older
passing through cataclysmic depressions
clawing out a path from mania
emerging bruised, bloody but alive


comfort
comfort


I am
I take
I feel
I want

from deep within
the home of my knowing
guides me through
these dark times

a letter to a friend...

seems like words really do heal, or at dull the sting of pain and confusion


My mom just spoke to my aunt and uncle.
Apparently my aunt's WBC is all over the map and has some sort of chest cold so they will have to delay, if not totally abandon the idea of chemo.
They spoke to the oncology ward to sign a do not resuscitate order.

The next topic was about the news, what they saw on cnn, what my grandmother has been up to, the weather here and in calgary...

It is just so surreal.
I've decided to burn the latest issue of Oprah magazine. My mom got it for me because she said that Oprah has this new thing that she did on one show about "People who are bi-polar coming out in the open with this disease" and thought it would inspire me. But in between each glossy perfume/Maybellene/Moschino ad is a reminder:
run for the breast cancer cure event"
"find a cure for breast cancer",
"Melanoma killed my sister..."

It's fucken everywhere and I feel as if we have nowhere to hide

When I spoke to my aunt, she said that she preferred to die this way - that getting hit by a car would just be too messy - this way she was hoping she would go in her sleep, at least peacefully.

I am so numb right now.
my mom is in shock and my 85 year old grandmother a basket case - she's too old and too weak to take a 4+hour flight to calgary. Imagine the feeling of knowing that your youngest daughter is about to die and you can't even be by her side when she goes.

Life...
Life?


Life followed by three ellipses that don't always mean "forever and ever".

I can't help but think what a mess it will be when we go down there for the funeral, and how I'll have to pick up the pieces of my mom when we get back, not to mention how I will deal with it. We will deal with it the best that we can, but it's draining all the energy out of me as I try to silence the manic demons that compel me to throw all caution to the wind and skip town, fly to Greece and start a new life as an English teacher, learning to love seafood and ouzo just to get away from all this pain in this what has become for me, a city of pain and sadness. No wonder that when I come back from NYC, I fall into a depression for weeks on end.

And the mouse on the wheel is running furiously from the demons around the corner - the cancer that may or may not one day, effect me directly as well. Despite deep breathing exercises and long yogic stretches, panic has become a part of my unconscious daily ritual as waking up to pee at 4am.

I'm hiding. I know I should come out to play - see other people and embrace the warmth and support that you all can give, but there is a fear there too, and I can't figure out why that is...

Perhaps it's just a fear - of everything right now. I'm even afraid of myself.
So please don't think that I am hiding because I'm stubborn or I don't want to see you, I'm just in a really dark corner of my mind right now.

Perhaps I feel that If I open the floodgates, I might just lose control - and all the puss of sadness and fear after dealing with my mom's cancer will suffocate me while on its way out.

My tear ducts are getting heavy - packing their suitcases of saltwater to take with me to Calgary and back.

why?
why

I don't think we'll ever know the answer, and perhaps that may be one of the reasons I fear life.

who the fuck knows.
I'm weeping now and everything disappears into a dark tunnel of need.

Fucken hell.

Sorry about this. I had to rant, but to begin to let this out a little at a time - through the only way that has served me well over the past 3 years - letting my fingers get lost in the motion of automatically channeling this deep confusion and sadness into a cushioned sentence where exclamation and question marks can't touch me.

hiatus

Funny how things come to an end

but who likes endings?

Funny how I've temporarily closed the chapter on my flickr account. The "pro" account runs out in October, but I don't think I'll renew it too soon...

Funny how that was one of the places I felt safest, where I could share myself through my images.
That place is changing - people come and go now. It's odd.

All good things must come to an end was a post on somebody's last photo upload.

With so much death around me, I can't help but feeling weepy at the drop of a goodbye...

Mom told me that one of the professors in the department - his niece had melanoma but it has spread to her brain. I winced in fear.

that's one of the places it spreads...

all I could say was "holy fuck"

and she's young, only 38...

After hearing stories like this, I can't help but thank God my body is cancer free and hopefully will be for the rest of my life on this earth, but the statistics are staggering - now it's one in 3?

Why is there no cure?
Where has all the money gone?
Will there be any cure as long as pharmaceutical companies hold the chemical formulas in their greedy hands?

My aunt wrote a beautiful email to my mother today. Mom was shocked. Said it was the most touching thing that she has ever heard from her sister - ever.

I wonder what I would write if I knew I only had a few months to live?

I try not to think about it, get myself sick over it, but this anvil of death and all things related to it, the tension in the rope over my head is starting to weaken and my options for shelter are getting smaller and smaller in circumference. Spinning in one spot - spinning and crying.

Another woman who we know through the office left us a message - her mother had just died. D's mother passed away two weeks ago...

All this death.
I don't think I could ever remember a time when I felt so fragile and alone, and think this what be what it feels like working in an oncology ward.

these people check in but never leave...

I must remain strong, and hold the belief that I was put here on this planet to share my stories and vision, and that until then, by the grace of God, will allow me enough time to complete this task, journey, mission.

And now to sleep - ah perchance to sleep and then wake up when I want to...

laugh medicine

I keep on watching this
It's my happy medicine for now

God knows we all need it...
http://www.ifilm.com/video/2897025

(damm. It seems as if this video has been yanked - it was a clip of Colbert heaving over the sight of a mayo martini that some restaurant in China was marketing. Thank God I've tvo'd it. It's priceless)

4 months

it's official.
My aunt (mom's sister) has 4 months to live

the cancer has spread throughout her body
Pancreas and now to liver

How ironically poetic that my mom broke their silence after so many years only a few months ago.

I was so close to my aunt - the only family I had really, and soon she will be gone.

We are never ready for death, and is that a good thing or bad?

sorrow and pain is part of my landscape now
cloudy days and nights

it's everywhere...

Another family member has cancer.

Does cancer run in my family, or are we all victims to the chemicals around us?

Mother (melanoma) - currently in remission
Father (Bladder) - currently in remission
Grandmother (mother's side) - brother - lymphoma -currently in remission
Grandfather (mother's side) bladder (RIP)
Great Grandfather (mother's side) liver/lung (RIP)

and the latest and most devastating:
Aunt (mother's mother) - liver cancer/possibly pancreatic
Pancreatic being one of the most deadly.

I was close to my aunt when I was a kid. She was the only family I had. My father's side all lived in Vancouver, and we lost touch after the divorce. My cousin (my aunt's daughter) is the little sister I never had.

They are all in Calgary now - which seems so very very far away now.

All that butterfly shit seems so incidental now, and just questions remain as to why this happens to so many people.

why?
and why...

all this on the anniversary of September 11th.

So many people dying/dead - such a senseless reason

May God bless them all.