Ok, stay with me here. The next couple sentences seem unrelated, but if you stick with me I think you'll find the segue.
I've tried pretty hard to avoid writing much about my "journey" this past year. Mostly because I live it every day, so adding another dimension to it just seemed excessive.
(As an aside, I just don't get why so many people refer to having cancer as a "journey." I think it would be more accurately described as a deep dive into Hell. Nobody wants to go on that trip. If my travel agent had booked this "journey" for me I would post a scorchingly bad Yelp review.)
Anyway, I am finding that while this is not a "journey" I would have chosen to take (I like Olivia's journey much, much better), I nonetheless am a changed person because of it. My way of looking at the world, and my place in it, has shifted.
I found out that I need help. Not "Call 911!" kind of help. Just everyday life help. We ALL need help. But don't you find that there are lots of times when you won't ask for it because that would mean you think that you couldn't get the job done by yourself? I did a million things by myself for no reason other than I really enjoyed congratulating myself on what a great job I did all by myself. But this past year, there were things I couldn't do. Really basic things, like getting out of bed, or more recently riding a bike. When did we start thinking that doing something alone is a greater accomplishment than doing something with help from others? Asking for or accepting help is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of being human. I've learned to ask for it when I need it, and accept it when it's offered.
Also, if I see something positive, I try to say something positive. Example #1: a young woman walking toward me was wearing a t-shirt that read, "You can sit with us." I love that. That is a message of inclusivity in an age of bullying. So as I passed her I said, "I love your shirt." She smiled and said thank you. No big deal. Not hard to do. And she got some support for being supportive. Example #2: the other morning I was at the gym, sitting on a recumbent bike wishing I was able to run. Kind of feeling sorry for myself. I started watching this petite woman doing TRX pull-ups and pushups. Then she would do them sideways on one arm. And then she got into a pushup formation but instead of doing pushups she did a running motion with her legs. WHILE SHE WAS IN PUSHUP FORMATION! If you can't picture this, let me help you:
Okay, so pretty damn impressive. If I tried this--well let's be honest, I wouldn't even be able to get into this position because I would do a face plant as my legs would be swinging wildly out of control. So again, pretty damn impressive. As I walked from my pity party on the recumbent bike over to my post-pity party on the sit-up bench, I paused briefly at the TRX bands and said to the woman, "You are a badass." She looked around and then at me and said, "Me?" I repeated, "You are a badass! That is so hard to do and you're making it look so easy." She almost started crying. "Thank you. Thank you so much. I've just had such a terrible year and my anxiety... anyway, you just made my day. Thank you." A year ago I would have watched her and thought to myself, I bet I could do that if I tried (which would have been me deluding myself, by the way). And that would have been the end of it. I likely never would have given her a second thought. These days I'm happy to share my admiration. I make a point of it.
And people are being quite lovely about sharing their happiness for me.
One more story about me at the gym. Dave and I have been going to the gym almost every day since he retired. But then BLAMMO! I'm not at the gym for months. Then I'm back at the gym a couple of days a week, bald, in a hip/knee brace and on crutches. I'm super self-conscious, and I have to figure out what I am able to do (because it's definitely not the elliptical that I used to do). Fast forward a few months and I'm going almost every day with just crutches. And then... TA DAH! I'm back at the gym daily with no external apparatus whatsoever (and hair on my head!). During that whole transition at the gym, I didn't talk to many people. If I saw someone I knew, I tried to avoid them. I thought I did a pretty good job of going about my business and going unnoticed. Funny thing, though, is that people had noticed me, and they were rooting for me. Every time I showed up with one less piece of equipment, someone I didn't know would congratulate me. A man who I recognized because he was always working out at the same time as me but whom I had never spoken to stopped me to say how happy he was for me and ask me if I was feeling better without my spica brace. Another man who was always sitting on a bike near mine said he noticed I was off my crutches and that I was moving just great! Those are just two of the probably five or six people who made a point of telling me how well they thought I was doing and how they could see how hard I was working. I guess all of this could have made me feel self-conscious, but it did the opposite, because people kind of sounded like they were truly sharing in the excitement of my victories.
I have my days, my moments, of course, that are hard. My "journey" (aka my crappy crapfest) has physically impacted me greatly in ways that are still hard to come to terms with. Running was my zen, my path to attaining challenging goals. Admitting that running may not be in the cards is hard. But that's all I'm willing to commit to at this point--that it MAY not happen. Because even though my crappy crapfest of a journey has changed me, as journeys do, I'm still stubbornly hanging on to the parts of me that have gotten me to this point.
I think most of all this crappy crapfest of a year has turned me into someone who notices and appreciates life's little moments and victories. And conversely, I care less about things that might have previously agitated me. If I notice that your hair looks nice, I'm going to tell you. If a driver cuts me off in the parking lot, I'm not wasting any energy on it. If there's a speck of good in the "woe-is-me" story you're telling, that's where I'm steering the conversation.
My place in the world is firmly rooted where there is ample light and silver linings.
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