Fomenting Discontent…or let sleeping dogs sleep!

Just a very short-timer blogger I am.  Once the idea  to blog about stage four life percolated for a while, I believed that having a somewhat anonymous place to air the raw-side of my emotions and fears and rants about stage four cancer would be therapeutic. When talking with friends and family (and sometimes total strangers), it is a blend of candid speaking and tip-toe-ing as I select the words to share what’s going on health-wise and emotionally with me. While my cancer seems to doze, my feelings are not always so inclined.

Now I am not so sure that dredging up, examining, and exploring my feelings is good.  Or therapeutic. I am not known for suppressing my emotions (ask my husband about my outbursts), but this feels a little like making rootbeer. (A family tradition going back to the 1930’s, but I digress) Water, sugar, rootbeer extract, and then some yeast to get fermentation going and a warm place to let those yeast fester out of control. After I write a blog, like my holiday meltdown, it ferments in my brain for a long time, growing like yeast and bubbling out of control like root beer until something that I could have dismissed as silly or insignificant has taken on a life of its own.

When I was little (well, let’s say pre-adolescent) and was upset about something in our family or my parents’ decisions, etc, I found it easiest to write them a letter about the gross injustice or wrong I had suffered at their hands, totally my perception.  I was usually quite emotional as I wrote, and I wish I had one of those letters because I think it would be hilarious to read today.  Most, but not all, of those letters were delivered.  Most, but not all, were treated with respect.  I learned to think of writing as a way to process and resolve problems and issues.  I still do.

I want my stage four struggles to be processed, to be aired, but then let go.  To nap undisturbed a little longer, to settle quietly as an issue no longer worth time to fuss about, to be quiet like my cancer, blessedly, is now.  And let me simply live.

Holiday Meltdown

By now I know that holidays have lost something since my stage four diagnosis…perhaps their lighthearted joy, their revelry in family togetherness, the quiet times shared with others just don’t feel the same for me anymore.  Day to day I manage well, I manage normally, I live fully. I am enjoying my life very much, keep it coming. But the holiday comes and I (notice that I…it is important) create a world of unreasonable expectations, like I want to create perfection for others, I think, but it’s really perfection for me.  I want it to be a perfect holiday for me.

Which I am simply doomed to fail.  So this year’s holiday meltdown should have been expected.

Here is some of my unreasonableness that I can share candidly and you can shake your head at and say no wonder.  Or maybe you’ll understand if you’re walking my walk, because my family tries but really doesn’t get it.

1.  Their Christmas will never be the same after I am gone because who will make all the holiday gifts and bake the cookies that are tradition and adorn the house with decorations I have crafted through the years?  This is a silly one.  They can bake or buy the cookies or treats they want, and this year’s $5 Christmas had some wonderfully-creatively-selected-purchased gifts.  The decorations, just like the kitchen towels that will reside in the bathroom, heavens who can tell the difference, will go anywhere they want to.  It will be different, but it will be Thanksgiving or Christmas or Fourth of July (what, without my homemade marshmallows and graham crackers for smores?) that evolves into new traditions and memories.

2.  I want to fit everything memorable into each holiday to savor and to remember.  That is a recipe for disaster!  Especially when I paint a Norman Rockwell setting where everyone puts together the puzzle, has conversation at the table, creates something together from that year that is special, takes long walks, and plans outings together.  I worked really hard not to be the “camp director” nor “camp kitchen queen” which I assume when no one else seems to be stepping forward.  That’s because their vision of a relaxing holiday and mine are at odds, and I need to  let people simply be and do.  But it drove me crazy, all the time together in silence, everyone plugged into something separate whether it was a book, a game, a phone.  I feel lonelier in the hours of silence surrounded by family than I do when I am in the same room alone.  I really tried, gave it several hours, and then I melted into a puddle.  Pretty pathetic.

3.  A square peg in a round hole.  Cancer does set me apart in my outlook on life, it just does.  I have had more than 20 years on this journey, and this one does not end with a cure and a trip to Disneyland.  It doesn’t end in a bad place either, but as much as I can filter out its implications, I struggle to do so at the holidays.  In the midst of my meltdown, I felt like I was stuck with the wrong family in the wrong place and wrong time.  I felt like I was already gone.

I was chagrined to have dissolved into tears (even though I did it on the beach out of their hearing) and then, since that wasn’t enough, gave my husband an earful later.  Natural, perhaps. But not the way I want to be and want to live. I am thinking maybe redefining the holidays in a less-traditional way so that I am not sucked into this pity party ever again.

Another day…another mistake!

Stereotypically, and perhaps truthfully, stage four-ers know how to appreciate the gift of each day.  Yes, I am blessed to see another sunrise, savor the beauty of the world I live in, treasure special times with loved ones, and fantasize about this Hallmark World I am describing.  While I am able to eek out these moments when I am not emptying the dishwasher, working on the checkbook, or getting up in the dark to trek to chemo, what is closer to the truth is…

The gift of each day is another chance to make another mistake! Screw up!  Goof up but good! Make a mess out of something or other!

Here are a few of the recent ones that are “been there, done that” which should be enough to prevent future stupidness.  But you see, I wouldn’t mind the stupidness again if a promised future comes with it.

1.  Trying to melt frozen hummingbird feeders in the oven at the lowest temperature possible…and still getting plastic bottle meltdowns.

2.  Forgetting that the property tax was due…and not having the funds, so deferring payment on the credit card with its commensurate high interest…and forgetting I have a home equity line of credit with a livable rate.  Forget-squared!

3.  Buying ruffle fabric and expecting to sew it with ease.  Ha!  Those slippery frilly slices of fabric wiggle this way and that as I stitch, and I pull out the threads, and restitch.  Repeat that last line.

4.  On a fabric mode, buying a kit of small little hexagons that need to be hand stitched around a pieces  of cardboard templates (later removed).  Did I mention there are a thousand hexagons?  Sounds like a Goodwill donation.

5.  Speaking of Goodwill, donating items that, doggone it, I find I need desperately the next week.

Not mistakes to shake the earth, turn my world upside down, or alter the course of history.  Most make me laugh, all offer a lesson in learning, and each is a celebration of life that offers two sides to every coin.

I wonder what mistake tomorrow holds?