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.
Stage Left..........Stage Right........Stage Four 