Hey all.
So, yes...I've been very absent from the blog. Not a deliberate choice--just been busy.
Busy with work. Busy having a social life.
Busy not having cancer.
Full disclosure:
There are some days where I'm afraid that I'll wake up and that none of this is real: That I'm not living with my girlfriend and building a future and being social and taking trips and feeling legitimately good and stress free for the first time in years.
It doesn't always seem real, this whole remission thing.
I'm so damn lucky and so damn happy right now that writing in what was mostly, as much as I tried to avoid it, a melancholy blog--has felt wrong.
I started it to share a serious experience and try and take some of the heaviness out of it when I could, but ultimately, no, cancer isn't fun.
The idea of smothering people who read this with how great things are makes me uncomfortable. I'm not one to gloat about my good fortune. I know everyone has their quiet battles going on, and that no one person's problem, not even cancer, is necessarily more important than someone else's.
It's all relative.
No one likes having other people's obnoxious happiness in their face all the time, right?
That being said--I'm happy. Really fucking happy.
And lucky.
I have an ugly reminder every three weeks when I go to Ann Arbor for chemo, but it's useful. It provides some excellent clarity over the next 21 days as to just how good I have it.
I went into remission. I celebrated. I ate foods and drank liquids I hadn't been allowed to eat or drink much over the previous two years. I felt myself comfortably sliding into some of the old habits that probably contributed to me getting sick in the first place.
I got fat(ter). Which was great. It was nice to eat hearty and feel good.
Then it donned on me, with some major help from Emma and my sister Sara who has lost like 40 pounds and is a stone cold fox but should probably still not ever have a boyfriend (kidding), that falling into the same routine, the same habits of my previous lifestyle, adopting the same attitudes and schedule from before all of this--was doing myself an enormous disservice.
"Non sum qualis eram."
Latin for:
"I am not such as I was."
I'm not. I have changed.
Physically, sure. I've got the scars to prove it and MY HAIR IS CURLY NOW WHAT THE FUCK I don't like it.
It's the other stuff that matters.
Cancer helped that happen, and to deny it and pretend I could comfortably slip back into the "old me" was naive.
I see just about everything differently.
I'm not telling you that I've taken some profound leap in any particular direction. Just that I've been taking seriously an attempt to eat healthy and be active.
To do positive things with my time and make plans for my future.
To live in the moment and enjoy the presence of my friends and family and to just shut the hell up and stop complaining and use the stressors in my life as calls to action instead of paralyzing uncertainty and to tell the people I love that I love them and to suffer no fools and waste no time and just be fucking happy.
I haven't found faith--not for me.
I haven't given up eating the occasional big meal or going out for drinks--never will.
I'm not a poster child for health--unless the poster is for someone bearded and overweight.
I'm not saying I'm immune to having bad days and letting the daily grind get to me--that's just not my nature.
I don't think I've got it "figured out" and I'm not sure if they way I go about things is right or wrong or would work for anyone else or even if it will work for me long term--but I don't care. It's working now.
I'm not skipping down the street smiling at everyone.
I haven't had some major "ah-ha" moment and found my "life's purpose" and I'm still mostly the cynical and sarcastic and sometimes grumpy jerk that I was before.
I'm still me.
A happier me.
A BEARDED ME AGAIN AHHHHH.
A slightly-less-but-still-kinda-chubby-but-working on it me.
And finally--hopefully--a better me. Thanks to cancer.
The amazing people in my life.
And all of you.
I'm still me, but:
Non Sum Qualis Eram.
