Eight years seems like a strange amount of time all of a sudden--both long and not long enough.
I sit here in a home inhabited by 2 eight-year-olds, and I think how many chapters in my life and theirs have been written in 8 years. It's a lot.
This cancerversary finds me in a very different place than I was last year, literally and figuratively. In the last year, I went from being on my own with Olive to moving into a home with Barry and his son. It's a new home and a new experience for all of us. We're here. We're settled in but still settling in, blending our styles and habits and stuff and getting the kids to get used to the compromises that come with more people.
Selling the house where so many giant things happened in 11 years of my life was an enormous process. I don't even know if I can put words to it now, but there was a lot of joy and hope and grief and heartbreak in those rooms. It was heavier than I was ready for, and I just needed to be done with it. That's where I'll leave it.
Barry and I are 3 1/2 years into this relationship, and I think it's helping us figure out a lot of new ways of seeing ourselves and each other. I feel like I came into this relationship with my true self pretty exposed, no modulating my persona to be what I thought my partner wanted or needed. I say to him what I need to say when I need to say it. It's nurturing and supportive and reconnecting in a way that is very private--I don't always know if other people hear too much about Barry and me because I do hold it close to the vest. I guess I'm cautious about professing to have too much certainty about what the future holds. I think I have good cause in that. But it doesn't mean it's any less fulfilling for me.
The kids, too, are a constant force to keep moving ahead with life. Single parent time was hard. Blending is hard, but when it's all clicking and everyone's having fun and enjoying the moment, it's pretty cool.
And I can say all this and focus on all this because I'm in such a different place. The regular dread about a cancer recurrence is not part of my daily life. Getting my oopherectomy really changed the feeling entirely and reassures me I've done all I can to stay well. I am mentally through the hardest parts. For now. There is always the unknown, but it's not going to define how I view my life at this time.
At one point, I thought I was going to know when I reached my new normal after cancer. This may be as close a time as any, but I don't think I want that anymore--with it can come a complacency. I had a weird moment today in the grocery store parking lot. I don't know if you'll agree with me, but the grocery store parking lot is where some peak obliviousness was on display today. It was just the little things, how people can move in the world with little acknowledgement of all the other humans around them. Walking (slowly, and eating) without looking up while others wait. Pulling out without paying attention to what's around them. It makes those interactions cold and thoughtless when sometimes people need you to look up and give them clear attention.
I realized that I was in a little period like that and that I needed to get clear and attentive. I remember how incredibly heightened daily interactions were to me 8 years ago. Everything felt threatened, everything felt precious, and I just wanted to meet head-on with the humanity in others because I needed it so desperately to get through the hardest of the time. Then I feel like I withdrew a little into my cocoon to rebuild myself. I got overwhelmed for a while. Now I am trying to emerge and get back to that vital connection to the world around me. I don't want to need something like cancer to make me stop, be attentive, be appreciative, and be clear.
I am so lucky. I appreciate that times infinity.
