Thank you for the wisdom, Room 13
This visit was not easy.
Goodbyes seldom are.
Goodbyes are hard;
change is hard,
deep changes are even harder.
Tomorrow, I have — what I hope will be among my last — oncology appointment at NAH.
If I’m being perfectly honest, that place terrifies me.
Some part of me thinks I would sooner have my toenails ripped out
with rusty pliers than have to step foot in one of this system’s facilities
because this past year has been so, so scary and so, so hard in no small part
because of the very broken American Healthcare System.
Today’s themesong was this ditty that makes me cry every goddamn time I hear it, particularly today when everything feels so raw, when I am on the cusp of yet another massive, freaky change:
I got burned today.
And it hurt.
And I find myself utterly bewildered.
It was one of those out of nowhere right hooks
that just hits you upside the head at 9 a.m. when
you’re leaving a fun early coffee visit with a friend,
on your way to your last day in the classroom with your students at this school,
and then the universe is like “Hell, no, bitch. You think you’re just going to saunter through this already difficult day with peace and hope in your heart? Fuck no. You do not get to say goodbye easily.
In fact, here’s some shockingly-unexpected-bad-experience
you don’t know how to navigate because it is utterly foreign.
How’s that for your ‘hopey-changey bullshit,’ Gruber?”
(My meanest inner-voice, today, was — apparently —
that of Sarah Palin.)
I’m vagueblogging. I’m trying to vagueblog.
And for those who read and actually care,
my health is fine. It’s not that.
I’m just going through some seismic changes
as a person
and that kind of growth is always really hard.
Adults disappoint me.
This is likely why I prefer working with teenagers.
Teenagers lie about stupid shit, teenagers lie when they’re afraid, when they’re trying to “get away with” something, but they seldom lie about
The Truth. “From the mouths of babes . . .” the idiom exists for a reason.
An Actual Adult human being hurt me today, and perhaps, I hurt
an Actual Adult human being in return.
No, I was not assaulted. There were no fisticuffs, no cursing, no door slamming, no yelling — just human beings failing each other magnificently;
— this was hurt of the “no one’s fault really” variety — nothing new.
The story of the world: “no one’s fault.”
If only we could pin the blame for our pain, honestly, on one person/thing/entity. If only. You know how much I’d save on therapy, psychiatry, and sleep aids if only I could find and blame the one person
who is the reason for my pain, my grief, my sorrows? But if I’m being “rigorously honest” (which is a phrase I’m going to take with me should I “peace out” of the program I’ve been “working” for seventy-four days),
no one person exists. There is just no ONE fucking person to blame.
And, no, I’m not drinking.
I have no intention of ever drinking again.
That doesn’t change whether or not I stay with “the program.”
I like the “rigorous honesty” part of “the program” I may or may not still be in depending on what I decide over the course of the next few days.
I like the idea of being “rigorously honest” with myself at all times — or as much as I can be in my limited, all-too-human — capacity. I really like Truth — capital “T.” And the Truth, as I see it now, is this: I am an alcoholic who perhaps does not truly jive with that particular program.
Maybe the culture of this program is one that, long term, will hurt my spirit more than it elevates my spirit. I don’t know. Quite lost tonight, which is why I’m writing.
Tomorrow morning, I will get up early and drive down to the valley for labs and injections and infusions and all sorts of shit that upsets me because way down deep, I’m so fucking angry that I have a chronic condition that could very well kill my ass out. I mean, I am full of righteous goddamn indignation that the universe had the audacity to give me cancer when I have tried my level fucking best to navigate my way through this shitty, mean little world without hurting too many others along the way. Like I’ve never (to my knowledge) swindled anything from anyone, played fast and loose with people’s feelings (I’m sure I did, at times, when I was still “on the drink”); I’ve never really wished anyone ill, nor do I now; I’ve never been greedy, nor coveted Power and Paper Money merely for the sake of Power and Paper Money, and I guess the worst thing — if I’m being rigorously honest — anyone could really accuse me of in this little span of time is maybe that I have, at times, been too jealous, too resentful, too fearful, too furious, and too frustrated.
And maybe, reader, that’s my Truth for today.
Maybe I was with “the program” for the requisite amount of time for me. Maybe, as a cancer patient in America, a queer woman in America there’s a reason I am suspect of most White Man Made Laws (And I do mean “White” and “Man”). Maybe as a woman I just don’t believe in the medicine that’s sometimes being pushed — whether it comes in the form of liquid, pill, or scripture.
Maybe, with “the program,” I became overzealous about a religious dogma because I was desperate, sad, afraid.
Maybe this morning “the program” failed and hurt me like the Catholic Church did.
But, in the spirit of honesty, my time in Catholic school was not for naught.
I learned some shit. In fact, I think in k-8, my parents purchased me a very quality American Education for my time and place. Learned to spell like a motherfucker, I’ll tell you what. Seeing how shitty nuns were treated in that system probably first ignited my feminism.
And if I quit “the program” (I will find something else, I’m not going to white knuckle it and make all my friends and loved ones suffer my sour, dry-drunk self), I will have learned a lot, too. A ton, really, in a very short amount
of time and maybe one of the things I learned is that I just need to keep with a good therapist, Zen Buddhism, and not necessarily be looking for some group to save me or whatever.
I don’t know. I just don’t know. And that’s fine.
I do believe in the existence of light and goodness.
I do believe we can move away from all the metaphorical darkness and insanity.
I do believe alcohol was (and remains) really, really fucking bad for me,
and the people who love me most.
Before I go to bed, I want to say this,
in the midst of some really painful Truth, I was able to
play video games (Mario Kart) with my seniors and watch them eat
pizza I bought with my meager Actual Adult Tithe.
I was able to eat tacos and laugh hard with friends.
I was able to hug people who were not my wife (not that hugging my wife is bad, just that I missed hugging other people, too — the elbow bumps just don’t cut it). I was able to say to a room full of teenagers, without flinching or averting my eyes, “I love you.”
And I fucking meant that.
And as “God” as my witness, I have never in my nearly twenty years of classroom work ever told a group of kids, to their face, all at once, that I loved them.
But they had to know because this is Truth.
And this Truth does not extend to all.
I do not love all of my fellow human beings. Not by a long shot.
This is also some hard work that I am mindful of improving upon.
I do not love all of my fellow human beings, because I am also human,
but I do try to guide every choice I make in the care of human beings (whether students or strangers) with compassion. I try.
And then there was that moment, after the hardest part of today, where I decided to scare the shit out of myself by imagining all the things that could go wrong and hurt or frighten me tomorrow when I’m getting my cancer shit tended to.
But then, as I was enumerating the things that could “go wrong,”
I looked at each one and said, “But it probably won’t kill you. At least not tomorrow.” In fact, I was able to say to myself, “You will be okay, and after probably being okay, you will stay in a hotel room and eat takeout.
You will not drink.
You will go home to Sarah and Abe and Tucson.
You will be okay.”
I have no perspective on today, yet.
As far as this moment: I feel fine in my body, a little sleepy (this is good), and most importantly, I feel strong in body and mind albeit a little shaky, today, in the spirit department.
But I know for a fact
that for all the shit that has happened and is happening
there is a commensurate amount of goodness, purity, light,
and I have to go forward in the assumption, however foolish,
that most people can in fact be trusted with my heart.
The other Truth is that more people have been good to me
than have been cruel to me. And this is what I will repeat
to myself tonight, until I can finally fucking fall asleep.
On that note, this post goes out to all the wonderful, kind, loving, wise friends I’ve made up on this big hill, and for the buckets and buckets of wisdom gained in the shadow of the Peaks, in Room 13.
The past seven years have been absolutely everything.
And what I’m really left with, tonight, amid the hurt and confusion, is an overabundance of love — love that I give and receive
every day
in powerful abundance.
And students, note: I am exercising every restraint
in my brain so as not to use this platform
to seriously, rhetorically, burn
it
all
down.
