Massage Limbo

I would like to create something of my time spent suffering. I want something more to remember this time by than bitter memories of hot flashes and the way the skin peels in my mouth from all the drugs. The pain pills they give me are becoming less effective. I feel a little more myself which is a nice change. More myself but halfway unable to do anything;  halfway weakened, halfway beat down. My body is a mess of twitches and spasms. My teeth chew at my lips and my back pulses in long slow aches. The bruises from my IVs are slow to heal and splotchy. They match the shadows under my eyes.  Never have I slept more and yet been so tired. Never have i slept less, eyes rolling in the early hours of the morning. I am learning a new kind of sickness. It is a way of being and acknowledging this fact is the first step to accepting the hostile take over of your body as it wastes away; becomes sick and not yours any longer.

I would love to embark on a journey of self discovery: bake something every day, explore some passion and find some purpose. If I don't beat this I want my life to have been fruitful in some meaningful way. But the pain gets in the way. Writing helps. I have always fought my fears by naming them. Describing them. Calling them forth where their power becomes mine. But these are deeper more adult battles and I fear my customary wit will not suffice its usual quick pass through the doors. Once I am inside I will have no answer for the long stares from vacant eyes. It is once you reach this point that bravado fails you. Behind these doors you don't find people who want to ask you questions. Behind these doors "what is your pain at?" is a way of life: people live and breathe on that 1-10, find reserves of strengths, and watch as all that they are fails them in their moment of need while some fish-lipped onlooker goggles at you next to the picture of the tumors like a snowstorm in the trunk of your body. While visitors certainly are the best and boost the spirit in ways unparalleled by non social contact they have to be the right kind; a quintessential goggler can sour the fight to survive like milk in an overly warm stomach. The mouth slightly ajar, the eyes unapologetically wide and wondering while the swirling vapid nothing behind careens a little drunkenly around the still births of undeveloped dreams and dim ideas, tripping in the dark like a late night walk through a cluttered garage. I am very afraid of becoming one of these people. I'm afraid i'll slowly slip into a sad husk of pain, rattling around inside myself as the days become longer and more unbearable.

So I try to fit in activities to remind me of me and kindle that inner spark or madness. We are born with but a little of it and mustn't lose it lest we lose ourselves. I make long mental lists of dried fruits and match them in my head with the antioxidants they provide like vitamin flashcards. I take stock of my reserves and start considering netflix candidates for new shows to watch. This is uninspiring and only vaguely bohemic in an urban outfitters kind of way but it's a start. I make myself a mental note to do better later. Today I go to see a new panel of doctors and it would behoove me to prepare treatment questions for them. I wonder how the interaction will go. I am hoping for a charismatic, take-charge, young doctor that will be bold and outspoken regarding my chances. I want someone with a little steel in his spine who isn't worried that i'll sue him if he can somehow jury-rig my body to stop this self-destruct clock that ticks away in the background like a little emotional terrorist. I'm essentially holding out for a hero till the end of the night. At the end of the day it won't matter, I'll take the time and attention of any qualified doctor willing to stand between me and death.

I keep waiting for the gravity of this situation to hit me. I feel as though I walk around peering up at the sky, forever waiting for the other shoe to drop. Death is a bottomless pool and when you drop your stone over the side you are doomed to be disappointed if you are left waiting to hear the echoing response as it finally finds rest. Death is what I am afraid of. It is too big for me to understand and I cannot control it. But I am ambitious as the most industrious of ants. I know how to break down these problems into smaller pieces and carry them bite by bite to the side of the river where you do not feel the gravity of the entire undertaking but rather the individual arduous journey of each piece, in who's rest you can find peace.

Today I have a massage in the afternoon and I cannot wait for the degree of relief it should afford my aching back and side. I feel as if I live in the lap of luxury as I have been lucky enough to attend three different massages in the last week; those sixty minute intervals are probably the calmest, pain-free moments that I remember of this time. They say that the chemo drug they dosed me with causes memory loss and hazy memory, both of which feel in real time like operating in life from behind a sneeze guard. Everything is mostly visible but also just a touch smeared underneath a plastic film that leaves little bubbles between the screens. The pain pills add a sheen of sweat over the whole equation and leaves you feeling like you're sitting in a diner in linen shorts that stick to your legs and the vinyl seats as the air conditioning breaks down and life slows down 50 years or so. Outside it rains, heavy fat drops that make quick deep mud puddles to soak the unsuspecting shoe. Inside the sweat trickles downs the side of my eyebrow in spite of the late April chill. It makes me want to take a shower, a quick and cold one, but the ache in my side says don't bother.