The stalker

I have a stalker.

He is tall and muscular and gloomy.  He takes the very breath from my lungs the moment I see him. It’s there, clutched in his first, seeping through his fingers…dripping slowly to the ground until at last it’s gone.  And I stand there unable to breathe… That’s part of my soul you just took away. Just pulled from my chest like the strings of a marionette, tugging me toward you and playing me for your amusement. When I’m frightened it makes me feel like a little girl, longing to wrap my arms around mommy’s leg and feel its strength and fearlessness. But sometimes, when I’m faking strong, I absolutely do not care for these childish games. Now get out of my way now and let me pass. Let me pass or I’ll…

He is always looming. He crouches in the corner of my dreams. When I’m awake he steps out of shadows I don’t even know are there. I feel his presence creep upon me like a bottle of ink spilt across a piece of newsprint. It’s horrifying. Not just because I’m scared—because I feel violated. Because this creepy is inside me. Around me. Hovering. You know it’s changed the color of my skin? I’m paler now than I used to be. Sickly. The circles around my eyes are darker, more pronounced and my eyes have sunk… my skin feels draped over my bones, leaving only a landscape of peaks and valleys with no discernable shape. 

So much wreckage.  This is my life. I never knew what a big word that was until now. I had cut out the pattern and colored inside the lines. But I had no concept of how enormous it was. That my body—this complex system of cells with weight and depth, sprinkled with thought and senses to help it maneuver in the world—is simply an emblem of life. A representation, a translation, of my experiences. The child who absorbs life like a sponge is only meant to grow up—not out of her impermeability. I know this to be true so why can’t I have it? Make room for it? The creepy prevents me. 

I have a vision that one day I will be free. I am standing before an enormous window—in a castle above the clouds. It’s covered with silk sheers and they billow into the room as the wind blows and my hair flies and twists wildly around my head. I walk toward the window, barefoot across a stone floor, deliberately, feeling the contour beneath my feet. Heal, ball of foot, toes. I am grounded. The fluttering curtains assure me that I am alone here and their translucency seems to offer the proof I need. But I’ve been fooled before. I reach out to the window, harnessing the power of the wind, and grab hold of curtains.  I rip them aside, my breath clamped down tight, veins flooding and rising to the surface of my pale exterior. There is no one there. No shadow, no image, nothing. I am alone.

Suddenly the deadbolt on my lungs is undone …and my breath is released for the very first time. I exhale and watch the dust covered cobwebs get carried away with the wind, swishing and twirling and tumbling into oblivion. I gulp in clean, fresh air and it fills me so completely that my feet are nearly lifted off the ground. I smile, the muscles in my cheeks pleased to be of service once again and they remind me with a biting sting that they have lay dormant far too long. Alone. My veins retreat beneath the surface of my skin and my color begins to change. I hear myself laughing, a familiar tune but a new melody. Suddenly everything is new. I’ve been reborn and the woman is once again a sponge of innocence. No longer bound to a shadowy figure in the corner of my mind. I am finally free. 

But in the real world, I’m haunted by a disease they say I no longer have. I take pills to stay awake and pills to sleep because every time I close my eyes I encounter the stalker and I’m too tired and too desperate and too weak to push past him into my dreams. I am constantly afraid. I cannot listen to the radio, watch TV or read a magazine. In the real world I feel stifled and stiff and I struggle to push on…

I want to pass…

…to where I am pourus and weighted with my surroundings not my surrender. To tell my story to everyone and let them be inspired. I want my life and I want to package it in delicate paper and wrap it with purple ribbon and give it to my children. So that someday, much sooner than I did, they will learn of the power that comes from within each of us.

This is my life now. I can’t reclaim the old one. He will always be in the shadows, lurking. I can’t make him leave any more than I can change the color of the sky. I have no intention of embracing him or offering an olive branch. No polite nods or awkward smiles when I feel his presence. If I am to exist I have to accept that, and with that, him. I don’t need to like it—only acknowledge that the pieces have a new shape; one with thicker skin and wider eyes. Do you see me now? How do I look from your perch on the porch, from beneath the umbrella in the rain?

Get out of my way and let me pass. If you don’t, I keep walking. With you in tow if I must but I will not be afraid and I will not be ruined. My window is waiting, and I will feel the sweet release from my lungs. Because this is my life, not yours, and I will not be held captive. Not anymore.

Thoughts, just for today

It’s hard, living this life. Cancer patient, cancer survivor, somewhere in between.

“Does it bother you when people tell you how well you’re doing?” he asks, knowing the answer.

“No one gets it. They see the outside. Not what’s going on in my head.”

“I get that. It’s a huge cross to bear. Even your own family members, I bet. It’s hard because you’re left feeling really alone. But what’s important is that you ARE doing well. You have to hold onto that.”

If you know anyone suffering with an illness, let me share these words. I tell you in confidence, you see, because this is coming from inside the institution of illness. Some come inside and visit, but the ones who stay have many secrets. And so my advice begins with telling you about some of them.

There are three crosses made of twisted metal and steel and wood, splintering into the backs of every patient. The first is “The body”. The Body is under attack, every moment of every day. It’s accepting or rejecting food and determining on its own how its host will feel at any given moment. It accepts and incorporates poison through infusions and turns blood into a toxic river, thundering through the body like a tsunami attacks the shoreline. It takes more than its fair share of beatings and routinely practices how to claw and scratch and strangle and kick and scream out in vengeance. So loud, sometimes, it feels like a league of pins poking the eyes and ears of those standing closest by. But none more pained than the person sitting in the blue treatment chair, hours upon hours a week.

“The Life” is the second cross. There is some humor to be found here, however ironically, because your person, your friend, your husband, is juggling 6 potatoes, a couple of donkeys and several hats while balancing on one foot and sometimes alternating feet depending on which one is less affected by the medication.

(for the reader, the potatoes are the people and things and daily tasks that must get done by him or her alone, as simple as a shower or folding laundry or as difficult as spending time with loved ones and showing up to life—a life made entirely of quicksand, situated squarely on the side of a cliff. The donkeys are the thoughtless boobs who refuse to accept this new reality and do nothing, if that, to lend an ear, or a hand, or a meal or even a magazine…The hats are the ones he or she must adorn each time the phone rings or the doorbell; am I doing well today? Do I need help today? Should I stay in bed and let the answering machine pick up or Leave the package at the door, I’ll get it later once I’ve crawled out of bed and picked the cracker crumbs from my robe, the one that covers the clothes I’ve been wearing for 4 days. Once I put on my wig. Or my hat or my scarf, whichever one gives me some sense of accomplishment.)

The third and final cross is “The Mind.” It’s a terrible thing to waste away, pulling and twisting and shoving thoughts around, disrupting perfectly beautiful emotions with twisted knots of death and dying, destruction and waste, chaos and vomit…She chokes on them as they force their way down into her throat, cutting off her windpipe and forcing her to her knees, gasping for breath, reaching up to the heavens for the clutch of an angel…Mental pictures of her past drip with tears of sorrow, her future completely out of grasp, too dark to catch even a glimpse of..begging for her life in vain…if this is God’s plan than all the begging in the world won’t do me any good but searching nonetheless under hatboxes and in drawers for a loophole, a reason, a prayer, a lesson that she can hold up and say Ah HA! I’ve heard you, I understand and I will persevere and in doing so will make my life more meaningful, more worthwhile, more to your divine liking, I swear…please spare my children from this horror, please I beg of you…her voice trails off into the wind, carried up to the heavens as a pale yellow balloon...

Her mind keeps her awake at night, scared pale that They will come to her in the night and so she paces the floor and checks on her children and sobs silently in the dark, legs curled under her feet on the toilet…thoughts of life and death play tug of war with her heart and it shreds and unfurls like strands of silk, falling delicately to her feet and she frantically bends over to scoop them all up, hoping she can stitch them back together and make something whole again, but they melt through her fingers and there she is….stretched out between life and death…

The Mind is Satan’s cross. And it’s a hell that only she knows.

So my advice to you, reader, friend, colleague, mother, brother, father…Take a deeper look at your loved one. Don’t presume that a nimble, healthy looking body, rosy cheeks and a smile means good health. Far from it. It simply means that The Body is not so heavy today. She’s still struggling, trying to claw her way out of quicksand. The Body is juggling…you caught her at a moment when the potatoes were all in balance.

“ So how does it make you feel when someone says ‘you look great’?”

“Pretty shitty actually. Because it gives most people an excuse to turn away and wash their hands of me. They didn’t see me this morning, see what I see every day. They didn’t see the ‘before’ picture without the makeup and hair..”

“Right. They think if you look well, you must be doing great. But you’re not. You never will be.”

“It makes it easier for them to let me blend into the background. ‘Doesn’t appear to be knocking at deaths door, so all must be well. Whew. Now I can get on with my day. But in fairness, it’s a shitty situation all around. Some genuinely do care and don’t know what to do. I can’t fault everyone for that. I just wish more people got it, you know?

“ I know. I really do know. Do you feel well enough for treatment today?”

“Of course I do. What choice to do I have?”

So the secret, my friend, is that cancer is like a clock…it sits on the second hand and spins round and round, moment after each passing moment. It doesn’t allow one to walk away, and if by some grace of God, she’s able to get out of bed and put on something other than pajamas, what you saw just now was blind will and determination. You saw the Body pulling it together, the Life stepping aside and the Mind on hold. You did not see cancer.

Show your love by seeing her and the iron grip she lives with. That’s where you will find the words.

Welcome everyone!

Hi, it’s me! Welcome to “It’s a moo point” and my maiden voyage on the web. For those of you who don’t know the significance of the name of this site, I am happy to share. “A moo point is a cows opinion—it doesn’t matter!” (I’m a huge Joey Tribbiani fan).

That’s how I’ve felt most of my life—that I have lots to say but it doesn’t matter to many people. I’ve written volumes of “stuff” on scraps of paper, only to be lost or forgotten and shoved away in the back of my head. I’ve only recently learned to move my memories to the page and let them have their day in the sun. For whatever purpose, for whomever may or may not care.  I’ve learned it doesn’t matter anymore if people find me funny or interesting. I hope they do but I guess I’ll never know until I actually share something.

So I started this page a year ago and it sat vacant. I couldn’t muster up the strength to put anything on it. But finally I have, my first post and I’m really excited to share it with all of you. It is what it is. And each post will be exactly that. If the passages I write are in fact as irrelevant as a cow’s opinion, than so be it! It’s my job now to have fun and to share what I can with people that matter to me. So that’s it.

Welcome to the page. And I do hope you return again.