So Goes Life

I am supposed to be seeing the plastic surgeon today, in a half an hour to be exact, but he was on call last night and is still in emergency surgery from whatever happened last night. Dang it. I was really looking forward to today's appointment, and now I am just stuck at home all day. So goes life.

Ok, my head is still reeling from this past weekend, and often I find myself wondering if the other women at the retreat are having as hard of a time adjusting back to reality. I will say though that I have not cried in the past 3 days, which is wonderful for my puffy eye problem.

I went out to eat with a friend Tuesday night to try and sort through all that is bouncing off the walls of my head. I have found that there might be a little bit more going on inside that I was allowing myself to see or feel. I know that a tough time is coming with the end of treatment, I have been there before and it sucked. I can only hope that from the books I have read, my previous experiences, etc, that it won't be too bad. I find myself hovering between feeling if it's going to come back it's going to come back, and feeling paranoid of it coming back. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. So where do I go from here? That is the million dollar question.

So the question on the table Tuesday night posed by my friend revolved quite a bit on why I am constantly involved in one project or another. I didn't feel that what I was doing was that big of a deal. The only time that I can get things done is when the girls are asleep, for the most part, which is at night. There is no way that I could do all of the painting that I have done with the girls running around. I am a glutton for punishment, but I'm not dumb. Most of the time. So, why do I have a hard time doing nothing? Let's look at some facts....

Yes, there is a part of me that is rushing to get things done "just in case". But the fact remains that these things have to be done at some point or another. We have lived in this house for 2 years and I was tired of all of the whiteness. So I painted.

I have a strong feeling that if I don't do some things, they just won't get done. Dion will agree with that since I asked him last night what he would do if I just stopped doing some of the stuff I do. Would he notice? Would he do anything? Here was his answer...

"Well, I suppose if the bathroom got really gross I'd clean it."

So in turn, there's my answer. If I lean over to the right, I can peek into the laundry room and see the piles of clothes. Dirty clothes, clean clothes, mystery clothes. I am going on record that I am refusing to fold the clothes that when I was gone last week, were taken out of the dryer and put on the table. This is one of the reasons why I am busy all of the time. I think it just so happens that it does not allow me to think too much about things, which for me, at this point in time, is ok. Apparently the fear is that, if I never confront my brain, everything that is stuffed somewhere in me will eventually explode into a full fledged depression. If it hasn't already. But to be honest, I don't know where to even start with unraveling my thoughts and having them make sense. I think I am still recovering from the retreat, trying to re-group my thoughts, trying to find a way to move on. As Beth said, I am sort of in limbo land. Where do I go from here? How do I pick up the rest of the pieces, put them in my pocket, and keep on walking? How do I live, productively, with the thought of recurrence nibbling at my brain for the next 40 years or so? How do I, in a few years, tell my kids about all of this and encourage them to not be scared, when I am scared myself?

I would like to think that moving on was as simple as mind over matter. I would like to say that I don't live in fear every day, I would like to say that life is what it was before, I would like to say that I am a better person than I once was. I would like to say a lot of things, but the thoughts seemed to be stuck inside of me, just kind of swirling around, waiting for the right moment to knock me over.

Why do I stay busy? I guess to stay alive.