joy, love or peace. In the last few days
I have felt tired and irritable and have
slept a lot.
On Friday I lost my cell phone.
Friday night I barely slept.
I have a list of things I need to attend to.
I met someone last week who has been on chemo for five years. I don't
know how she has done it. She looks amazing. It also seems she has a
loving family who supports and loves her. I imagine that has a lot to do
with it. I may have to ask her more of her "secrets." She seems incredibly
resilient. I could only hope to have some of what she's got.
As I write, I think about all that has been going on, and it isn't all bad.
I got a couple of donations recently that really will help. It also turns out
that on Monday my cell phone was found, and I should have it back
today.
I also am given the opportunity to attend an event in Vegas at the end
of November. I don't know that I will be able to go, given the transportation
and lodging issues and costs, but it is nice to have the potential opportunity.
I know someone who has frequent flier miles that were once offered me.
I am going to see if the offer may still stand.
The event should help me help myself. I am feeling quite stymied by this
bump in the road. It wasn't that I wasn't stymied before this, but the
detour has certainly brought things to a head. Much of my business is
non-existent at the moment, and just because chemo ends, it does not mean
that suddenly all will be right with the world in that regard.
It makes me very anxious at times.
Last night I was watching a video about Louise Hay. If you don't know
who she is, she pioneered work that has to do with the connection between
the mind and the body. I don't know what I think about that sometimes.
I am not sure how absolute it is. However she said something at one point
about how when she has worked with people often the work of loving
oneself and accepting oneself was all that was needed to help someone
heal. She said that it wasn't always necessary to deal with the particular
symptom.
I bring her up (even though I just slightly detoured) because in the video
there was discussion about taking one step at a time and doing what was
in front of one, and the rest taking care of itself.
As you may know, I don't have the easiest time with this at times. There
are moments things seem to flow more effortlessly than others. Some
might say I am stopping it at other times. What do I say to that? I don't
know.
What I do know is that there are things that nag at me. There are things
that come and go in my mind affected by chemo. It can be there one
minute, and gone the next. I can make a list, but then I forget the list
or forget to check the list.
It is so incredibly frustrating at times to be the me of the moment so
when I think about the idea of loving and accepting myself, it gives me
an interesting feeling. The feeling is one of not loving and accepting
myself. I feel like I need to be/should be doing better. I should be able
to function better. There certainly is no acceptance in there. And when
I lost my phone I was upset with myself because I think I knew I had
dropped my phone on the train. Something told me to go back and
look, but I didn't. I was too out of it and too tired to listen. Can't say
there was much love for the person that was me. I didn't listen to
myself and then I had the repercussions of the deaf ear to deal with.
Then there is the piece of not being happy with myself for not being
in the "right" place when it comes to how I view myself. If I don't
love and accept myself, who the heck will?
I am not sure that I feel confident that I can take care of myself. Last
night I dreamt I needed help, and was calling out for my mother.
I felt like I was in the position that I was in because of her, but she
was no where to be found. The situation in my dream was based in
the past, so maybe I was filtering out things from there.
I guess the good part of the dream was that I was able to get away.
The bad part was the fear that I felt and the fact that I felt that there
was no one who would help. In the dream, though, I was with my
grandmother at one point. I was so happy to see her. She very rarely
shows up in my dreams. I am not sure what she was doing there,
and she was in no position to help anything, although at that point
I wasn't looking for help.
I also found myself clearing a lot of things out of a refrigerator.
It was a lot of food that had to go. As I think about that, I wonder
if the dream was something of a clearing out for me. Getting rid
of the things that needed to be gotten rid of. Interestingly some of
the things seemed to have been fairly fresh. They somehow
seemed to have been OK, despite the apparent amount of time
that had passed. But they still had to go.
There was something said about the refrigerator, and about
California. Apparently I was going to leave and leave the
refrigerator that I had brought with me from California. I wonder
if that was a way of saying that I was ready to let myself let go of
(some of the heavier?) things from my time there.
I also dreamt about how some people got caught up in a machine
of sorts. They got in, and were trapped. How they would get
out I did not know, but my time there was coming to an end.
Just as I was waking up, I saw someone in the dream opening
a type of safe that seemed also to be something like a clock radio,
but those people did not come out. When they didn't, the safe
got closed, and it looked as though it was being set with a time
lock to open again at some future time when perhaps those people
would find their way out.
I guess to sum up a lot of my dreams were about letting things
go and things ending/moving on.
I wonder what those people who were "locked up" represented.
Are those things that I am still holding onto? I guess with all
that I was getting rid of, there might be a part of me that would
want to hold onto something.
One other side note about Louise's video. Wayne Dyer was
talking about fear and he suggested we replace the feeling of
fear with curiosity. I thought about how I have been dealing
with my situation and it occurred to me that on some level
that is what I have been doing.
I guess when you are curious about something you are more
likely to dance with it than run from it, like you would
something you feared. I like when things have a way of
working themselves out, even when you don't have a clue
of what's going on.
There are parts of life that seem so magical at times. I
wonder if they would seem so magical if the times it
seemed to be anything but ceased to occur. Those
contrasts are the things that seem to give perspective.
They seem to be the things that make us look at things
and question things.
There are times I feel that this journey has a bigger picture
attached to it than just mine. I think that somehow there
may be some reason that this will not only help me alter
my world but the world of others, too. There are times
that I meet others in this journey that touch me or are
touched by me, and that would never have happened,
had I not been touched by cancer in this way. They
also would never have happened, had I opted for less
conventional treatment.
So...
perhaps there is some joy love and peace in here, somewhere.
But had I been focused on it all along, I would not have
necessarily have been able to write what I did, and explore
the things I have.
I suppose that is a good thing.
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