Milky Way

I posted to the blog a few days ago and immediately regretted it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have computer access when the regret set in and so It took a few hours for the post to come down. I apologize to anyone who read it, it crossed the line into pathetic. Finishing treatment {if one can ever consider themselves finished, with all the follow-up appointments}, has been anticlimactic to say the least. I don’t feel celebratory or excited, I feel tired, sore and alienated. I feel very uncomfortable around people, I don’t know what to talk about, how to just be, I feel different, awkward, a refugee from hurricane cancer. I feel heavy of spirit and heart. Maybe it’s that I’m still one big boo-boo. I’m burnt and sore. I’m peeling, but instead of new, healthy skin underneath, the peel reveals more burn. My feet are still numb, shoes are difficult, balance comes and goes, fatigue is overwhelming.

So this is my post from last weekend, but edited. I don’t usually edit, I blab and post, but maybe it’s time to exercise at least a spec of self-control.

I’m most comfortable at home and at my studio and I’m so grateful for these places. I was standing at my kitchen sink yesterday, washing apples and I almost cried, I was so grateful for my kitchen sink... that I have this home, this comfortable place {cluttered and messy as it may be}, HQ, homebase. I’m not worrying about the yardwork or the old water pipes, the paint chipping off the front porch, I’m just so fucking grateful I have a kitchen sink... and a bed.

I’m going to spend this gray day in the studio where I have specific goals and lists of things that need to be done, deadlines are good, without those I wouldn’t know what to do with myself or where to begin. I feel peripheral, like a shadow, a ghost... there, but not really there.

I went to a halloween party last night because little boy made me go, we’ve gone the past few years and it’s an elaborate affair. Months worth of decorations, endless food and elaborate costumes. Previously, I’ve wanted to stay and he’s wanted to leave and this year we were role reversed. I didn’t know who to talk to, or how, and if anything brings out cleavage it’s halloween costumes. Lot’s of skimpy costumes with boobus erectus. Everyone dancing and feeling sexy, I can’t imagine dancing and feeling sexy anymore. For all my talk of not being defined by my breasts, I miss them more and more, I feel like an amputee. I feel old and tired and quite thoroughly unsexy. I had dreams and delusions of dating and adventures when my marriage ended, but now I’m feeling lone, empty, depleted, damaged. Everything happened so fast and with such urgency, I didn’t have time to think about what it all really meant.

I want to find my footing, my bearings, but right now everything just feels alien. I'm disconnected, untethered, maybe the wind will lift me up and I’ll fly away. I feel lonely, so I eat junk food and then I feel a thousand times more guilty than you would, because I’m convinced I’m giving myself cancer. I’ve spent a year trying to stay alive and now I’m killing myself with sugar. Death by fried food and chocolate, I know what’s bad for me, and now it feels lethal, but no less appealing which is disturbing.

Fast forward a few days, It’s halloween, I’m splayed on the couch with the laptop while little boy watches cartoons and eats candy and the doorbell rings are dying down. I'm exhausted from strolling the neighborhood. Halloween seemed much more lowkey than usual, that’s his take too. I just gave all the milky ways to the last trick or  treater's so I wouldn’t eat any more of them. I only eat milky way’s on halloween, but I can eat a lot of them. I did eat a lot of them.

I’ve been working like crazy getting the store ready to open, I sure hope it’s a good year, I hope the farmer’s market makes me feel more festive. If nothing else, it will eradicate any excuse I have to avoid Kale and that will be helpful. So much to do in the next 48 hours, I won't have time to be morose, that's probably a good thing.