Small World

If chemo is cumulative, so is radiation and it's hit me like a brick. I'm so tired, so sleepy and the burn has spread to my right armpit and hurts like hell. My happy countdown has morphed into an endurance test and I'm afraid of each new day and how increasingly tired and sore I'll be. The powers that be refuse to give me the last laugh.

I'm getting anxious about my reentrance to society after my parole is granted. I'm feeling alienated, detached from other people. Aside from the small circle of friends I saw regularly through this ordeal, I don't feel comfortable with people, I feel different. I've been bald and sick for a year, I finally have some hair and eyebrows, I look more normal than I did a few months ago, but I feel increasingly different and alone.

When I was in chemo, I kept being sad and disappointed about missing things -- events, gatherings, I so much wanted to remain a part of things, I still felt social, my world was bigger. Now I feel disconnected from these things. I don't want to be anywhere but home with my kids or in my studio -- my little world. I feel self-contained, in a glass bubble and I don't know how to be anywhere else, my world has gotten smaller.

I stole a johnny from the radiation place so I could be a mental patient {shock treatment} at a halloween party, but I don't really want to go anymore, don't want to be in a room full of people, don't know how to make small talk, would rather stay home, but I promised little boy... I'm hoping he forgets.