Pity party, anyone?

Remember, I write because I am my own best friend and I want to see what I have to say.

There is a busy month on my calendar and that always triggers a bit of anxiety for no apparent reason – except that one cannot have grown up with my parents and escape occasional bouts of ridiculous anxiety.

So this morning I need to flop emotions onto the page for all the world to see. Perhaps someone will be able to convince me I’m simply a little crazy – so not to worry.

Frequent storm and tornado warnings were blasting around town here last night. I like to watch, so took up a comfy spot on the second floor, at the head of my bed, with my head three inches from the window. I flossed and brushed extra carefully; if I took to the skies, I wanted to have fresh breath.

When the storm died down, I enjoyed the quiet and concentrated instead on the strange sensations I’ve been having in the area of my torso that once housed my left breast. It will soon be four years since diagnosis and although I am typically ready to say “I never worry about it” when people ask, there are times when that is an out and out lie.

Breast cancer is a subject that still comes up daily in conversations with myself. I’m damned angry about the aftermath and even now a lump forms in my throat. Oh, not because I’m afraid it will return and “get me.” But because of how it changed my life. It had no right. (I know, I know, how “trite.”)

The medication I take is the enemy. An enemy I could, of course, abandon, but I can’t seem to make that decision. The pill, you see, has been proven effective for preventing my cancer’s return. The reason I say it’s my enemy? It’s job is to keep my estrogen at zero -- and a very good job it does, indeed. As any woman with zero estrogen will tell you, life is not the same as it was before. Sometimes I hardly recognize myself on the inside.

Next anxiety: Some of you will recall the perceived success I had with a counselor I met just over a year ago. Who would have imagined I had the capacity to become co-dependent on a fledgling counselor under the age of thirty? Well, apparently I did, and she quit, and I miss her terribly. I asked her if it was something I’d done and she assured me it wasn’t, but I still have my doubts. (Greg tells me I blame myself for absolutely everything, but that’s not true. I do not blame myself for our crappy Wisconsin political system. I didn’t vote for him.)

But enough of my baby-boomer complaining. My problems are miniscule and my advantages many. The snow is gone and the perennials are poking through. Next time I write I’ll tell you about the medication I take that I hate almost as much as the other. And if you’ll write and tell me about YOUR anxieties, maybe we’ll all feel better. (I feel better already, thank you very much.)

All of us can relate to these words of a favorite author of mine, Barbara Kingsolver, “Sugar, it’s no parade, but you’ll get down the street one way or another, so you’d just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up your pace.”