I’d apologize for my absence, but I don’t know what I would have really said while I was gone. I kept starting to blog and then being all “I have nothing to say!” and bailing on it. Maybe I should just suck it up and say anything? I don’t know.

Anyway. Health-wise, I’ve been in and out of the doctor office. And in and out of the gym. I need to get my game up on the latter and the former is just a waiting game.

But here is what I’ve learned since the first biopsy.

Even if you’ve always considered yourself tough, you are still tougher than you think you are. At the same time, you are also more fragile than you think you are. In my case, I already knew I could suck it up and get through rough times on my own. I’ve done it before. But, this time, it felt so overwhelmingly large (which is hilarious, almost, when you consider the shit I’ve gone through) that I found if I didn’t try to talk about it, I would unravel randomly. This happened at a work party where I got too drunk, too fast, and basically lost my shit. I did, however, learn a valuable lesson from that : don’t be a fucking hero.

Seriously. Don’t. Let go of that feeling that telling someone you can’t do this alone is weak. It isn’t! Letting someone in takes courage because it is so scary. I’m still working on this. It takes a lot of trust in someone to believe that they won’t bail on you. You don’t have to worry about their reaction, you don’t have to feel like you’re bringing them down, like you are the serious downer at their fun times party. Because that’s what it feels like, with this sort of thing. Like I’m crashing their happy-bubble with my terrible luck.

And it isn’t not true, exactly. When you tell someone that you’ve got a health problem, you are injecting something serious into the conversation. There’s no way around it. Sorry. I still don’t know exactly what the best way to handle that is. It really does come town to believing the best of your friends. Which brings us to:

People will surprise you.

Some of the people I would’ve expected to be there were, well, not there. And maybe this was partially my fault. I’m not good at reaching out and, if I do and then feel rebuffed, I probably won’t really keep trying. I will wait for you. I don’t like to interrupt, I feel like I’m annoying and dragging people down or back. These days, I feel like I’m sort of not part of their lives and maybe my trying to be is pathetic.

If this is actually true of not is hard to know.

Here is a truth though. Some people can’t handle when you get sick. You say “cancer” or you say “biopsy” and they check out. They ask a few questions and they offer their advice (“such-and-such is a great hospital”, “you should eat x”) and they give you a hug and they say if you need anything, to let them know. But then they never speak to you for weeks.

I get it, I do. But forgive me if I am not overly-sympathetic. I honestly would be better off if someone would just say they can’t handle it. Because I’d understand that and, while I also understand silence or distance or tense moments of awkwardness, it makes me sad.

But then there are the people who you didn’t realize would be so supportive. The ones you wouldn’t have guessed that would be there for you, come over on a Friday to hang out because you don’t feel like partying but want to do something, and let you either talk about it or not talk about it. My advice to you if you have someone going through something? Let them talk about it or not. Still have conversations that don’t start with “how is you health” or “how are you feeling”.

I unsuccessfully tried, just the other day, to get a friend to tell me about her trip to Mexico. She would not do it. “No. We’re talking about your health.” and when I said I was fine, it was all going along, she still wouldn’t do it. Sigh.

Really, I was surprised about how incredibly lonely this has made me feel. Because I can’t get around that fact. It’s just really lonely. there isn’t any one or another thing about it make it less so, I guess. Because even hanging out with a friend of mine who had been through something similar, even having people to talk to about it, even being in therapy already and having a person who has no choice but to listen to me talk about it – all of that still makes me lonely.

There’s perhaps nothing to be done about it.

I’m still waiting. Waiting for results, waiting to see if the cryo took, waiting to see if it was actually more or worse than they originally thought. I’ve switched to a new doctor – a specialist – who does not mince words. I don’t feel like I’m frozen in some holding pattern anymore,  but I do have this in the back of my mind. My schedule is littered with “call doctor” and “make appointment” and the days I can’t have off. When I’m sick at work, I make sure I am really terrible and horrible before taking a half day because I want to save up my sick days “just in case”.

I’m still working on trusting people. Letting them in. I don’t believe I’m not being awful when I tell them what is happening and I feel guilty the whole time. I feel like a terrible burden, like a pity-invite, like I should only be effervescently happy and cheerful and keep it light. I’ve felt like this before, but more so now. When I’m feeling dark or sad or super anxious, I don’t believe anyone really wants to be around me. You can imagine that, as a person with an anxiety disorder, this is especially difficult.

I’m also working on building a life that does not revolve around work. This is a challenge. I’m not sure I’m doing well at it. But I’m trying. I am trying to believe that people will surprise me in good ways, that I am worth being around even when I am fraught, and that everything is going to be okay.

Here is what I do know, though. No matter what happens, I can get through it. And while I already knew this, I suppose it’s nice to have it re-affirmed.

Here’s the thing, the type of thing that really drives me is the demanding, unforgiving, encouraging type of yelling (see: my Jillian Michaels dvds). Which isn’t to say that I didn’t shred myself to pieces tonight, ’cause I did, but holy fucking shit. I also almost cried – twice – and almost thought I was going to throw up at one point. I could barely force my muscles to do what I (and the loud gym man) was demanding of them, during recovery runs my breathing was almost frighteningly erratic, and I almost cried a third time in the shower after because I was emotionally exhausted. But by fucking god, I did it. I did every motherfucking jump and hill and standing climb and I cranked that god damn gear handle and I gave it everything I had and then I gave it even more. And I was able to be proud of myself, to say “I did this!” and to very briefly consider never eating anything unhealthy ever again.

Um, I ate three homemade shortbread with chocolate chips cookies tonight. But I also ate a spinach salad with some shredded salmon! And a piece of jerky. And some pistachios.

So, obviously, I benefited from the method in his madness. Except even the “Atta girl!” I got and the compliment (or comment, it’s…hard to tell) on how I turned it around during class, while making me smile, didn’t quite make up for the fact that I felt actually ashamed of myself in the start. I didn’t accomplish everything because I wanted to prove I could do it, but because I was desperate to escape further attention. I wanted to vanish. I was convinced he was going to walk over and kick me out of class.

How much of this is my anxiety being ridiculous? How much of this is genuine? I don’t want to be coddled by my instructors. In fact, in every class, where I fight and I struggle and I achieve more than I did before, I’m doing it because I’ve got an instructor there correcting me and demanding more from us/me. That’s why I go to classes more than working out by my lonesome, ’cause I need to extra force. And while fear and stress keep me in line as much as anything else, I didn’t leave feeling as amazing as usual.

Still, if it is this guy or no working out, I’ll bring it.

See, this was going to be a non-gym post, but here we are. I had gym stuff to talk about.

Also tonight, my mother and I were talking on the phone and she said she had youtubed spinning and thought it looked awful. “Ha, you should look up turbo kick, I do that sometimes too,” I cheerily informed her. Her response was instant: “Oh that looks awful! Don’t become obsessed with the gym and go to all these classes. You shouldn’t go too much.” When I told her I’m not even near a gym-rat, she simply continued to tell me to cut back and ease up and don’t do such crazy classes.

Of course, she could’ve still just been mad at me from Take One Thousand of our current fight. And she’s never been a supporter of anything I do more than half-heartedly. And, to give tonight’s demon class the credit it is due, it certainly did give me the wherewithal to dive into the argument.

Our biggest current bone is that she wants to come up for my next doctor appointment (the one with the cryotherapy and the second, more invasive biopsy, although I sure as hell didn’t describe it that way to her) and I don’t want her to. Although I’ve said it several thousand times, I broke out the “This isn’t about you” a few dozen more times and she said she knew and I kept saying I didn’t want her to come up and she kept getting wounded and this ended with this therapy-prized gem (holy shit, I typed ‘gym’ first, WHO AM I)

“Because this isn’t about you. This is about totally and only about me and my situation and what I want to do. And what I want is for you to not come up. This is my decision and it isn’t a discussion. This is what I want. If you want to help, you’ll respect that.”

We fought some more and she says the topic isn’t closed. But I think I’ve won. And I’m proud of myself for saying it. Go me!

Who could this awesome girl be? Why can't we see her awesome face? RECLUSE.

This isn’t the first time in my life that I’ve lived alone, but the previous occasion was, to be honest, much different. As in: a different part of town, a different group of friends, a different type of life different. I lived near many people I spent time with, I was in college, I was pretending that my life wasn’t full of problems that I was avoiding with some rather unhealthy choices (to achieve my rather unrealistic goals), and so on and so forth. Now, I am living far away from most people I know. I work, but I’m not in school, so the dynamic is different. My life is healthier (despite the fact that, yes, I did eat all of the veggie-tuna-mac I made for dinner tonight and then had hot chocolate. it’s not like I do that all the time.) and so on and so forth. The differences are real and striking, so it makes sense that I don’t remember feeling this way before.

Now, I have a cat. I have more space and I have a firmer sense of what I want to do when I’m in charge of all my space. I cook and make things, where before I would attempt to and then just make another frozen something. I craft. I read and turn off the t.v and listen to music and practice my keyboard. Sometimes. Not as much as I should.

Not that I won’t complain about how I am not amazing the next time I play, mind. Practice makes less horrible!

I have a much different life than I did then, all those seven years ago,  so it stands to reason that I have a different apartment experience, a different set of feelings about everything. I am feeling both more solid and more separate than I did last month, when I speculated that maybe I needed some more veggies and the holidays to be over.

Right now, I’m half of the mind that I should just take a few steps back from everyone that I do not find myself required to see on the daily. God, I miss the life of a recluse. It’s hard to really count yourself as a shut-in if you, in fact, spend a zillion hours a week playing with children. It doesn’t work. I sing ridiculous songs repeatedly, all day, and read the same three dinosaur books so often that I’ve memorized them. I’m weird, sure, but that’s just because I love my job. I’m not really a recluse.

I also find dragging my ass across the whole damn city at night and back again to be tedious, at best.

So, while I am not texting or calling anyone who isn’t contacting me first right now (this is, also, actually, as passive-aggressive as I get but also is sort of a problem with my anxiety – I don’t want to be a nuisance and so I figure I will wait because, if I have attempted to speak to you and you don’t get back to me then I start to think that I am really annoying and what is wrong with me and oh god why are you DOING this, arrrrrgh. perfectly normal.), I am still in contact with others. I’m going to work. I’m a volunteer tutor and I do that, which is awesome, and at the very least gets me out of the house because it is part of the whole “loving being an educator” part of thing.

Other Current Goals To Be All Functional an’ Shit:

- do laundry. I finally got those Purel “we do everything in one handy little sheet!” boxes because now that I have to walk longer? This might be awesome.
- organize craft room, jewelry, and clear off kitchen table. This pretty much explains itself.
- work. out. already. I’ve been taking a sabbatical from the ol’ Jillian Michaels dvds. I need to get back on the stick. I know it, you know it, she knows it. And I’m a little scared of her. So.
- think about eating better, then only marginally eat better. I don’t eat like total shit, so, I figure I’m okay.
- try and actually stick to a skin care regime. I’ve never actually been able to do this. I like the idea of the challenge.

And those are just a few things I want to do.

I have a thousand things to do, sure. But at the very least, two of those are pretty much having to happen unless I want to become a hoarder who wears dirty clothes. Which I don’t have any plans on becoming any time soon.

Or ever.
Just so we’re clear.

I really do think that those are more easily attained than, say, “convince so-and-so that I am a great choice to entertain the concept of dating with” and “trust others more better” which almost deserves the horrible grammar I just gave it but…only because it displays the awkwardness properly. Baby steps, right?

Right.

I have the knowledge and the power to...do shit.

Well, I’ve done it.

Last week, I finished packing up my life and crammed it all into a cargo van, which my friend and I rented from the good folks at U-Haul via Mr Flower and Mr Ping Pong (I’m not kidding, that was the name of the place. It was a wonderland, guys. Packing boxes and bamboo as far as the eye could see.).  It was hectic. It involved a lot of swearing. There was rage and a threat to break my couch into pieces to get it out the damn door.

We were…not best pleased at the start of the move. But once the furniture was moved and it was down to all the rest of my possessions, it was a hell of a lot easier. Plus, we had an extra set of hands upon arriving at the new apartment. That was nice.

Also, I had purchased Matt coffee by that point. That always helps.

So, now I live in the Southwest Side of Chicago. A whole week! I like being here, would like it even more if I had a fridge, but since I should be getting that on Monday then I am fine with it. My Spanish is about to get a solid workout, too. Plus, I actually managed to – get ready – switch my utilities and suchlike in a timely manner! I’ve spent a solid chunk of time on the internet here at the local library, chatting with LiveChatBots (I don’t believe they are people, but I do like cheerful service reps, so whatever) getting internet questions cleared up (must go to an actual office, lame) and other sundry details squared away so that I may embark on this next chapter of my adult life.

I like this.
Well, mostly. I’d like it more if my apartment were already unpacked. I don’t see why I have to be the one to do it. My damn cat just is not pulling her weight.

Ugh, I am in a weird state right now so I should probably just log off of here and let you all get about your business. Where, I can only presume, you will spend time wondering what I am doing. Well, I can clear that up.

Later today, whilst babysitting, I am going to be doing Teacher Busy Work. Which is to say, cutting out the pieces for fifteen kids to make snowmen.

Envy me, readers.