Changes

It’s like nothing has changed. My family is not fazed by my brush with death; they still dismiss most of what I say; act like serious things are nothing serious. Had I died I doubt it would have made much of an impact on them… the adults, anyway. I lowered my expectations so low, yet I am still disappointed. I came home from war and no one got excited to welcome me here. I find the comfort of being with my friends is helping me to ignore my family’s lack of apathy. I am an island, lost at sea, floating and floating… I find myself, back at the house I grew up in, feeling my mom all around me. She is everywhere; in the pictures on the wall, in the way they were hung, in the furniture, the food in the refrigerator, the boxes of random papers scattered everywhere throughout the house… the shag carpet, the wood paneled walls, and in the dolls on the shelves. She is this house. This house is her. I come here to find her, but she’s not the same, yet nothing has changed. Anywhere else I go I can imagine my mom here in this house, watching tennis on TV or watering her plants in the back yard, but when I am here I have to face that, despite her presence still lingering within everything she left behind, she is gone. Gone forever. And I am here. I am here, trying to smile through the disappointment; trying to cling to my sanity in the land of the insane; trying, with all my might, to be a better person than I was before cancer. Being in this house may not be healthy for me. I’m pretty sure this will be my last visit here. At least for a very long time. It is time for me to let it go and move on; to live my life for me and no one else. I know I needed to come here, but I don’t need to stay. I can choose my own path and it is not this. I am learning every day to be okay with what I do have, and if I want something I can simply go out and put all my strength into getting what I really want. I am an island, and I will float alone. If anyone wants to join me then great, but I’m not changing who I am for anyone but myself. Because, despite the fact that nothing has changed for my family, everything has changed for me, and I am determined to make the most of it. This place no longer defines me. My mom is here, within everything, but I am not. I don’t exist here. I’m okay with that.

Friend

The other day I was very lost. My mind was all scattered and I was dizzy, and I was trying to keep track of simple things but couldn’t figure out what I was doing. I needed help but wasn’t getting it. I went to the library and they were so rude. I felt like half my brain had fallen out and I couldn’t explain why I was so upset, I just was. I couldn’t explain what I needed and I wasn’t being talked to like I mattered and it was so difficult because I knew I was in a hurry but I couldn’t figure out how to go fast enough. It was like trying to fit together a puzzle with pieces from another puzzle. I was scared. I thought I was losing my mind. A friend of mine was in the library and I saw her and hoped that she could help, but when I approached her in the midst of my desperation she responded as if she were a wall of brick; she told me to “breathe” and then she just sat there like I was some crazy stranger. I wanted to die. And it struck me that—well it struck me later since, at the time I was barely able to see straight, let alone be struck by something. At the time it just crushed me— It struck me that my therapist is right: I choose the wrong friends sometimes. She told me weeks ago to stop being friends with this girl because it's not healthy and she is very negative and mean, which is the last thing I need. I said I’d consider it; that it wasn’t like I was best buddies with her but we have some common qualities, and when she’s not being mean and moody she can rather nice. But I see now that compassion for others is not one of our commonalities. This girl doesn’t want me to cry around her, and obviously my cancer, surgeries, and my recovering from the hardest struggle in my life is either too much for her to deal with or too deep for her to understand. How can someone who knows that I’ve been through battle and that my brain is damaged from it, treat me so callously? Even if she didn’t know me would she be meaner?

Honestly, it’s not much of a loss. She fucked me over several times in the past and never apologized, and she interrupts my stories or things I do to avoid hearing I was sad or to avoid being around me when I cry. It’s so immature; so selfish really. I thought we had so many things in common and that was nice. I felt supported by her for a while, but now I realize that she is much like who I was before my mom died, and I never really liked myself back then. But even then I had compassion for others. And I knew how to say I’m sorry when I was a dick to others. At least I learned something and I’m just letting it go; she’s not important enough for me to waste energy feeling sad about. She really is a damned bitch.

Resurrecting the Orange Bag or Why I Wanted to Die Last Week

Last week I was going to kill myself. I’m not sure now whether I was really going to or I just really wanted to. What I wanted was to stop feeling so hurt. For more than a week I was hearing things like “You need to be more feminine,” “The play you directed wasn’t good,” “Why don’t you use happier emotions,” “Show MORE joy,” etc etc etc. And in response to these things I wanted to fall off the face of the earth. How do the people saying these things not hear what they are saying? Then take into account who they are saying it all to? I have short hair—shorter than it has been since I was a baby—and I have one half-real boob, my body has been through hell & so has my mind and these fucking people (they were my teachers) are questioning my femininity and asking why I can’t be happy on stage!

So I’m asked if I’m afraid to access joy. OF COURSE I AM!!!! I’ve had fleeting moments of joy in my life, but never lasting joy, and every time I get happy something awful happens. Example: Happy kid-Raped, Happy kid-Abused, Happy kid-Constantly told how ugly & stupid I am, Happy kid having fun- yelled & screamed at or continually ignored &/or laughed at, I grow up, I get over that shit (or so I think), finally getting my life together- car accident, find a good job with kids & get really happy- my mom gets cancer, Think she’s OK & get happy with new boyfriend- he’s an abusive psycho & my mom’s cancer is terminal & she dies & I get a restraining order on boyfriend, So I move away to make better life & try to fit in – but keep losing my job, Move to NYC to fulfill a dream & get happier than I’ve ever been- I get cancer. Afraid to be happy? Why is that question even being asked, and furthermore, why didn’t a single person in the room say: “Well, she did just survive cancer. We should be glad she’s still in school at all.”

It’s not the first time I wanted to die or thought about killing myself in my life, and not the first time this year. I wanted to die many times during chemo- the loneliness and isolation, and the pain was often unbearable. And after my reconstruction surgery I was so depressed and never certain if it was the anesthesia or something else, but I almost did do it a few days after. I was alone again & no one seemed interested in helping me. I’ve been struggling all semester & in that struggle I’m learning that without acting I’d rather be dead & these comments were threatening my acting. It’s the one thing I have that keeps me going through this shit and I’m baffled at how the teachers at my school don’t get this. Last year it was far better; the teachers were far more considerate & they made the classes safer so I felt good about being there. Now I feel in danger when I’m at school; like anything they say will destroy me because I don’t know that they care. I knew my first year teachers cared either because they told me or because I could see it in their actions.

People may think I am so tough & strong, but I am sensitive &, as my therapist explained, I have this open wound on my emotions & the more negativity I get the less I thrive & the more I hurt. It’s just stabbing at an open wound. I realize most people can’t fully understand where I’m at in this experience, but I am not healed and I am very scared. I feel alone constantly and I feel ignored and abandoned. All I want is people to talk with and have fun with, whether it is for distraction or just to find joy that I can feel safe with. I hope that makes sense. It’s not that I really want to die, but I want to gain control over something in my life, I want to feel safe, and I wanted to feel loved. I don’t know who I am anymore & I go to school to be other people. To do that one needs to know who they are. It’s such a conflicting state. I was me before cancer & before chemo, but I’m not the same anymore. I don’t even look the same. It’s definitely a crisis with identity & I wish more people in my life could see that & cut me a little slack; just take it into account. Just because I was who I was before does not mean I’m exactly that way now. I feel like I am treated as if nothing has changed. But the fact is, EVERYTHING has changed.

Identity Crisis

The shame in my tears drips down my cheek,
Drops of fear and frustration landing inside my glasses
As my head hangs low so nobody sees who I am

Hiding is never easy;
Trying to cover who I think I was
From who I might become

I am no one
I am non
I am nothing

My lack of identity is binding me;
Shackling me to stifle as much emotion from surfacing
So I don’t show anyone the truth

The shame in my fear keeps me crying in private places
Crying when no one else is awake
Crying in silent

I have no identity
I have no reality
Who I was is lost

Who I am now is…

Hit

The realization that I really almost died this year; that I really could have DIED: it just hit me.

I read an article about James Franco a few months ago. He said that as a kid... or it was his mom saying it... as a kid he was afraid to die because he said he had too many things to do. I'm feeling that way. "One always dies too soon- or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up." At some point we have no choice; we either randomly die or we get ill & find out we are dying soon. I never thought about death as something that came by surprise when you were totally content. No wonder people fear death: it's truly scary to consider that it's basically beyond our control when or how we die. I'm afraid to plan my life out; to get happy or to get busy because if I died tomorrow I wouldn't be satisfied that I had lived a good life or that I'd been successful. I need more time to get things done and be the person I always wanted to be. For some reason I've always thought I was guaranteed tomorrow; that my life needed to come to some cathartic conclusion to end, like in movies. But it could end at any moment. How do people live each day knowing this?

#beatcancer

#beatcancer

This is not my vagina

My pubic hair is brown. I look down as I sit on the toilet and I think ‘whose vagina is this?’ it’s attached to my body but it is not mine. Mine had red hair on it. And when it was nearly bald it still had some red hair and I got used to it. But now it’s not mine and I don’t like it. The hair is straight and soft, not like it should be. And brown. It’s ugly. I’m embarrassed by it. I fear that someone will see it and laugh. I’m a red head and my pubic hair is brown and the hair on my head is blonde. I feel like someone stole my identity and left the unwanted pieces of theirs for me to have to deal with. This is not my vagina and I’d rather have none than this one.