Journal to a Muse

I'm not a fighter, and my game face doesn't fool many.

2008 hasn't been my happiest year. It is much better since I've quit taking several medications, returned to therapy, and taken a more determined stab at silencing the mean, nasty inner critic who has wreaked havoc with my thinking, my achievements, and several categories of behavior for as long as I can remember.

My physical aches and pains are diminished. I wound my psyche less frequently, and less harshly.

But just the same, I am so grateful that Jan Hoffman, in the NYTimes. wrote about the spectrum of responses to a cancer diagnosis. Sen. Edward Kennedy has been super human, in my opinion. Can you imagine giving a friendly wave to paparazzi after a memorial day boat race, only a week after a diagnosis of inoperable brain cancer? A one finger salute, I could imagine. Patrick Swayze is apparently doing the equivalent, as have Tony Snow, Elizabeth Edwards, Farrah Fawcett... and many others.

Perhaps if I were used to "fame" or scrutiny I would have had to learn to grin and bear it. Or like Lohan, Spears and others, perhaps I'd have acted so badly and self-medicated so inappropriately that the fame would evaporate.
As it is, I can put on a happy face for most people, most of the time, and I'm glad to do it. For their sake.

But sometimes I don't want to.
Sometimes I want to talk about the doubts I have about a "normal" life span. Will my breast cancer recur? Will I die from some other cancer that I don't even know about yet? Stephen Jay Gould was told he had eight months to live after abdominal mesothelioma was discovered. He researched, planned and lived for twenty more years before dying of an unrelated cancer. The twenty more years sounds like a plus. Wondering what ticking time bomb cells might be lurking in freckles, moles, organs or intestines can really keep you awake at night.

I wonder what I should be researching and doing differently. Google has 373,000 results on preventing cancer recurrence today. And they hardly agree with each other. I don't want to make 373,000 changes! Would you?

I have sometimes said that if I could change one thing about me, it would be my "health." This is my euphemism for weight. Fat. The press of mortality makes me wonder if "it" (or "I") am worth the time, trouble, and effort it would take to reduce my bulk to a healthy weight.
Get thin and die? or die of fat? I can tell there is something illogical about that set of choices, but I can't tell what would make more sense.

And the anti-obesity advertising is not motivational. I just feel fatter. Nor does it help to have every food company I've ever heard of (plus some I haven't) presenting lucious photographs of some sugar, corn-syrup and fat-filled delight on television and in magazines.
If I'm going to die anyway, why skip the pie?
But if I had twenty more years, during which I would have strength, stamina and energy to travel to and with my children, to play and travel with my husband, it would be worth sacrificing lots of pies, peanut butter and midnight dairy debacles.

I don't like feeling sorry for myself. But sometimes I do.
And I guess that's just the way it is.
Maybe I'll lose a few more pounds if I remember that and don't consume calorie laden placebos that are not harmless and that only change the pain rather than heal it.