Today was hard. I’m not sure why. In general, I’ve been feeling a lot better physically, emotionally and mentally. Maybe I was feeling too buoyant, and I had to come down a little bit.
Actually, I guess I know why. Two things happened today: My hair started falling out again and my ex moved the rest of his stuff out, and I had complicated feelings about both.
My scalp started aching this weekend, and I had hoped it was because I’d been wearing a big garden hat. Today, little pieces of my super-short hair kept showing up on my desk, on my laptop, in my hands. I was told there might be mild alopecia from the PRRT, but my hair had already thinned from the earlier chemo.
Losing my hair had never really bothered me before. When my hair fell out before, I had believed that someone loved me and thought I was beautiful no matter what, and I couldn’t stop myself from thinking I was wrong on both counts. Even as I thought that, I felt disgusted at myself for having such a blatant moment of self-pity. But after trying to banish the negative thoughts and everything else you’re supposed to do, I couldn’t and so I decided to indulge and let myself cry so I could finally let it go.
I was going to go to meditation after work today and come back when all his things were gone. That would have been better, but I had to answer some mundane logistical questions, and I needed to ask some equally mundane questions about the cat litter genie and some remote controls, so that’s how I ended up crying in front of my laptop instead of enlightened and beatific on the G train home.
I don’t think my sadness is specific to this relationship even. I recently said that if I ever felt sad, friends should remind me that my ex took all the dental floss. (We had like six of them too. He took all of them.) Sometimes when I’m sad about one thing, I get sad about everything all at once.
Why do we always think we’re going to the the exception to heartbreak, to illness, to tragedy? And sometimes the thing you fear the most happens. Your cancer comes back. Your relationship ends. Your hair falls out. And you’re still here. Now what?
When I find myself worrying about my health getting worse again, I have to remind myself that worrying won’t stop anything from happening. It will just make me miserable in the present. And right now, even though I felt a little sad, I’m OK. I don’t have the illusion of immortality; most people who have been through cancer don’t. Can I live like I don’t know how much time I have, because none of us does?
A lot of the meditation and yoga talks discuss suffering and not being in the present enough. I think I’m more melancholy than most people about the passage of time. I’m not sure why. When I would go on vacation as a kid, for instance, I would think in the weeks afterward: “A week ago, I was doing this fun thing in this great place.” I was always comparing the past with the present and the past seemed better. Sometimes I even am sad while something good is happening because I know it won’t last; I’m nostalgic for things as they’re happening.
That’s weird. I know. Yet I still find myself trying to grab on to good and happy things and I can’t hang on to things. Time passes. It’s almost like living in the moment, but I hold on too tight.
I had methodically removed a lot of breakup items, but today he took his beach stuff and my beach towel remained, still smelling of the beach. The woman at the beach (maybe two years ago now?) didn’t know her relationship had an expiration date. She thought she had longer to live in general.
The past doesn’t always make me sad, of course. An unexpected benefit of my ex moving out was the unearthing of a lot of my old journalism clips and my photos. I also found my high school yearbook that I had chided him for putting away in a box somewhere. “I still used it as a reference material,” I complained to a high school friend who was recently in town when she tried to explain to me who someone was. Now it is back within easy reach on a bookshelf where it belongs, along with my 1998 interview with Britney Spears and other important documents. (“She doesn’t say much,” I complained in the accompanying email to the editor of the publication, back in the days when you sometimes printed out emails.) I found CDs of friends’ bands and mixes, including mixes of Phil Collins and hair metal that a friend made for me. I actually physically hang onto the past and never throw anything away.
Sometimes I feel buoyant and free and happy. More often as every day passes. Usually, in fact. This weekend I even worried that I didn’t feel sad at all.
I hope the treatment continues to work. Hair loss is a small price to pay for feeling better. It’s one of the less common side effects. I’d hoped since I didn’t have the more common side effects, like post-treatment nausea, that I would skip this one. Hair loss is probably better than radioactive vomit. I will take baldness over the way I felt earlier this year.
And yet: Vanity. Today I felt ugly and stupid. Luckily the bad things don’t last either.
I have been able to return to yoga a little bit. I spent this weekend in the community garden. Even though it was sweltering, I get comfort from weeding the garden path. I was worried I’d get too sad from being alone with my thoughts, but sitting on the warm bricks and the feeling of the sun on my skin, the smell of the earth, the sound of the birds, all of the descriptions that other people have written more eloquently about so many times because it’s so good—it all makes me feel so happy. I suppose there’s something comforting and permanent about the Earth and the sun, though that’s an illusion too.
Before the sun eats up the world or however the world ends, however, I have some fun things planned. I planned a birthday trip in October to one of my favorite places. I’ve been meaning to go back since I was 11 or 12, and I specifically remember being sad about the end of that trip for weeks. This long holiday weekend two of my favorite people are coming to town and I’ve been terribly neglectful about making plans. Then more friends are in town. And then more friends are in town. A friend was in town today, in fact, and I got to see her unexpectedly for half an hour and it pulled me out of my self-pity.
I do miss having someone to always do something with. Even though I have packed lots of activities into the past month, I liked having a default person to hang out with.
I started the day with a free outdoor yoga class, and then I took the ferry to work and I was feeling really good before I unexpectedly slid into this temporary sadness. I was feeling so inexplicably sad by the middle of the day that I also took the free yoga class in my work building. (A cockroach showed up at the end of class, and now I will be doing savasanas with one eye open.)
Sometimes all the yoga and meditation and looking on the bright sides of things just don’t curb the sadness, and you have to just be sad in order to let it pass. Since I started writing this, though, I already feel much better. Only my scalp hurts now.
Tomorrow I’ll probably wake up to less hair, but I’ll also wake up to my own apartment and the purr of cats looking forward to breakfast. Tomorrow I will be Kelly Clarkson. Tomorrow I will be Vince Neil (sadly with less luxuriant hair).