For the most part, Facebook Memories has been mercifully kind during the past months. Yet two photos, five years apart, popped up into my feed recently and struck me because I’d been feeling the same thing when they were taken. One was from six years ago. It’s of me smiling on a vacation. You wouldn’t know anything was off in the photo, but I’d felt weird about posting it. At that time, I was clinging to something comfortable, yet I had felt deeply shaken. I felt like wasn’t being true to myself. (A few months later, my ribs would push themselves out of my chest because of the Hodgkin’s lymphoma tumors. I would be glad then I hadn’t upended my life.)
Another photo showed up from last year. I was in the exact same predicament as five years earlier. I wanted to do the easy thing and was afraid to do the hard thing. Still.
I wondered what I would say to those women.
Dear me:
It’s going to be OK.
And it’s not.
You’re going to get cancer, and it’s going to take a long time to get better, and they’re going to have to rebuild you and you’re going to think you beat it. Then one of your cats dies, your mom will need hip replacement surgery and then you’ll feel a weird stomach pain and end up in the hospital with pancreatitis. You’ll feel like your life is falling apart. This will be the beginning of your second cancer, not related to the first. Most people get it when they’re older than you are. They don’t know why you’re so unlucky. Steve Jobs died of it. Aretha Franklin will die of it. The doctors will operate and the cancer will come back and they’ll do a procedure and tell you it’s all gone, a rarity. You will be so lucky. For one day. Then they will tell you that they hadn’t seen on the scan that it’s come back and it’s going to keep coming back. You’ll always have cancer. You will die of it like Steve Jobs and Aretha Franklin, but also not, because you’re not famous and it’s much too late to become famous now. Oh, well.
You’ll spend your 39th birthday in Iceland and Scotland. You’ll have a nice trip and you’ll finally get to relax but something will feel off. You’ll soon develop peripheral neuropathy that will cause painful twitches and muscle cramps.
You’ll spend the end of your 40th birthday in tears but you’ll still have a good birthday weekend anyway, thanks to your friends.
You have really good friends. You know this too. But you’ll be genuinely and sincerely touched at just how much people will do for you: friends, co-workers, neighbors. People will send you silly gifts and cards. They’ll send notes and texts and postcards. They’ll chip in for Seamless and for prescription medication. They’ll travel with you. They’ll visit. They’ll host. People will be so good to you. You have made so many mistakes, but you will take comfort in that you must have done something right to have these good people in your life. You’ve met and gotten to know a lot of really amazing people over the years. You shouldn’t be so cynical.
But then again maybe you should, because you’re not always the best judge of character. Some people who you assumed would be there for you won’t be at all. It’s OK, though. Don’t be hard on yourself. You sometimes try to see the best in people and sometimes it’s not there.
Someone you thought would always be there for you will betray you and you’ll feel blindsided and yet as if you’d always known this was coming. You know this is coming, don’t you? That’s why you look so uncertain in the those photos. Why don’t you do something now? Because you’re scared. I know. All you wanted at one point, in fact, was to be in a relationship, and you did it for so long at the expense of so much, sometimes even yourself. Maybe you’re bad at relationships. Maybe you’re bad at this relationship. Maybe this relationship is bad.
Once you get through the first month or so you’ll wonder why you wasted so much of your time and energy on being unhappy to try to make someone else happy who isn’t going to be happy with you anyway. You’ll have some happy times though; it isn’t all bad.
You’ll get to be happy. Remember the independent woman you used to be sometimes? Or you’d pretend to be? Here you are. You’re finally pretty comfortable with who you are, and you’re going to die soon. Alanis Morissette would maybe label this “ironic” but that’s not true. You’re not dying alone; you’re living the rest of your life on your terms.
It’s sometimes tough though. Sometimes like today you’ll be cleaning up cat vomit and diarrhea while feeling exhausted yourself and you’ll cry. You’ll stare off into space for about 20 minutes trying to muster the energy to go to the bodega to get cleaning wipes. You’ll feel depressed and lonely sometimes, but you often felt that way for the past four decades. It will pass.
You will fulfill your destiny as a cat lady and have three cats now. Your cats who you loved so much are gone, and then you had a kitten who died, but she had a good few months and you loved her. You have her brother: an eerily smart and very funny pink-nosed tabby, and a brother and sister set: a sweet and gentle little tabby and a black cat (after wanting one as a goth girl for so long).
You’ll be really sick and convinced you are dying for awhile, and you pretty much are, but they have a new treatment that will buy you some time. Not a lot. You’ll try to find happiness and meaning in church pews and meditation centers, on yoga mats, at hypnotism. You’ll try to live life to the fullest.
You’ll try to not worry about how much time you have left, though it’s something you’re always dimly aware of.
You had a re-housewarming party and a fun summer of Josie.
And you had a nice European vacation with a friend and you saw some of your friends in Dublin and Copenhagen, and you went to Amsterdam and you met up with your mom in France, and you went to Paris and Lourdes. Your mom stayed with you for a week in your newly rearranged apartment and it was nice and cozy.
You’ll spend your 41st birthday in Bermuda. You made it back! You always thought you would, and then when you were dying you thought you wouldn’t see those pink sand beaches ever again. But you made it!
You’ll still have so many conversations about everything: life, politics, friendship, love, philosophy, cats, pop culture. After talking with several old friends recently, you’ll realize how much of life doesn’t turn out how you plan.
Today is one of those days, where little things go wrong. You just spilled salsa on one of the cats, and that’s one of the better things. You’ve spent too much time by yourself and are probably too emotional. Yet you’re filled with gratitude and hope still that life, in its shortened state, provides more joy.
It’s going to be OK.
And it’s not.