A few weeks ago, my work building was offering free headshots with a professional photographer. I love free things. (I had actually been signing up for free yoga offered in the building when I discovered the news about the free photos.) So I took off my wig, flattened a particularly stubborn cowlick in the bathroom, and got my plain black dress I keep in my “Don Draper drawer.” (It sounds like I have flasks of whiskey and crisp white shirts in case I end up on all night benders, but it’s actually crammed with condiments, an elderly laptop for freelancing, contact lens solution, yoga clothes, and some random clothing items in case I hate what I’m wearing or spill something.)
I had forgotten about my headshot with my PRRT treatment the next day and a looming freelance deadline. As I sat sequestered and radioactive in my apartment that weekend, my headshots arrived in my inbox. I updated my Gmail/Google photo that I’d had for at least seven years. A pre-cancer, smiling me sits outside a neighborhood restaurant in the old photo.
I surprised myself by crying. Not because I look younger and better in the old photo. My long locks are long gone and my hair has thinned considerably. Cancer has aged me—a lot. My eyes crinkle, and I’m thinner in a weird way. I’m covered in little radiation tattoos and scars, from the tiny points of entry for my PICC lines to the long scar that runs down my abdomen from the Whipple procedure. I have a Mediport in my chest. I cried tears of self-pity for the smiling girl in the picture, who didn’t know what was in store for her, particularly this tough year. She looks so happy.
While this summer has been great, I’ve had to come to terms with a lot of things this year. Dying had been on my mind, but being so sick earlier this year gave me a glimpse of the end. It’s not pretty. I’m not sure I’ve come to terms with that completely. As always, the doctors are doing what they can to piece me together and keep me functional. My bone marrow is pretty beat up from not only the PRRT, but also the previous chemo that made me so sick earlier this year. I’m feeling much better, but there’s always a cost.
As time passes, you have to let possibilities go. With an abbreviated life, I’ve had to come to terms a little sooner with things I’ll never experience. When my time comes, I won’t have two of the things I feared most I would die without. Motherhood is one of them. I’ve always had complicated feelings about it anyway, but the idea of not having children has always been a strange fear. Even though I was uncertain about it, I thought it was something I would do. When someone dies without having children, it’s always made me oddly sad. I don’t know if it’s a sense of the frailty of mortality? The need to feel like some part of someone left behind as a legacy? I think I’ve come to terms with it. It wasn’t meant for me. Leaving children behind sounds incredibly hard and painful. (Julie Yip-Williams, who passed away earlier this year from cancer, writes about it beautifully.)
The second is the fear of “dying alone.” I’ve always played a kind of game with myself: If were randomly dropped into my current life from the past, what would past-me think? Would she be happy? If you would have put me from a year or two ago into now, sitting on the couch in my apartment that’s been rearranged and boyfriendless, I think past me would be surprised. I didn’t expect things to turn out this way.
Yesterday, I took a yoga class at a new place. Often in classes the dharma talk or something the teacher says seems as if it were selected for me. The yoga teacher said that life doesn’t always go how you expected, but it’s necessary and how you deal with it is what’s important. (He calls himself the smiling yogi, so he encourages smiling.) I’m not doing it justice, but it was what I needed to hear. In fact, in a very small example, I hadn’t expected to be at that class. I just missed the bus and was running in the heat to another hot yoga place, but while I was still huffing and puffing my way there, the class registry closed, so I opted to run faster and farther to a nearby studio with a class at the same time. It turned out to be a serendipitous turn of events.
I’ve dealt with anxiety in the past, and one of the methods of dealing with it is to imagine the worst thing. Say you’re afraid of having a panic attack on an airplane. The exercise is to imagine the worst: You’ve had a panic attack, you’re ripped off your clothes and are screaming up and down the aisle. And then what? Nothing. You’re still there. (Although I’m pretty sure that would get your restrained or Tasered or something.)
When I attended a cancer support group, several people there were afraid to have children or do things because they didn’t know if the cancer would come back. I tried to encourage them to live and gave myself as an example. The worst happened: The cancer came back and isn’t going away. I’m going to die childless and “alone”—isn’t that what society dictates that women are supposed to fear the most?
My very worst fear was fear of abandonment, and it happened.
Yet I’m surrounded by love and don’t feel alone at all.
Sometimes, what you fear the most isn’t that scary. What you thought might make you happy might be making you miserable. Some things are the worst things: cancer, death of loved ones. But sometimes what you think are the worst things aren’t. Sometimes they’re the best things, or at least better things. Sometimes you miss a yoga class and take a great class anyway. (Or sometimes you miss class and end up going to a later class and seeing Lady Gaga in the lobby; this also happened to me and is among my best celebrity sightings. Also, I just realized I spend of a lot of my time trying to get to yoga classes.) Sometimes it feels like your life blows up in your face and when the dust settles, you assess the damage, realize you’re still here, dust yourself off and move forward.
I have a cat purring on my chest right now, and, above the couch on a cat shelf, another cat lounges, one tabby foot and a striped tail dangling off the edge. I love that the small tabby tucks me in at night and I awake bookended by the pink-nosed tabby and the black cat purring in my arms. I love being a cat lady.
I love the rearrangement of my apartment. I love my new bedframe I got for free from NextDoor. I loved what was deemed the “Summer of Josie,” and have plenty of things to look forward to in the fall, including my first vacation in a year, visits from some of my oldest and dearest friends, and a birthday party.
My headshot by C. King Photography
I love this city. I am coming up on my 10-year-anniversary with New York. Similar to my weird feeling about feeling sad when people don’t leave offspring behind, I always felt like the closer to a city and to New York you lived, the better. I always kind of wanted to live here but didn’t think I could do it.
I still get sad, and I have a lot to work through. But I still love my life, even after the unexpected turns.