The Return of the Kraken

Almost exactly two years ago, on Record Store Day, I had a liver ablation to get rid of what they thought could be my last neuroendocrine tumor. (It wasn’t.) My ex went out that day to a beer event and to a show, and he took my beloved Kraken Rum umbrella, complete with tentacle handle, that I got at a media event. Only one of them came back that night.

It wasn’t my umbrella.

I called the bar and music venue. Friends offered to look. The umbrella was gone. My ex said the umbrella was hard to hold anyway.

My friend gave me her Kraken umbrella as a replacement. Another friend sent me an octopus tentacle pen.

Then, a few weeks ago, a friend who sometimes works at the music/event venue texted me a photo and asked, “Hey, is this your umbrella?”

There it was, in coat check.

It was as if it sensed it was time to return to me.

These past couple of years have been rough. I was told I would always have cancer. I had a traumatic 40th birthday. I almost died and for five months, until the new PRRT treatment, I watched myself deteriorate with no relief in sight. A 12-year-relationship ended. Something I had hung hopes on for six years evaporated in the course of 48 hours, and it hurt so much that the weight would pin me into bed some mornings.

Yet, I’m happy. It seems like every time something knocks me down—hard—I have to pick myself up, dust myself off and keep going, even if I am wounded or limping. (Sometimes, as was the case this week, literally.) “I don’t have time to be sad,” I explained to my friend who let me stay with her after my breakup and first PRRT treatment, when I was radioactive. I just don’t have much time. Months. Maybe years. I feel sick today and whenever I feel sick, I’m worried it’s forever.

A lot of things have been outside my control, from disease to other people’s behavior. I was telling someone last week that bad things seem to have happened to me, while I’ve had to actively make the good things happen.

A few weeks ago, I went to a talk about neuroendocrine tumors. When it came to the part about ki markers, I just remember that mine aren’t good. After PRRT, the average is 40 months of wellness. I was given six. My rare VIPoma tumors produce hormones that have terrible effects. I’m younger than most people who have this cancer. Most people think I am a caregiver, a daughter, not the patient. When they realize I am the patient, something in their faces shifts.

Sometimes it all catches up to me, and I cry out of exhaustion. Last week, I was the lady with the black eye crying on the train, my favorite place to cry. (As I have mentioned before, I don’t feel alone but I also don’t feel so vulnerable or like I have to explain anything.)

Oh, I gave myself a black eye last week. The black eye is a symbol of something. I’m still not sure what. I had gotten my chipped front teeth fixed and was ready to take on the world. Then my sick cat had to go to the vet, and as I ran to catch him to put him in his carrier, I tripped on cat-urine-soaked bedding and fell face-first into a trunk. The top of my eye socket hit the trunk lid so hard, I saw stars. It was like a cartoon: as I lay on the floor bleeding, the animated stars circling my head, the cat sauntered away.

I arrived at the emergency vet, bruised and bloody. “Is he hard to handle?” asked the vet tech, visibly worried, as her eyes moved from my swelling purple eye to the big tabby cat in his carrier.

My sweet cat Ziggy has been leaking since he had a bladder obstruction. On Friday, the vet said that maybe his bladder had stretched out and might not go back, and if that were the case, I’d have to put him down. He’s only three. He’s so smart and sweet that when I give him pills and they fall out of his mouth, he’ll try to dutifully eat the pill from the floor. He’s an exceptional cat, and I love him so much. Are you kidding me? I mentally railed. You can’t leave me this one thing?

Luckily, it seems as if the medication is working. I woke up last night to thunder and to three cats that had set themselves up diagonally across the bed. Ziggy, who was (and always is) snuggled closest to me, is drier and less groggy.

Saturday marked two years since my umbrella loss, but it was also another anniversary, according to Facebook: Five years earlier, I’d gone into the hospital for a monthlong stay for my stem cell transplant to treat my refractory Hodgkin’s lymphoma. That also brought up some complicated feelings: the hope I’d had then, when I didn’t know I had a second type of cancer.

The past several years in particular seem like they’ve been full of high highs and low lows, with very little in between. Not everything lasts. Often I’m preoccupied with good not lasting or wondering when good things will be taken away. It’s a particular type of suffering, I learned at a dharma talk this summer. But the bad doesn’t always last forever either. I’ve been trying to become comfortable with the fleeting nature of happiness. I’ve been trying to learn to be happy with what I have instead of what I want or what I think will make me happy.

While worried about Ziggy on Saturday, I went to yoga. It wasn’t the class I’d planned to go to, but I’d mixed up the times. Often when that happens, it ends up being fortuitous. After class, the teacher read an excerpt from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, about the balance between joy and sorrow.

“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, ‘Joy is greater than sorrow,’ and others say, ‘Nay, sorrow is the greater.’
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”

It was exactly what I needed to hear.

Sometimes, when I realize I’m feeling OK, I’m so joyful. It’s nice when I’m well and not sick. (Conversely, when I am sick, I freak out it’s forever.)

I don’t know what to do with the rest of my short life. Who does? I live life intensely, but I always have. Sometimes I feel like I have to justify what I do, but I know that’s not specific to me. A friend pointed out that some people might always question my choices. Why am I still working? Why am I traveling? Why do I work out? (The last one is easy—if your time on earth might be limited and you want to stretch it out, 30 seconds of squat-jumps, burpees, or mountain-climbers seem like an eternity.) I don’t know what to do except march forward.

I’m afraid. I’m afraid I’ll get sick again soon.

But tonight, Ziggy was purring and playing a game on the iPad. He sits curled up with me as I type. Right now, we have this moment and are happy.

This Week

This week I found out that something I had hung my hopes on for six years won’t ever happen. It is a different type of heartbreak. I cried so much, I had to go to the eye doctor because I dried out my eyes. I had trouble getting out of bed this week, but one of the cats took preliminary nibbles at my inert form and so I had to rouse myself from my self-pity and continue on. I also had friends in town this weekend and that cheered me immensely. A lot of people reached out to me. I will heal from this.

I have been worried I’m going to die and I won’t leave anything good behind. It’s such a lonely feeling. I want my life to matter. I want to do good. Is it something that we all struggle with? The worry we won’t matter somehow?

I do have a life full of love.

I need to be happy for all that I have and not what I want. Why is that so hard?

To cap off my week, I discovered that something I had suspected since May was indeed true. Since I knew already, it wasn’t so bad.

In the midst of all this, I got some OK medical news. I was feeling very tired last week and I would get out of breath climbing the stairs so I received a transfusion on Saturday. After my blood boost, I’m feeling better. My bone marrow is still beat up a bit from the treatment.

Since I’ve been feeling OK, I probably won’t receive another round of PRRT because it might affect my bone marrow in a negative way, causing more platelets and hemoglobin. The next step would probably be another embolization if the tumors start acting up again.

Right now, however, though there are a few more, they’re more or less holding steady. So, for now, we’re going to wait and see. New treatments could be on the horizon.

I’ll continue to live my life. It won’t always be easy because life isn’t easy. But this time is a gift and I get to live. I don’t know how much time I have, but I want to make it as good as possible, filled with joy, laughter and love.

Faith

Years after arriving from Hungary, my great-grandfather had a job burying victims of the 1918 Spanish influenza outbreak. According to family lore, he never got sick because he had stuffed his pockets with mothballs.

When I was in grade school, my mom put mothballs into my coat pockets to ward off illness. I don’t think I got the flu, but I did get the common cold, as well as a lot of questions from other kids about why I smelled like mothballs.

I don’t think I ever discovered a reason why my great-grandpa never got sick. My personal theory is that if you smell like mothballs, people might keep their distance. Mainly, I think you need to have faith in something for it to work. I regularly take those dissolving vitamins concoctions like Airborne to ward off colds when I feel them coming on. I worry that if I stop believing in them, they won’t work.

I’ve been thinking a lot about faith, and lack thereof. I started feeling sick again in late December. The disease is progressing, and the last treatment of PRRT is being put off indefinitely. (At last count, my white blood cells were finally up but my platelets are still down. My marrow is no longer a rich environment, but closer to a wasteland, from what I understand, and the doctors want to keep it from turning into a full-blown Chernobyl.) Though the disease is progressing, the doctors seem optimistic they can keep it controlled for a bit. I am being bought little increments of quality time.

Naturally, I’ve been wondering how much time I have left and how much of that is worth living. Some people, like me, are wary of getting any more possessions or making too many plans, because I won’t be around to enjoy them.

Other people, however, firmly believe they’re going to get better. They think if they can hang on, they can be around for a cure. I wish I could have that kind of faith.

I often have difficulty having faith in anything. It seems as if, in order for things to work, you have to have faith in them.

In June, shortly after my first PRRT treatment, I went to a “Hypnotism to Improve Your Mood” workshop at Gilda’s Club, the non-profit for cancer patients and survivors started in memory of late comedian Gilda Radner. I’m a cynic and didn’t expect anything to happen, but felt desperate. It was shortly after the breakup and my heart was leaden. I had been going over what I could have done to make things different and how I had ended up alone despite everything I had compromised to prevent it. The same refrain of abandonment was on repeat.

I entered the Gilda’s Club outpost in Brooklyn and sat down at a table of about 10 women. The room smelled strongly of another attendee’s lunch, a strong mixture of canned soup and vinegar. I closed my eyes and accepted the hypnotist’s suggestions: to let go of things that didn’t serve me, to feel better.

To my surprise, I felt better. The heaviness lifted.

Friends asked if it was like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; like most movies, I haven’t seen it. But I stopped obsessing. I let things go. I often replay cringeworthy moments over and over again. I dwell. I feel myself circling a drain of depression that I can’t escape. With just one visit, I stopped. It helped not only with the breakup, but with other aspects of my life. I’m easily wounded and dwell, and since then I’ve been able to let things go much more easily. Not always, but I would say it changed my life.

I attend about once a month, when Gilda’s Club offers the workshops. The hypnotist says it’s not him doing something; he makes suggestions that we follow. For example, he says to imagine he’s put a brick in one of your hands, a helium balloon in the other. The brick hand will lower, the balloon hand will rise.

Some people believe that, with enough faith, you can improve your health. I looked up several of the names bandied about. Dr. John Sarno, who died in 2017, was a sought-after physician for back pain at NYU Langone, though it also seems he was equally dismissed. He believed a lot of chronic ailments was caused by psychological anxieties. (Someone said deep-seated anger could help cancer grow, and I certainly had a lot of that over the past decade.) There’s Bruce Lipton, a molecular biologist who speaks of the importance of the mind-body connection. I would take this all with a grain of salt, as well as with doses of conventional medicine.

Is there anything to willing yourself better? I read an article this summer by Jo Marchant, author of Cure: A Journey Into the Science of Mind Over Body, and it seems as if the mind can at least help you feel better.

My mom believes I’ll get better. She keeps telling me to have faith. In September, I traveled to Europe with a friend and we met my mom in Paris, then we traveled to Lourdes, France. At the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains, Lourdes was a small town in France until the mid-1800s, when the Virgin Mary appeared in a grotto to St. Bernadette Soubirous. Today, about 5 million people visit Lourdes per year, mostly to visit the shrine and gather water from the spring, which has been said to have cured many people. I went there in high school with my mom and grandma, but we didn’t do the baths, as none of us needed the curative properties.

This time, we waited in line, organized by volunteers wearing name tags of their home countries and the languages they speak. (According to one of my neighbors, a member of the church across the road goes every year for a month, and many of the volunteers are those who have been cured.) The baths are divided between men and women. We waited on benches until we were ushered into one of the baths, each with its own changing room and a flurry of women helping to dress and undress those going into and coming out of the baths. Years of Catholic school has made me weirdly modest in women’s locker rooms, always covered, but years of gym locker rooms has made me pretty brazen in terms of pilgrimage sites; one of my volunteers who held up a big towel around me while I dressed was told to cover me back up after I told her I was OK putting on my tights by myself.

Once you’re undressed, they put a sheet around you and when it’s your turn, you’re led to a cement tub filled with cold spring water. Women on either side of me said a prayer and then they led me in, and to my surprise, I also sat down and they held me under my arms and swished me around a bit. Then they send you to get dressed. “We’ll pray for you,” said one of the women, and it almost made me cry. For some reason, the kindness of strangers makes me cry more. I’m not sure why, but part of me feels that I don’t deserve it. I think because when people close to me have hurt me, I wonder if it’s because they know me better and are treating me the way I deserve; maybe I don’t deserve the kindness from strangers.

It’s hard to believe, looking out at the sea of people gathered for services and the lines for the grotto that I would be among those cured when so many have faith and seem to deserve it. As we marched in the candlelit rosary procession, I was touched by the beauty but also couldn’t help but feel hopeless sometimes as so many hope to be healed.

My cynicism isn’t always bad. Sometimes people remind me that doctors don’t know for sure what’s going to happen, and that’s true, and they don’t profess to know everything. I’m wary of people who say they do know, particularly for a price. I’ll go to a $5 palm reader at Coney Island for fun, but I’m not setting store by something bigger, no matter how comforting that might be.

I’m still plagued with doubt. I’m looking out uneasily into the horizon, waiting for the storm of illness. How can I trust myself again? Is it too late to find faith in myself, at least? How do I find faith and meaning?

While recently in Trinidad de Cuba, my friends and I came across a gallery with art that made us stop in our tracks. The artist, Yuniesky Fernandez Frias, is a fisherman and most of the paintings, created on pieces of old boats, depict a bearded fisherman in a wide-brimmed hat. A word at the top of each painting outlines a concept, illustrated by the fisherman in his boat below. One that struck me was called “Duda” (“Doubt.”) The artist explained that he was thinking what happens when we doubt ourselves. The fisherman in his boat is upside-down in the water, with fish floating by; his line is cast upward to the sky, fishing for birds.

Since the day I tuned into the cat cam, I felt as if my world was turned upside-down. When everything shifted, I was left gasping for air, and it took awhile, but I realized it was air I was finally breathing in. I had been in the water, fishing for birds.

Now, and until my time is up, however soon that might be, I’m grateful for every breath.

A few months ago, I quoted Albert Camus, “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” I was surprised that the quote was his, but a friend found a short video tutorial about him, and I was reminded that he was the most fun-loving of the existential philosophers. I can’t imagine it’s something that is hard to achieve, but it’s probably why he’s one of my favorites. Like his peers, he maintained that life was absurd and pointless, but that one didn’t have to necessarily despair and could find some sort of happiness. In his 1942 essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus compares our lives to that of Sisyphus, the Greek mythological character condemned to forever roll a boulder up a mountain and watch it immediately fall to the bottom again. Instead of despair, the absurdity of life requires acceptance. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” Camus says.

I thought of this quote as I spent an entire December weekend doing laundry. A moth had fluttered out of a sweater my ex had left behind, and I decided I was going to wash everything and finally reorganize my closet. We had moths a few years ago and had washed everything, but they’re particularly hard to get rid of because they can lay eggs in your wool clothes. I was tired of seeing the occasional rogue moth. So I spent an entire weekend rolling my laundry to and from the laundromat, in what seemed like a never-ending modern-day Sisyphean task. I hate doing laundry and could not imagine myself or Sisyphus happy and was eager to no longer think of moths and existential dilemmas.

I took a break Saturday night and went to a friend’s birthday party and had a weird extra bit of time when I went to the store and bought a new rolling laundry basket to replace my broken ones. I also got a few closet moth cakes. I thought they would smell better, but they are really just giant moth balls, as it turns out.

Now, as a testament to the power of faith, my apartment always smells vaguely of moth balls.

The Moment

People talk about the holidays being rough for some people. This season was particularly difficult for me, even after years following losses and even with good things happening. This year I lost a lot, and I almost lost my life this year; for the first five months, I lost a semblance of a normal life at least. I gained things this year too, including some extra months of quality life thanks to the new PRRT treatment. 

I got myself back this year. I didn’t like who I had become. It feels good to be me again even if it’s just for a little while. I’m ending the year with the opportunity to help some other people, and that feels good. 

This holiday season was hard for me for a lot of reasons. It could be my last one. I got to spend it with my mom, and that was nice, though I was in the hospital for a day with a fever and exhaustion. They don’t know the cause, but they gave me some blood for my low hemoglobin. (Though getting blood for Christmas, a friend pointed out, is pretty goth.) My bone marrow is just beat up. 

I haven’t been feeling as well for the past few weeks. It seems like the magic of the PRRT is wearing off. My blood counts are too low to get treatment soon. My December treatment was pushed back to February. Feeling sick again puts me in a really dark place. I’m grateful to have had this extra time, but I don’t want it to end. I’m not eager to go back to diapers and IVs and feeling sick all the time. I’m greedy. I want more time. I got a scan on Friday and I’m talking to the doctor in a few days. I hope I can get a fourth PRRT treatment. 

Since improving after the PRRT and since the breakup, I’ve been trying to suck the marrow out of life, as someone said. I declared a summer of Josie. I traveled. I saw lots of friends. I saw people I hadn’t seen in years. I had an amazing birthday/Halloween/pirate party. I have tentative plans to do more traveling and to see as many people as possible. I probably won’t be able to travel for very much longer, unless the doctors have more tricks up their sleeves. (I have tentative plans to travel and I’m not sure how I’ll feel until–if and when–I get another round of PRRT.) I’m doing a farewell tour of sorts as well and am trying to see people who live in other cities. 

This summer was also a summer of self-improvement. I tried to find peace on yoga mats, in meditation centers, at hypnotism, in church pews, in therapy, in books. I did find some degree of happiness. Earlier this year, I was resigned to die, but these past months have been so good. I have things to live for. I don’t want to go now. 

I try to live in the moment. Sometimes I have to think ahead and I can’t help but look behind. Sometimes I’m so fully immersed in the moment, it’s hard for me to reach out to make future plans or be reachable, and for that I’m sorry.

For so many years, in many yoga classes, I’ve heard about living in the moment. It’s all we have. We’re not promised anything beyond that. 

Looking to the past is too incredibly painful. I thought I had something and I didn’t. I have been looking back on earlier memories, distant and safe ones. 

The future is too terrifying. I am too afraid of what it holds. More illness. 

The moment is what I have. 

Someone asked why I take so many selfies. I take a lot of them and a lot of photos in general. I’m trying to hang on to the happy moments. I know you’re supposed to stay present and enjoy the moments, but I also have a habit of hanging onto the past and trying to grasp the happy times even though I can’t hold them. Photos are the best I can do, and it’s trying to capture the moments even as they escape. 

The holidays were bittersweet. It was hard because I lost people this year and felt abandoned in a way, but I had so many people around me this year. I have been surrounded by love and friendship, and that sounds trite, but I don’t know how else to put it. 

During the holidays, it’s hard to be in the moment. I think that’s where a lot of the holiday blues stem from. The future always demands attention: Parties, plans, presents. Past memories, both good and bad, are always there. Even happy memories can be painful if someone is no longer around or if you worry that this holiday won’t be as good.

On Christmas Day, I received a nice message from the past. My mom and I were making goulash, and meat I bought was bad and had turned gray. We tried to figure out what to do, and luckily an open store saved the day. My mom was looking through my recipes and found this message at the end of a handwritten recipe from my grandma: “Don’t be disappointed if it’s not a success—many cooks fail. Next time you’re home we can make it—so you can really be successful. It’s easy. Good luck. Love Grandma.” It was exactly the right message to find. I miss her. 

I actually started writing this post in October, when I returned from Bermuda, where I’d gone for my birthday. I went there when I was 11 or 12 and have been wanting to go back ever since. My last morning there, I watched the clear waves crash against rocks and pink sand and tried to stay in the moment while ignoring the feeling of sadness at my impending departure. I love New York and am rarely sad to come home, but Bermuda was hard to leave decades ago and it was hard to leave this time as well. (After that first trip, I moped and thought, “A week ago, I was in Bermuda,” “Two weeks ago, I was in Bermuda,” for quite some time.) I have always had trouble living in the moment, and still can (and do, despite my efforts) make myself pretty miserable with this line of thinking.

I have trouble describing Bermuda because it’s too beautiful. The pink crushed-coral sand, clear waves giving way to progressively deeper shades of blue before the ocean meets the blue of the sky are what paradise looks like. The hibiscus and flower scents and the smell of the ocean are what it would smell like. The ocean’s waves breaking along the nearby shore and the chorus of the tree frogs are what paradise would sound like. (I did see a mouse and it didn’t look like vermin, but like a character illustrated in a children’s book.) I did yoga on a covered rooftop section of the hotel one morning and I realized that this is the peaceful place you’re often told to envision in savasana. I didn’t need to envision it—I was there.

That morning, as I tried to absorb the beauty of the island, I knew I couldn’t. I’d done a lot of Instagramming during this trip and my recent trip to Europe. I want to remember everything. I want to take it with me, like the few grains of pink sand I grabbed or the remaining Malin + Goetz shampoo and conditioner in the small hotel bottles.

On its last day, I feel like I should acknowledge the weirdness of this year. It was strange for me personally but also weird in general. I feel like we’re in some simulation that’s gone awry or we’re a science fair project in the bedroom of an alien teen that he’s either forgotten about or we’re the jar that his little brother stole to mess with him. People thought that there was an alien invasion or an apocalypse last week when transformer in Queens caught fire, and that kind of made sense and people didn’t seem very surprised. I was convinced it was fireworks, and I would be terrible in an apocalypse. (Someone told me that in situations like this, one third of people react appropriately, one-third freeze in panic, and one-third doesn’t react properly and fails to panic. I’m in the last oblivious group.)

New Year’s has never been my favorite holiday. It demands reflection on the past and resolutions in the future and a lot of pressure to be spectacular. I had a series of bad New Year’s that reached its nadir the year I was stood up by some guy and then, then I ended up in a bathroom with a bleeding woman who had been attacked by her boyfriend. They have been better since. I’ve been sick or on chemo for several recent ones. 

I don’t even know where I was going with this post really. I haven’t posted in awhile; when I feel well I’m out doing things. I have so many half-started posts. 

I should say thank you to my friends for an amazing year and for so much support. I don’t know what I would do without you. You have helped me so much. 

When I posted about being in the hospital last Sunday someone posted a very thoughtful response, and one line that I’ll share (I hope he doesn’t mind) is: “I want to give you courage, and blanket you in peace.” It felt nice to have that virtual blanket of peace, and it helped me immensely that day. 

For your new year, I wish you peace and happiness. I wish you lots of happy moments. 

 

Unreliable Gut

I’m supposed to be in California right now, visiting friends, and instead I’m in a hospital bed. It’s been an extremely weird week all around, personally and California-wise, with the shooting tragedy and the terrible wildfires. I wanted a last-minute getaway when I booked my flight, and I couldn’t shake a gut feeling that I shouldn’t stay here this weekend.

However, as I joked to friends on Friday, my guts were increasingly unreliable because of antibiotics. On Thursday, after feeling increasingly short of breath, I called MSKCC. I’ve had this feeling before. Sometimes I feel as if I’m coming down with something and I’ll fight it off only to get mild pneumonia. I asked if I should go to CityMD or another doctor, and they advised coming to urgent care here. After some tests revealed mild pneumonia, I was given antibiotics. I felt increasingly upset in my digestive tract, but I thought it was just normal antibiotic side effects. I woke up at 3 am on Saturday, however, and called the on-call doctor, who advised I cancel my trip and go to urgent care again. Instead of taking a cab to the airport, I took one to the hospital, where I’ve been since.

After being evaluated in urgent care, I was put in the Clinical Decision Unit for 24 hours for hydration and to see if I should be admitted. My room had a light that mimicked a window that reminded me of the “Fifteen Million Merits” episode of Black Mirror. I really loved the way it seemed like it was daylight, but when I woke up in the middle of the night and was convinced it was morning, I finally had to shut it off.

I had a scan this morning that shows some inflammation. The tumors don’t seem to have increased so that’s encouraging. I have been terrified that the PRRT has stopped working. I am still worried that my symptoms have come back for good. I’m not ready for that. I’ll never be ready, but I thought I had more time. I’ve been a bit quiet during this hospital stay. It’s brought up a lot of past things, like the anger and sadness I felt when they asked me who takes care of me at home. The last time I was here, I was unknowingly a few weeks away from being left. I had to fill out a new form. I ultimately put my mom’s name, but I took comfort in that I could have put so many names down as people who would care for me for a bit.

The past can’t hurt me so much if I don’t let it. It’s the future that I’m worried about. This is physically a taste of the past and what awaits me once this current treatment wears off. I thought I had at least another six to eight months of wellness. I don’t want this. I’m grateful for these five months I’ve had on my terms but I’m not quite ready to begin dying again.

I hope I can improve to get out of here. I’m on the BRATT diet, so my food choices are limited to breads, plain pasta, plain rice, Egg Beaters, egg whites, and potatoes five ways. A friend helped me create a hack with soy milk and peanut butter to create a peanut sauce for my pasta. I amused myself today by ordering both the Boiled Skinless Potato and Skinless Boiled Potato. (Some say there’s might be a difference as to when the skin is removed. It looks the same to me and they tasted better than I thought. I want to believe they needed to make the menu choices symmetrical and this was the solution.) I hope I can get better. I still have more living to do.

 

Dear Me

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.

PRRT, Part 3

A lot of people have asked me how I am feeling the past few days. I feel outraged by most of the news. I feel concerned about the upcoming midterm elections. I feel hopeful that I’ll win the Mega Millions jackpot. I feel excited to have friends in town soon for my birthday party. I feel happy that I had two great vacations back-to-back.

People are asking about my health, though. I had my third PRRT treatment yesterday, and now I’m back to feeling pretty good. This afternoon was a rare time of feeling bad. I feel fatigued. My stomach and bowels feel a little weird. I made a long list of things I wanted to do today, when I’m stuck at home and radioactive, and I spent my afternoon curled up on my bathroom floor.

While on the floor, I had time to reflect on how much more fun my other recent Saturdays have been. Last Saturday, I was in Bermuda, on pink-sand beach, basking in the sun. The Saturday before that, my mom was in town, and we took a tour of my neighborhood that included Key lime pie, a stop at the local winery, barbecue, and ice cream. (Plus a bonus trip to Marshall’s for comfortable shoes. Though we received condescending service from my once-favorite local restaurant, it couldn’t mar the fun week we had together.) The Saturday before that, I was in Paris with my mom and a friend, popping into museums and churches, and attending an opera at Palais Garnier in my wig and a new dress I bought in five minutes at the train station. The Saturday before that, my friend and I had spent the morning at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam then angered a shuttle bus driver and boarded a plane for Copenhagen, where we met up with a good friend I hadn’t seen in a long time. He made us dinner and we went to Octoberfest, where we watched drunken Danish people dressed as Germans drink large steins of beer and sing “Time of My Life.” The Saturday before that was my 10-year New York City anniversary and my cat’s birthday, and I started the day out soaking up the last of my free week trial at a fancy gym, taking a treadmill/strength class, then sitting in a sauna infused with essential oils, followed by a dip in the mineral pool. Then I met up with friends in town and we ate pizza and then took the ferry to my neighborhood for that Key lime pie and view of the Statue of Liberty before heading to a local bakery for a treat to put my cat’s birthday candle in. At my apartment, my second set of friends in town briefly overlapped for a rendition of “Happy Birthday” to the cat. (He received treats and a David Bowie shirt that he appeased us by briefly wearing for photos, proving himself to be a very patient creature who will do anything to ham it up for attention.) Then we went to a bar with a bunch of wax figurines and ate some paella at a food court and ran into some other friends and then we played Chutes and Ladders at a place in my neighborhood that I went to a decade earlier after I spent the day looking at apartments.

In fact, sometimes I forget I’m sick. I was surprised to come back from Bermuda and have a bloodwork appointment on Tuesday in preparation for Thursday’s treatment. I tried to cram as much fun as I could before this weekend of relaxation and radioactivity. On Tuesday night, I went to see some bands and then on Wednesday night I saw David Bowie’s Lodger performed (for free!) in a mall near my workplace.

I prepared my things for Thursday, setting aside my laptop and my clothes and workout clothes. I decided to go to an early workout since I will be radioactive and can’t be sweaty around people for about a week. I was worried I wouldn’t make it to the class (the trains!) but I made it and was feeling good about my decisions until I showered and realized that the rest of my clothes were still on my bed at home. I put my workout clothes back on and went to the hospital for treatment.

By now, I know the drill, so I was given graham crackers and put on my pre-medications through my accessed Mediport. The IV took a bit to put in, as my veins are all used up. When my veins were finally cooperative, I had the treatment again. I wasn’t quite as sleepy as before so I was able to talk to the doctors a bit.

Initially, I was slated to have a half-dose again, like last time. My platelets and hemoglobin dropped after the first full treatment, and remained steady after the second treatment. However, this time it was agreed that I could have the full dose for the PRRT benefits. I think if my blood counts are still off, I might get a transfusion. (I’ve had them before. It’s Halloween! Let’s get the vampire stuff going, I say.)

As before, I’m radioactive. I maximize my distance for others for a few days. No eating or drinking off the same plates for six days. I have to wash my clothes separately for six days. No gym for six days. (Though I managed an ab workout at home under the skeptical eyes of a tabby cat.)

I’m not supposed to hold infants for longer than 30 minutes per day for about 10 days, something that isn’t a problem. “What about the cats?” I asked last time. They are small. I’m told their lifespans aren’t long enough to worry about effects. But they’re young. I worry.

“Some people treat their pets like children,” the radiation officer said to me when I asked again this time. I just nodded. We ended up talking about Halloween and when I told her that I had dressed as Little Red Riding Hood and one cat was the woodsman, one was the wolf and one was the grandmother, I feel like maybe she got a better sense of my relationship with my cats. I have tried to keep my distance. I put a stepladder and handweights against the door of the bedroom, but they pushed it open. Last night, I put my nightstand against the door and I awoke to the smallest cat mewling in my face for breakfast. I think the radiation is turning them into super-strong mutant cats. Tonight I will try something larger as a barrier.

After I started to feel better today, I put on pants that I’d worn over my hot yoga (hot yoga, something I thought I’d never do again) clothes on Monday and went to the drugstore.

Today was a reminder: I have cancer.

It feels so good to forget sometimes though. There are reminders: the surgery scars, the Mediport in my chest, the bouts of fatigue or digestive issues, the bruises that seem to appear from nowhere, the hair loss.

Having my life back, even for a short time, has been so good. In four short months, I feel so different from the woman I was when I first received the treatment.

The doctors estimated about a year from the outset of treatment. I’m one-third through that. Tick-tock goes the invisible clock. As with anything, even time that feels stolen isn’t enough. It’s not the loss of time that scares me; it’s the taste of the inevitable end that haunts my thoughts sometimes.

Do we ever have enough time? There’s so much more I want to do. That feels better at least, than the deeply sad resignation I had earlier this year.

In reading that item from July, however, as I plan to buy some Mega Millions tickets, I realize I also haven’t given up on winning the lottery.

One Year Later

If you would have told me exactly one year ago what was in store this past year, I would have said, “No thank you!”

It’s been a weird year, for the world and for me. The world has become such a weird place I’m convinced we’re some alternate universe project and we’re actually in a jar somewhere, forgotten in a teen’s bedroom after the science fair or we’re in some kind worst-case scenario simulator. (The plot isn’t even plausible anymore with these Vanilla Ice and Kanye West twists. I think the Cubs made some kind of dastardly deal to win the World Series two years ago.)

As for me: I was deathly ill and rushed to the hospital in January, and remained sick for five months. My boyfriend of 12 years is gone. Sometimes I think that I’m doing pretty well, and then I remember that it was actually a year ago that a big portion of my life fell apart. A year ago is the last night I went to sleep with an illusion of my life intact, though I had known by that point that I would always have cancer. I worried it was the last birthday I’d be able to celebrate, and if it weren’t for PRRT treatment, I think I would still maybe have been too sick to have much of a birthday this year.

Last year didn’t go as planned.  I spent the evening of my 40th birthday crying and devastated, wishing I’d never been born, in fact. I was told I ruined everything. A year ago, I started to see the truth that I felt maybe I already knew deep down. Once I saw it, couldn’t un-see it, though I was willing to do so until that choice was taken away earlier this summer.

A year ago, my left middle finger was still intact but my spirit was broken. I walked on eggshells all the time. I felt stifled. I tried to be happy, yet I often felt disappointed in who I’d become. I felt a duality, which only worsened after my birthday weekend last year.

I’ve been told my broken finger is all my fault. OK, then. Fine. I don’t have the energy to disagree. I went to the doctor the day after it was broken and I had a finger splint but it healed crooked. I bite my nails so it’s not like I’ll ever be hand model. It’s barely noticeable. I see its misshapen form whenever I do yoga and am in warrior two. I feel like a terrible warrior when I think of all I put up with and how it got broken. It hurts on rainy days like today.

It’s funny that it’s my middle finger.

I don’t say much about it anymore. When I’ve told the story, I tried to tell it in an impartial way. I don’t tell people much about the breakup because I don’t want to make people uncomfortable. I don’t care much about it anymore. I sometimes feel like I’m not being true to myself to stay so quiet, but it’s also not worth thinking about when I want to and need to move forward. I’ve held my tongue so much it physically hurt. I would grind my teeth at night from stress and my tongue hurt when I woke up.

I’m much less angry than the person who has been bottling things up for years. I don’t have time left on this earth and I don’t have time to be angry anymore.

Also, I wear a mouthguard at night.

Sometimes, I feel like I have no choice like today, an anniversary of sorts. Today was kind of tough.

I am happy to be able to surround myself with people who love and support me. This year I have a getaway planned. I’m not going to pay for my own birthday dinner or for a hotel room I didn’t sleep in. I can look towards the end with a sense of peace and I can treasure the limited time I have with people who make me smile and who sometimes make me laugh so hard, I worry I’ll pass out. Sometimes, they make me cry with their generosity and thoughtfulness. That’s the kind of crying I have room for in my life.

I’ve felt a duality for years between the person I feel I am who was stifled by trying to be in a situation I shouldn’t have been in.

I often feel misunderstood. Since May I worried that people would mistake strength for indifference or coldness. I worried that people would mistake kindness for weakness. I worried that people would mistake assertiveness for meanness or pettiness.

But I also don’t have time to worry. If anyone thinks I deserved this or that I haven’t been fair or that I should stay quiet, then allow me to close the rest of my fingers on my left hand and extend this crooked middle finger skyward.

When the “Worst” Happens

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.

 

Suffering and Karma

My contacts have been bothering me so I had my eyes dilated for a free Lasik consultation at the end of the workday last Monday. I emerged blinking uncomfortably into the sunlight and decided that since I couldn’t really see anyway, I would look inwards and go to a Monday night Dharma Punx talk with Josh Korda at Maha Rose.

It was an emotional week, as it’s been a year since I found out I’d always have cancer.

I had been feeling a little philosophical as well. As part of my apartment rearranging project, I’d moved a bookcase and had taken all my books out. As I arranged my books by existentialists on one shelf, my black cat wedged himself into the empty shelf below and I thought about how pleased my 17- to 22-year-old self would be with that tableau. That’s the shelf that I would present to people if I wanted to posture as an intellectual and hide everything else I’ve ever read.

I put Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha on that shelf and thought about how I didn’t remember anything about it except that it dealt with Buddha and I’d read a good portion of it in 1997 while driving to Cleveland from Columbus and traffic was stopped on the highway for a fatal accident. Word filtered back as we emerged from our cars. Before cell phones, I actually walked to the nearby rest stop and made a pay phone call to my mom and grandma so they wouldn’t worry. When I finally arrived, Princess Diana had died. It was a strange day.

Earlier last Monday, I’d read an article that popped up in my news feed about “The simple art of not being miserable,” and it was about Hesse’s Siddhartha. I’m now convinced internet algorithms can read your mind. The two friends in the book who sought the meaning of life and happiness had asked the wrong questions. Essentially, it seems, it was about eliminating expectations and not always focusing on what you think might make you happy. The constant longing for something makes you miserable.

The talk that night, called “The Fear of Insignificance, Transcendence and the Final Process in Buddhism,” mentioned the French existentialists, and I felt it brought me full circle. It dealt with dukkha, or suffering, and there are three types of suffering. The bad news is I suffer from all three. (Would my inner goth be pleased?) The first type is physical suffering, like my cancer and my contacts issue. The second type is a suffering that comes from a loss of security, like a loss of something we grasped onto going away. It’s the pain of something coming to an end; the example he gave was the closing of a favorite restaurant. (How I’ve mourned the loss of favorite places! I even wrote a column about it years ago for the magazine I worked for. I had no idea that there was a Sanskrit word for it.)

The last one is Sankhara dukkha, which is the pain of trying to find meaning and trying to distill temporary human experiences into something that gives them meaning (selfies, etc.). Oh, no! I thought. As if I don’t already try to grasp onto temporary things, I’m always trying to assign meaning too! And taking Instagram photos! I’ve also been very much Enthusiastic Parker from Friends, trying to take mental snapshots before I get sick again. He also spoke about how we try to take lessons away from painful situations so we never have to feel that way again. Korda recalled overhearing a man telling a friend of a recent breakup, “That’ll teach me for dating a Canadian.”

Everyone laughed. We’ve all done that though. In this recent breakup, I’ve thought I need to take a lesson away.

He also mentioned what existentialists call the pain of  life slipping through our fingers: angst. That’s one of the reasons I love the existentialists so much. They understand my angst and are so much more eloquent about it.

He also talked about how we should live in the moment and I immediately started thinking about my feet falling asleep because of peripheral neuropathy and he says we shouldn’t get caught up in thinking ahead. So I started thinking ahead to this post.

Korda said a lot of other important things and you should listen to his talk. I kept bumping into people and I had a hard time being in the moment. I got a better seat this time but my neuropathy was acting up, and I somehow managed to get a slippery meditation cushion. How do you fall off something on the floor?

I had a better experience being in the moment at yoga this weekend, except for the very end of today’s class when, during savasana, the teacher did the thing where they give your shoulders a mini massage and pull on your head in a nice way. She lingered for a second and I wondered if she was doing some sort of reiki or meditation, but then she whispered, “The back of your earring came off. It’s next to your mat.” My earring did the same thing yesterday and I thought it was funny, and then my mind wandered to the bottle of sparkling wine and the macarons I had in my yoga bag to take to a friend’s place after class, and the present moment seemed less appealing than the future, which held wine and macarons.

I try to be in the moment, but as a daydreamer, it’s tough.

Someone posted on social media last week about karma. She said, “Karma, hurry up and do your thing please.” I have often thought that as well, maybe more often since this last election. Fairness is so important to me, and things often don’t seem fair. Things aren’t fair. Sometimes you can do what you can to right things, like vote.

Sometimes you can’t, and you wait for some kind of cosmic justice. That doesn’t always happen.

Sometimes, people try to steal your joy. When that happens, I try to remember that they are miserable and whatever is causing them to be a jerk is a deep unhappiness that won’t be solved when they are mean to you. That person is being mean because they are deeply unhappy.

It’s deeply unsatisfying though. More satisfying would be seeing someone smote.

A few weeks ago, I went to a book reading in DUMBO near the Brooklyn Bridge and a stranger next to me started talking to me. I barely said much in return. Out of nowhere he told me that when someone is a jerk to remember, “Don’t take it personally. They were a jerk before they met you.” Wise words, I suppose.