Alone.
Willing myself to recharge, gather strength, get ready, be stronger.
Chemo starts again.
One more week.
My relationship status with chemo on Facebook would read: It’s complicated.
Chemo keeps me alive.
Buys me time.
Gives me days, weeks, months.
But
Makes me sick.
Causes my hands and feet to numb, get tender, peel, redden, swell, ache, burn, throb.
Tires me, sickens me, weakens me.
How can I hate that which gives me hope?
I check in with friends on Twitter.
I see photos of beautiful people in watercolor places doing things I want to be doing.
I am jealous.
The light hits her hair so perfectly, magically, like a mermaid.
It makes me cry.
I literally weep at the beauty of a friend,
wishing I could be with her,
with them,
anywhere but here.
I had a dream of being at Sirenland.
I set a goal, but it has come and gone, unfulfilled.
I cannot decide if stage IV means I must downsize my dreams or shoot for the moon.
Is there nothing left to lose or simply nothing left?
It is late night in Positano now.
They have done their work for the day.
They have their late European dinner, their drinks, their views of the water shimmering at the base of the hill.
I was supposed to go on a trip there once, coincidentally.
A fifteen year anniversary present and celebration of finishing cancer surgeries and chemo six years ago.
Plans were made, everything was set.
Four days before planned departure, our (then) five year old son’s appendix ruptured.
Nine days of round the clock hospital bedside vigils followed.
No trip. No rebooking. No celebration.
But no regrets at being where our son needed us to be.
Wistful I remain.
Unsure I will see that place now.
I envy those who are there.
I wonder if they know.
How I envy them.
Link to Twitter