wendy

I really didn’t want to write about this because I didn’t honestly know what to say. Then I realized that that is the exact reason why I should be writing about this. I process most productively through writing. Almost as though I can’t see what I need to say until I’m reading my own words. My fingers just soar across the keyboard and I most often have no clue where it is going. And how do I begin other than to just rip it from my throat?

I have an ovarian mass. It popped out of nowhere and has grown incredibly fast in the past couple weeks. Initially it was assumed that Wendy, my mass, was just a cyst. Tennis ball size, harmful and painful but not detrimental. Then after further studies and specialists reviewing my file, it was determined that Wendy must be removed because she was in fact, a mass, a tumor, growing into many of my internal organs. Initially, it was supposed to be a very cut and dry procedure that has transformed into a very complicated case. And of course it is, of course my case is complicated. Of course my body cannot cooperate. Of course it can’t be easy because when in my life has it ever been this way?

I don’t get it. ugh, so much of it I just don’t get. How? How is this happening to me? I am relentlessly good at taking care of myself, almost obnoxiously so. I am a vegan. I exercise daily. I meditate. I get enough sleep. I go to the doctor when I don’t feel well. I am gentle and kind with my body, something that has been incredibly difficult for me to learn over the years of so many being unkind. Blah, so why me? That’s just the shitty thing about life that I came to learn very early on, with my stringy hair and pudgy cheeks, life is a bully and a gift. It does not select who it picks on. It does not eenie meenie who it is going to cause suffering and heartbreak to each day. Life is a bitch and is drastically unfair. But fuck, it’s also one of the most breathtaking gifts. And how is that even possible?

I would love so terribly to blame something. To feel like something did this to me so I don’t feel like I did something wrong. But that’s just the complication of the human body. There’s often no rhyme or reason. So I will sit and wait for another ten days in excruciating pain until this foreign alien is removed. And then gosh, I hope, I pray, that that will heal me. That this ominous mass that has led doctors to a concerned conclusion is not what they think it might be. Man, do I hope and pray that life does me a solid here.

I learned about suffering and the ability to be when I was living in Nepal. Oftentimes, people who are hurting really don’t want or need a bright side, they just want to be seen and held in a situation that feels hopeless to them. It’s very difficult to do because it makes us uncomfortable, yet the ones who suffer are so alone if we do not. And how backwards is that. Recently, I’ve had some conversations with people that shut me down for even bringing up the topic of cancer, just because it makes them uncomfortable and saddened to hear about it. Here’s the thing though, they have the luxury of hearing and forgetting for hours, days, at a time even. I do not. This mass that presses into my core, leans on my ureters and kidney, tugs on my ovary and twists around my bowels does not allow me the space to have a break. The vomiting, the sweating, the hormonal upsets and pelvic burning does not open a door for me to have a relief from it all, to let go of the worry and the possibilities. My medical background, while beautiful and helpful as it is, just swirls my thoughts, making all my concerns even more logical and realistic.

I’m living each day just to cross it off, which is not a way I have ever lived. The pain can be unbearable at times and I frantically start clawing at my tummy, wanting all the badness to just fizzle like a flat coke. But it screams and cries and kicks and whines; throwing tantrums inside my core. I don’t want to live as a guest of this world. I do not want to be a visitor and simply exist. How dull and dreary, how insulting. And yet, my struggle to be gentle and to live are in contention with one another, fighting for the little space of my body.