Sacrifice

I think that the truth of it is this:

The introspection laboriously endeavored in the wake of such a loss is the origin of the pain, and not the actual event itself.

The loss being the loss of me. The real me. Somewhere between then and now, 'poof', I'm gone.

'I' used to be, in the adult sense, this fast talking, fun loving, titay bar attending, patron drinking, inventive swear word using (cunt trap? - yes!), shit talking, swagger having girl who sport fucked and baked ginger cakes and volunteered
in nursing homes and did accounting. I was, to put in mildly, the most fun anomaly that you could possibly know.

And then, I got 'the cancer shit' the first time. and yeah, it was a pain in the ass. the treatments and the bedrest and the hormones and the pills. but whatever. right? whatever. you do it. you get the shit pumped into your veins and you get the shots and you take the pills and you put up with all of the side-effects. you have the mood swings and you go through menopause at 27 and you alienate the people that you love because you can't stop crying and you can't be happy and you can't be on a schedule that doesn't involve pharmaceuticals and you can't eat and you can't keep your food down if you do eat and you can't be cool enough and you can't be warm enough and you can't be comfortable and your head hurts and your skin crawls and every motherfucking thing hurts and you are doing this shit in hopes of living but really, a lot of times, YOU WANT TO DIE. but, you can't say that. because if you say that, everyone is uncomfortable. and now, on top of being in pain every moment, you have to worry about causing the people that you love additional discomfort.

because you see it, all of the time, anyway. the discomfort to be around you. they don't want to not be around you. because that would be 'rude' or that would make them an 'asshole', but suddenly, awkward silence becomes a language that your entire group speaks fluently. and i'm so over awkward silence as my second language.

so, you go through it. and you have the surgery. and the recovery period. and you wait for the test results to come back. and it's good news...but wait. don't get too excited. take this extra treatment, just to be sure. keep in suppression. don't let the bad bad hormones come back just yet. and, get tested all of the time, think about it all of the time. be vigilant. don't.ever.stop.thinking.about.the.cancer.

so, finally, you start to live your life a little bit. you start to test the waters. you think that it might be safe again, to think that maybe it's okay to think that you can just be a fucking normal twenty-something bitch with an extra dose of cynicism and you're maybe just a little extra bitter and tender to the touch right now.

so, you start to go out, have a few drinks. date a little bit. find someone that you like some and have some awkward new sex with a new person with him and in the same thought hope to god that he calls again and hope to god that you never see him again in your entire cursed life. you flirt. you meet famous people and go to new year's parties and hang out with actor's from very popular television shows and record execs.

but always, always it is there. think about it. you are still suppressed. you are still taking the pills. you are still, to a certain extent, processing what you just walked away from. you want to be a good person. you want to do the right thing. you don't want to let this universe regret you. but also, you want to have some fun. you want to just fucking have some time to forget about all those moments upon moments of misery and contemplating all of these things that you never imagined time in your twenties spent doing.

months go by. slowly. time moves so slowly after something so heavy. you become weighted. i know that it sounds so cliched, and i'm a fucking hard bitch so it's annoying coming from me. but sometimes, it just is what it is. and you get weighted down by that shit. and there's not really any ever making anyone who doesn't 'know' what it feels like understand what it is to have your hormones deconstructed, ripped apart, to be on all these other pills that alter your testosterone, your protein, inhibit this, increase that, abort that, prophylactically alter something else.

and then, there's the mental stuff that comes along with it. after so much hormonal devastation, your self-esteem begins to plummet. your breasts swell and then shrink. your reproductive area becomes a playground for teams - literally teams - of medical professionals. you take your clothes off and lay in a room, on a table, in stirrups, and people grab your breasts and squeeze, feel under your arms, your lymph nodes, your groin, they put things into your vagina, fingers, hands, speculums, cameras, other tools, they put things in your anus, all of this to test growth and placement and musculature. how is your disease progressing? how are your organs holding up against it? all of this in front of many.

you are reduced to a specimen to be examined and entered for the sake of discussion as if you aren't even there. but it is for the greater good, and so you suffer it.

and you don't cry in front of them. you don't ever cry in front of them. they leave, and as you dress, you hold those motherfucking tears back. and as you leave and pay the money that you would like to spend on magazines or movies, and get the prescription for the next round of drugs that will fuck you up and cause you to cry compulsively and scream obscenities at the people that you love and curl into the fetal position and wish that you were anyone else, anywhere else, in this entire universe, and proceed to the lab where they will take your tainted blood so that they can tell you exactly how tainted, you hold those motherfucking tears back.

and as you break the door to outside, you put your iPod on, you pull your sunglasses down, and you let those fuckers slide. but a point comes where maybe it's just habit, because the pain is so much that maybe it isn't offering any release any more? maybe this is too big. maybe this is too much?

you think about these things a lot as the months go by slowly. not many months. but, as you watch other people, and they seem so fucking happy. so carefree. and you hate yourself because you just can't seem to get there. you can't seem to just let it go. put it down. just not be scared for a minute, not be so hard on yourself for a minute, and just be here now. you think about all that time that you spent miserable and hurting and not relating to anyone, and how that set you apart. and how it made you think that you are maybe unlovable, maybe somewhat. maybe this baggage is too much. maybe you are too tortured. your girl shit doesn't work. your hormones are all fucked up. you can't have babies. this is all under thirty. and you aren't recovering well. your self-esteem is suffering. you need lots of reassurance.

and you wonder if your vanity, your focus on your outer self all of the sudden, which you never gave a fuck about before, is because all of the sudden you feel like you don't have shit left on the inside to give...like whatever is in there is so fucked up beyond repair that it is not even worth pretending about and so let's talk about my pretty hair and my bikini wax, please?

and then...and then. BAM. this shit is back. worse. altered treatments with increased dosage, frequency and intensity. more meds. more aggressive course of therapy all of the way around. we are going alternative and some experimental. not FDA approved but fuck those bitches, they don't know shit about reproductive disease and they don't give a shit anyway. and so, Angie, this is your choice - jump in and do this, and suffer (you know that you will suffer so very much) and hope against hope. or don't. just don't.

and so, i take the leap. i take the treatments. aggressive. frequent. i take the pills. the appointments...up to ten a week. the prescriptions...up to four an appointment. it's running me up to one thousand dollars a week to maintain this chase. i'm watching everything i've built up since the last time, less than one full year ago, slip through my fingers.

i'm feeling the pull back into pharmaceutically altered brain chemistry and chemically induced menopause. the hot flashes. the crying. the mood swings. and the pain. oh my god, the pain. the joint pain. the skin crawling. the nausea. the vomiting. the calcium loss. the protein loss and the subsequent vision disturbances and semi-permanent dizziness as my brain can't register things if i move even semi-quickly. things that i just don't talk about. so many more things.

and people don't register the intensity. because the treatment is clinical. my hair isn't falling out. i keep pushing myself, getting up, going to work. i have to. if i lay down, i will die. this is what i have decided. i cannot quit. and so, everyone assumes that i am strong and it isn't 'that bad'. and therefore, the sympathy that i eventually am going to need to go on isn't forthcoming. and so, i burrow into the shell of me and i bury myself in work and i keep going. the vicious cycle.

and then, suddenly, things get intensely worse. after month five, and a total of 13 months of treatments all in, the wear of 1 to 1.5% bone density loss and the registering of no calcium has taken toll and suddenly i have a toothache and i'm chewing gum - YES, GUM, and so i go to the dentist and wow. my bones have tried to suck the calcium from my teeth.

at this point, awkward silence has moved to my 3rd most fluent language. pain has become my 2nd. i hurt always. i hurt from my diseases. i hurt from having ovaries that are full of cysts and two to three times their normal size. even now, in good response to aggressive treatment, they have 'only' ten follicular cysts each and are weighing in at twice their normal size. i hurt from having endometrial implants that adhere my fallopian tubes to my intestines, causing severe digestive problems...causing pain if i eat a certain amount of food. which people can't get, no matter how many times i say. so, we will eat. and it will be good. and i will eat more than I should, go beyond my personal limit for my body, for my diseased organs. and i will say, 'i ate too much'. and the person, whoever that person is, will say...'you have a problem with your self-image. you have a problem with food. you have a problem with ______.' but really, i have diseases that have altered the landscape of my twenties.

and so now, the medicines to rid my reproductive organs of 'the cancerous tissue' and to stop the growth of the endometrial cysts and adhesions that have implanted themselves on my abdominal organs and are spreading the cancerous cells and are bleeding into my abdomen, causing unbearable pain and scar tissue, which are causing side-effects that include life stopping migraines, incessant crying, mood swings, aches, yeast infections, insomnia, restlessness and more, have caused my teeth to deteriorate from the inside out.

and i need to have (at the beginning) seventeen thousand dollars worth of dental surgery to save my teeth. so, i have a choice. at this moment, i throw in the towel. i say fuck it. i have given enough to this disease, enough surgeries and recoveries and pain and time spent in doctor's offices. pull these bitches, put the fakes in and let's k(eep).i(t).m(oving). - this was the advice given to me by my family and a lot of my friends. and my old therapist, whom i called. and my two previous ex-boyfriends, whom i called. and i considered it, because honestly, i didn't know how much will i had left and i didn't know if i should use it on my teeth when i know i got some major life or death shit coming up.

but, i reached in, grabbed what was goddamn near the rest of it, threw it down and said let's go. they said it's better to do as much as possible. it's going to hurt like fuck but be strong. they also said it's between 600 to one thousand dollars cheaper each time to stay awake, so try to stay awake for as many as possible. at this point, i need to be economical. so, i've made some bad decisions in the name of a thousand dollars here or there in the past few months, a couple that i regret. like scheduling two dental surgeries back to back three days a week for months on end.

for the past 10 weeks, i have not been allowed to eat solid food. i have lost almost more than 10 inches total. my hair is falling out. my skin is turning gray. i have bags under my eyes. i miss food. but, i have told my body no for so long that it is like a child that has been damaged. it is scared to ask now. recently, some damage was done and a couple of surgeries had to be added that increased it to upwards of 20 thousand dollars.

i'm at near the end of my savings. i'm into my high-yield now, which i swore i would not touch. but, there are things worse than this.

i think that i am at near the end of my hope. or my will. i've spent so much time waiting for my second chance, or just a break in all of this that would make it all clear. i am, at this point, a small child again. i am in a constant state of sacrifice - i have given up everything, almost everything, that gives me pleasure.

i cannot go have a drink with my friends. i cannot sit down and have a meal. i cannot hike the canyon. i do not smoke anymore (and i realize that this is a good thing, but it was my one remaining vice). i cannot have soda. i cannot travel in an airplane. i cannot take a bath. i cannot go more than two hours without taking a pill. i cannot go more than two days without having a doctor's appointment or some kind of procedure. i am constantly having my life dictated to me - do this, stop doing that, take this, wash with this, only wear this kind of underwear. i even had to change what kind of underwear i wear.

but, unlike being a small child, there isn't anyone to take me into their arms and promise me that it is going to be okay. to just rock me and hold me and wipe my tears away and let me sob all of this pain and frustration and heaviness that is pushing against my chest into their collarbone until i can't cry any more and then just hold me there.

there used to be things that i was ashamed of. i used to be ashamed of strangers seeing my naked body and putting things inside of it. i used to be ashamed of being put to sleep and strangers putting my legs into stirrups and filling my abdomen with gas and putting things into my body and taking things out. i used to be ashamed of gas. and crying until my veins broke. and trusting untested people with my fragility.
i used to be ashamed of showing how close i was to my breaking point. of showing my need...for comfort, for affection, for reassurance, for something resembling being understood.

i just want so much to feel like someone gets me. because the truth of the matter is that my reserve tank has hit empty. i have hit my limit of bearability. physical pain every day and copious amounts of medicine and the side effects of medicine and medicines to treat those side effects. not being able to eat. not being able to focus. having to work so hard to be able to sustain this. and knowing that the end is still so far away...and that the pain after the surgery is going to be great.

i am so tired of being in pain every day. and of being hungry all of the time. i feel tortured beyond belief. i don't even think right. if my phone rings too loud or my coffee gets cold, i cry. my brain is on edge all of the time, it thinks that it's under attack, and it doesn't understand why everything hurts all the time and i only feed it chemicals and why someone is always sticking a drill or some other painful, invasive thing into me.

so, the thing is, i'm miserable. obviously, i am miserable. if i were even remotely happy, i would question my sanity. but the thing is, my need, i think that it's making a lot of other people in my life miserable too.

like every other being, or most other beings, i want friends and the comfort that they provide. but at the same time, i am unable to be a good friend. and so i feel like i just need to go away for a while. until i can be at least a semi-good friend. or one who doesn't just suck the air out of a room.

i don't know what to say to anyone anymore. i am lost inside of a head that says 'hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt, jaw hurts, head hurts, tooth hurts, joints hurt, ovary hurts, fallopian tubes hurt, pelvic floor hurts, chemicals hazey, hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt hazey hazey' and then, suddenly, screams, 'PLEASE, FIND A WAY TO GIVE ME COMFORT. GIVE.ME.COMFORT.'

my surgeon just called me and my voice caught. he asked me if he caught me at a bad time and i told him that my life is a bad time. he asked me what is wrong and i started sobbing so hysterically that he pushed back his appointments to talk to me. my surgeon, who only called to tell me about my robotic surgery. and i released this torrent of angst and hurt and frustration and pain and anguish and exhaustion so deep that if i were the me of previous times, it would have been of my biggest shames.

i used to be ashamed to cry.

the people who know me now would not believe this, but the me that was built on stubbornness and will and temper and flare and grit and nothing but jobs and smarts and determination has been cast aside by this sniveling, annoying, needy bitch who i totally would have smacked around when i was still a sassy bitch.

i miss being a sassy bitch. i miss being fun. and not being scared all of the time. and not feeling so desperate and confused and fucking diseased.

i just don't know what to say any more.