Hello again,
If you didn't already know, recovering from a chemo treatment - speaking delicately - stinks. And this last week has been particularly rough. There is a place you can go where you just can't imagine that anything will ever be good again. Goodness or rightness or even okay-ness are unfathomable; I found myself in that place quite a lot this round - both physically and mentally. (Does this remind anyone else of the dementors from HP?) My Aunt Mia was here with me until Saturday and did her best to keep me steady, which sometimes meant just petting me and cooing while I cried. After she went home, it was my Aunt Meg hanging on the phone with me while I did the same. A bunch of "no good, very bad" days.
I question why I'm writing so much and so clearly about this here. In this venue, shouldn't I just get to the point, give a quick update, then get positive? I don't know... Should I? I feel as though, if I were in real eye-to-eye conversation with you, I'd tell you the truth, so why not here? This treatment has me holed up and broken, but as much as people like to label me "sweet" and "nice," it's in my soul to be real. Maybe I'm too raw still and will revise some of this away. Maybe not? I wonder what you'd prefer. How much is the right amount of sharing? (You don't have to answer that!)
Well, anyway, I felt like I was knocked further down by this last treatment even than the ones before, but may be starting to see the upswing coming. As evidence, I can tell you that I cried only a little today and asked Jen T to drop off some dinner (which, of course, she happily did!). I paid some bills and did some work online and reveled in a lovely email from a friend currently on a road trip (one of my very favorite spring-summer-fall pass times). The email described the scenery in a way a writer could love and even included a frosty mug of root beer at a roadside stand. It made me nostalgic and happy in equal measure. Happy in the same way I was happy to get a smiling selfie from my brother, Jason, and his wife, Susan, who are vacationing at the beach this week. It's just amazing to imagine that life - road tripping, summer-vacationing, kids-dripping-ice-cream-cones life - is going on in a circle somewhere close to this one I'm trapped in for now. The nostalgia is for my own past selfies and road trips as much as for future ones that seem, right now, so hard to envision.
After all of this maybe-I-should-edit-it rambling, what do I really have to say to you today? Enjoy yourselves if you can, folks. I need to know good stuff is happening out there.
My, that might all be too maudlin, so I'll end with this...
I woke this morning to a text from my big brother. It came in at 5:37AM and began with an iPhone photo of the sun coming up over the ocean. It said, "Sara... The sun is rising. :-)." When I woke up several hours later and gave a simple reply, Jason continued, "Do you get it? It's a metaphor. :-p" I love that guy.
And you too. Thanks for being here and for being you.
Xo,
Sara
PS. On a totally logistical note, I am looking for a temporary foster home for my dog, Elgin. It would be best for me to find a good spot for her to stay until I'm through with these treatments (mid-October). I think she would do best in a one-dog household with no small children. (She has had doggie-friends before, but they are hard to come by; she is used to living with a feisty cat.) Elgin is currently in Tulsa and could be fostered either there or in St. Louis (or in between, I suppose?). Drop me an email if you would like to discuss in more detail.