A Long Slog
Here's a picture from last weekend at the Nachusa Grasslands, where we were the only people in the world. That muddy road looks like maybe it could go on forever, but it doesn't. I've been that way. I know.
It occurred to me yesterday that I've felt the way I feel right now before.
There was a night I remember, maybe in late January or early February of 2009, when I had just started chemotherapy to kill the lymphoma in my chest. The doctors had given me a good prognosis. They'd told me the mass would probably go away and that in all likelihood, I'd be just fine, but it would be a slog. Eight months, at least, they said, and every two weeks over that eight months, I'd have to go downtown and let nurses poke around in search of a vein they could never seem to find so they could fill me with all sorts of chemicals that sapped my strength and left me tasting metal even though I hadn't eaten any metal. And then I'd go home and try to sleep as my arm throbbed and my hair fell out and my mouth tore itself to pieces. Eight months of that, they said. Eight months.
I try my damndest to be stoic about that sort of thing and just suck it up and accept what has to happen, because whining about it doesn't do you any good, and for the most part, I think I did that pretty well. But there was a moment in January, maybe two cycles in, a regular night not long after a trip downtown, when I'd done what I always did. I went into the bathroom and got ready for my shower, and something just hit me. I thought about the passage of time and how slow it can feel when you don't want it to feel slow, and in that moment, eight months felt like a billion years. I stood in the bathroom feeling paralyzed, because eight months was everlasting. Eight months might as well be on the other side of eternity, and it might be something I'll never see. Or I might, I thought, but what did it matter, because right now was where I was, and nothing was going to move me to some other place in time.
Except time.
And that's the thing I have to remember. There's been more than a decade now between me and that moment in the bathroom on Maplewood. Time passed. It ended. As all things do. That doesn't help in the moment, when I feel trapped in a place and know I have a long road ahead of me. But it's something to hold onto. It's someplace I've been before.
Only the entire world's with me this time. So let me be your guide. That road you see that looks like it might go on forever? Take it from me. It doesn't.
A Long Slog
Here's a picture from last weekend at the Nachusa Grasslands, where we were the only people in the world. That muddy road looks like maybe it could go on forever, but it doesn't. I've been that way. I know.
It occurred to me yesterday that I've felt the way I feel right now before.
There was a night I remember, maybe in late January or early February of 2009, when I had just started chemotherapy to kill the lymphoma in my chest. The doctors had given me a good prognosis. They'd told me the mass would probably go away and that in all likelihood, I'd be just fine, but it would be a slog. Eight months, at least, they said, and every two weeks over that eight months, I'd have to go downtown and let nurses poke around in search of a vein they could never seem to find so they could fill me with all sorts of chemicals that sapped my strength and left me tasting metal even though I hadn't eaten any metal. And then I'd go home and try to sleep as my arm throbbed and my hair fell out and my mouth tore itself to pieces. Eight months of that, they said. Eight months.
I try my damndest to be stoic about that sort of thing and just suck it up and accept what has to happen, because whining about it doesn't do you any good, and for the most part, I think I did that pretty well. But there was a moment in January, maybe two cycles in, a regular night not long after a trip downtown, when I'd done what I always did. I went into the bathroom and got ready for my shower, and something just hit me. I thought about the passage of time and how slow it can feel when you don't want it to feel slow, and in that moment, eight months felt like a billion years. I stood in the bathroom feeling paralyzed, because eight months was everlasting. Eight months might as well be on the other side of eternity, and it might be something I'll never see. Or I might, I thought, but what did it matter, because right now was where I was, and nothing was going to move me to some other place in time.
Except time.
And that's the thing I have to remember. There's been more than a decade now between me and that moment in the bathroom on Maplewood. Time passed. It ended. As all things do. That doesn't help in the moment, when I feel trapped in a place and know I have a long road ahead of me. But it's something to hold onto. It's someplace I've been before.
Only the entire world's with me this time. So let me be your guide. That road you see that looks like it might go on forever? Take it from me. It doesn't.