Fight The Big Fight: January 2018

Jenny here.

The number 26 is the May date of our anniversary. It’s also my favorite Paramore song, ever.

I feel as though I have all but abandoned this dear blog that has meant so much to me and Wil and journaled our walk through cancer land. There is no sense trying to capture all that has gone on since I last wrote in June 2017, but I will include some pictures of events and happenings at the end of this entry.

Gosh, I don’t know how many other cancer blogs I have read throughout the past few years that, many times, just end. No caption. No note to say if the person lived or died. There just comes a last entry, that maybe wasn't intended to be the finale, with nothing more after. It leaves you to wonder, and that’s not what I want to do here.

Life 2.0 is moving right along for us, with all the ups and downs of regular life. Somewhere during 2017, I think we turned a corner and started to define our 2.0 life together. Another layer to this thing.

I once attended training where the presenter said that the last stage of grief, acceptance, was more than one layer. There was seeing acceptance, knowing life is what it is, which could still include anger and fear…a few levels in between I can't recall...and then down the acceptance line, there was a resting place of acceptance. Those statements have meant a lot to me in my work with clients. You can still be making progress, still be working through and into acceptance, with struggle by your side. It’s not about finding anything. This last acceptance phase is more a state of being. The whole thing is a philosophy that time + active healing, could take you to still more places than you are right now. But you need to allow the process of acceptance to continue to evolve to get any deeper than just seeing it.

I have been thinking about that a lot lately--All the layers that 2017 included for us. Maybe we are somewhere in between the seeing part of acceptance and the being part. It's progress all the same.

Recently our apartment complex replaced our 1939, single paned, windows for new fancy double paned versions. Mind you, this window project started about 6 months ago. They had anticipated it would be a simple process. A few weeks at most. First, new heat/ac, then pop out the old windows, insert new ones. Easy.

And then they attempted the first apartment.

Nearly every window, painted shut from 78 years of apartment life, would not budge. Thee ones they HAD opened (well, cracked them and couldn’t even get them to shut again), wouldn't even allow them to remove the old fashioned a/c units that were jammed in the windows. They promptly gave up for a few months, seeing it would be a much more labor intensive project than expected, until the weather cooled down.

Watching them literally bust out every window on our apartment a couple of weeks ago, and have to clean up the shards of glass and splinters of old wood, made me think of one thing: life after cancer.

No gentle replacement to life before. The only way we have managed to move along that acceptance continuum is to just let all the windows break. And then one by one, cut, sand, and seal into place new ones. I’ve had bit of nostalgia watching the process of disposal at our apartment take place. Every day, the dumpsters filled. Not a single window intact. The salvage DIY’er in me felt sad. Yet it was the only way. And now? Perhaps we have less history in that place, but we have fully functional windows that I absolutely intend on opening, as much as I can, to let fresh air in.

Our life windows are open now too. Wil is in his last semester to finish up coursework so he can take more of his certificate exams. He’s still got his eye on pursing his Bachelor’s degree after he is done with this semester. His health has been OK (same old, same old, chronic pain with some days better than others). We had a little scare around his 3^rd stem-versary in October (yes! He made it to year 3!) regarding his kidney function. Just another “shit that happens after intense chemo” side effect. They are monitoring it and he’s OK for now.

I am plugging along at 3 jobs, but I adore 2 of them, survive off the other one, so life is pretty good. I am fully trained in EMDR now and working on my certification hours while being supervised. I have some dreams now again.

I may be back on here soon, or we may just be out living life for now and not processing through every little thing. But I promise to not disappear forever, because this story is long from done. And for every heart break that we’ve shared, I still hope to document some of the moments that are mending and replacing the shattered-ness, all along the acceptance trail…the experiences that are sealing us up again.

So now, here is where my heart is at in terms of the cancer crap, in the lyrics of Paramore and pictures. Look it up if you’ve never heard it before. My heart aches and tears flow at the bridge…every single time.

Much Love.