Chapter Thirty Seven
August 31, 2009
12:37 a.m.
It’s been a while since I posted something…. Not since I’ve written, but since I’ve made them available to you.
Lots to say I suppose…but lots that I’m not ready to say either. I wonder if I’ve had a quarter-(ish) life crisis…sort of like a mid-life crisis but not as legitimate as the real thing?
I know in the end it’s really just trivializing what is and has been much larger crisis’ in my life all along, things that I’ve never wanted to admit were worth attention. Somehow getting sick has made me feel like life doesn’t care whether you work your issues out or you don’t. At the end of it all…it’s really quite simple…you are faced with whatever you did or didn’t do with the life you were provided. If you pretend you are perfect and that the problems you had belonged to others and not to you then more power to you I suppose. What I found out about me, in this very individualized journey, is that I won’t choose to face my death, next year or 50 years from now with the notion that I never really had the guts to peel it all back and face me.
Anyhoo – I won’t bore you with another labored chapter of introspection...so now for the good stuff. Do you know what I did today? I had a picnic at a picnic table of my very own. I built a fire and my dolly and I had lunch outside in the sunshine. She talked to her baby and pretended that huckleberries were tangerines because to her doll, they would seem like it. She scolded bugs for having the audacity to bother her in her lovely moment and she sang… beautiful little lyrics, all new and made up by her. This coming off of an evening in which I had the opportunity to watch her dance, literally, dance in the goal box. While she should have been providing sentry to a net she instead looked up at the rain opened her mouth…drank and laughed out loud. Then she danced in the dark illuminated by the field lights and those of the cars parked nearby. She danced in the darkness and splashed in the puddles and she was so happy…and I was so moved by it that I got out of my car and cheered in the middle of a monsoon. Not because she came anywhere near that ball…but because that kid has a better understanding of what is important in a day than I think I will ever have. She faced it all…new challenges and unknown spectators, the cold and darkness….she faced them all and she laughed. She knew exactly who she was and who she wasn’t and she didn’t pretend to be anything other than the incredibly delightful, Campbell Rose. She danced in the rain and will never know how much she inspired a grown woman in the middle of what has proven to be murky waters…to become something so much better.

I’m on my way to Anchorage next week to participate in a documentary. My goal is to share some of my experience so that others who are recently diagnosed can see that there is hope after the diagnosis. I am struggling with little parts of the process though. “Bring an outfit that you feel most represents you.” What the hell? Good God. Huh? I am less worried about the major decisions regarding the film process, like for instance: Should I participate? What will my message be? Do I really have something worth sharing? Will I bare my scars on film?
No, instead I am wide awake at 12:37 a.m. wondering …..guess..just guess. If you know me, then you know where I am headed with this. Yep, I’m laying here wondering WHAT IN THE HELL AM I GOING TO WEAR. AND! AND!!!!! The producer and crew are seriously asking me to pick ONE outfit that most represents me. ONE??? REALLY….ONE? Well depending on the day, and my mood, I might be channeling crazy-angry girl, or happy-optimistic girl, or professional-put together girl or on a really bad day….I- don’t- give- a- shit girl. Soooooo, when I should be focused on the positive words that I might choose to share with others diagnosed, instead I am mentally running through my wardrobe trying to figure out who the hell I am based on one single outfit. I know, in the big scheme of things, no one is actively dying but Good God! I have no friggin’ idea who I am from day to day and the thought that somehow this visual is going to be permanent is really bugging me. What if I die next year and this video is the one video that my son and daughter look at obsessively to remember who I was…what if I choose the wrong outfit. What if I choose crazy/angry girl and my daughter based on that one little snippet of film attempts to be crazy/angry girl for the rest of her life. OMG! Seriously, if these producers really had any sense at all, they would say: “bring them all.”

Sequins!!!! That’s the other thing…. In my opinion it’s just a bad precedent to set, the whole notion that somehow there is not enough worth celebrating in life to wear sequins regularly. I completely understand that the majority of the general public would disagree with me. However, I choose to live my life in a way that is more glittery than most. I do this because I do not participate in the use of narcotics and I do not use anti-depressants (yet) and based on those two things alone, I feel that a pick me up is warranted. And so, I believe whole heartedly in the use and abuse of glitter, sequins, bows, rhinestones and diamonds. I believe in them, I use them and I love them…and I do not care if you disagree. Yes Campbell Rose, someday you will face yourself in a mirror and hold up the glittery bauble or shiny skirt and think: “Should I?” And the best advice I can give you is to tell you that Yes, it may reek ever so slightly of “Vegas Girl Past Her Prime” but your mommy would still say “Hell Yes Little Lady! For God sake pick the shiny one and wear the bauble too.”

j

Chapter Thirty Six - March 2009

Slowly, slowly said the Sloth. I love that book. My sister gave it to me in honor of Trevor and of Shawn. When pressed for time they both seem to s-l-o-w down. Defense mechanism maybe, but it brings my sister from a state of being calm to being extremely agitated in a split second. “Slowly, slowly said the Sloth. “ That’s what keeps popping into my brain this year. In answer to the questions that everyone seems to want to know I feel like my response should just be “Slowly, slowly said the Sloth.”
I have over the past six months just sort of s-l-o-w-e-d down…interesting timing…Not as I expected anyway. But through the chemo and the chaos I kept it patched up…put together…sort of… but upon completion and nearing the end of the journey I felt myself slowing down and less able to respond to the challenges before me…both the physical ones and the emotional journeys too. I felt myself curling inward, waiting…
There’s more though… Part of the reason I stopped sharing myself with all of you was because I recognize that there are those now that read not because you care about me, but because there is a tendency towards unkind voyeurism. I suppose there are those of you who may choose to read me, find me, seek me for reasons that are less than kind or more than mean and the knowledge of that simply silenced me. It has given me pause and hesitation about the information that I share. It has made me feel edited and judged, so what I write is not true nor honest nor real. But my kids and friends have asked and for the first time in months, I feel it again… the energy to look outside the tunnel.
I completed my last surgery a month ago. Since I wrote last, in June I have had check-ups and surgery, ups and downs in my recovery. I ran a breast cancer race, and walked for three days in honor of Susie G., I was on the big screen for the Anchorage Aces Paint the Rink Pink fundraiser and I participated in a local article to help raise awareness with an emphasis on prevention. I also hope to participate in a documentary in September with the goal being to provide the truth about the experience and in doing so, provide comfort and hope for those recently diagnosed. I believe that with enough attention and enough funds there will be a cure and that the cure could come before my daughter ever has to worry that this could be her disease. I believe in that. I believe in the money that I give to help find that cure. I believe in it, for your daughter and mine.
Failed….I hate that word…Failed…I don’t like to fail at anything. I am a loyal little dog…seriously, I come from the kind of stock that sticks shit out. Among other blessings/curses is that fact that I was raised Catholic and I think Catholics understand the notion of sticking with something and succeeding. Anyhoo – I’ve had the word on my brain a lot lately, getting used to it I suppose…. I have always been fearful of it. Fearful of failure, it’s interesting though, now I wonder if the truth is that with failure comes freedom. Hmmm…
My last surgery failed. Did I tell you that? The last one, the final surgery that I hoped would provide the closure I needed did not get the results we had hoped for…….sigh. What the hell though…so I won’t become a topless dancer…still, I’m alive and there are others with the same diagnosis, the same prognosis that are not and so as petty as I would like to be about my most recent failure I guess I will just say this….if you love me, then you love me despite the scars and disfiguration that the cancer has caused. And since we’re being honest, I think we all know that I’m not just referring to the scars on the outside. There is trauma there… ugly and red, less than perfect, far from pretty. But, as it is, you love me or you don’t. I’m okay with it either way. There are other moments more important than that…my daughter…my son….my illness has boiled my life down to those moments. The ones that if asked in the end would be the ones I remember.
Do you want to know a secret about me? I was never comfortable with just me. I wanted my days filled with noise and busy, busy hours. I was afraid of what I would encounter if given enough time to sit and face myself. One of the most liberating moments of my cancer adventure is that I have the ability to sit now, on my own and just be…no noise, no excuses, no friends, no loves, no Gin, no shopping, no kids, nothing more to fill my spaces, nothing except me. Do you know what I think now? It’s more of the shifting that all of you have watched over these years, but I don’t count my satisfaction in any of those ways anymore and I don’t count the moments in which I am killing time or distracting myself from me…I don’t count the perfection that I had once hoped to maintain for a lifetime. I realize now, covered in mud that it is about rolling around in the mud… falling and standing up, making mistakes and leaning on others as you help each other through the days…do you know what I hope for now? Not the pristine appearance at the finish line that I demanded of myself and others…No, I hope now, to arrive, covered in a shit storm of mud and debris and laughter and energy and mistakes. I will know I knocked the ball out of the park….in the end it will just be me facing me and I’m no longer afraid of that.
I danced today, in broad daylight in front of others who were dancing too…no dance club needed, nor men either…just a group of ladies who heard a song that made us start dancing and so we did…shaking our asses in the middle of the afternoon, for no other reason than it felt good. One of my all time favorite residents EVER, was a little lady who wore gold hoop earrings that seemed larger than her 80 pound frame could handle, she wore fur trimmed coats and she laughed with a voice that was sexy despite the years that had crept up on her, she drank brandy in the evenings and she showed me black and white photos of herself and her Love when they were young and beautiful. In a picture that was 50 years old I could feel, not see, but feel the passion that was between them. She intrigued me and moved me and I would go and hear her speak to me in the afternoons and she would tell me stories of dancing… of the dresses she would wear, the lipstick (“always red honey, don’t bother otherwise”) and the shoes and the gloves… and the men, and the music and the fun. She loved to dance and every time I had the pleasure of visiting with her and occasionally of watching her dance again, I would be reminded that at the end of my life I will regret how little I danced in my days, I will…there will be a day in which I realize my body can no longer move in the way that it once did and I will wish I had danced more.

So today, I am inspired by women who I do not know who danced with me….in the middle of an afternoon, there were no regrets today.
In a day worth having, in a moment worth holding….I faced me…and I danced and I don’t care who was watching, and I don’t need anyone else to love me, except for me.
j