Angry

I think I’ve just realized how incredibly angry I still am. About all of this. About Cancer. About Chemo. About surgery, and pain, and nausea, and being useless and feeling worthless, and just… all of it.

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One of the dogs was barking. Because that’s what she does, she fucking barks. At nothing. For no reason. It might rain- she hates rain. So she barks.

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But as usual, I was up late. My sleep schedule is completely screwed up. So I’d only been asleep for about… maybe an hour when it started. And Kris is gone, at church. So it’s just me, and the house, and the animals and the damn dog started barking and I snapped.

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I stalked across the house, slamming 4 doors (2 on the way to her kennel, and 2 on the way back) and screamed. Screamed so loudly that my throat hurts… that my chest heaves… that my eyes are sore from the sheer exertion of it.

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And the dog stopped barking. I mean, wouldn’t you?

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I should feel bad. I know I should. But I don’t. I just feel angry. And I hurt. And I’m exhausted. And faced with the task of trying to go back to sleep- nauseated and tired and in pain.

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And I’m so angry. Not at the fucking dog, because what would be the point of that? But at the world.

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I spent literally 20 years of my life pretty much feeling like the most useless, vile, ugly piece of shit there was. Desperate for most of those years to kill myself. And then at 29 it finally clicked. Some things in my life that had twisted my head all to ruin finally got sorted. And I started, for the first time ever, to be really, and truly happy…. more than that even: to be content.

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I had a good job. I mean, it wasn’t my favorite of “things I’ve done” for money, but it was a good job, steady, well-paid. I had coworkers who were even… friends to a certain degree. I was good at it. I was valued.

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I had my art. My aspirations to be a photographer, my passion to capture things other people just… missed. And I was good. I was hopeful. I thought, genuinely, that someday… I might be able to quit that good job and live off of my art.

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I’d made friends, learned to handle my family and their shortcomings and they were learning to handle me and mine.

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I finally felt like my life was MINE. And then with a lot of hard work- my body and I started working this tiny thread of truce. And then there was finally peace between us… and then one day I woke up and realized I could look in the mirror and not see a monster. 20 years. 20. YEARS. I hated the sight of myself. And I finally learned to love me- ALL of me.

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And then the Cancer came. And for a year before we even knew what it was it ate at me. But I dealt with it. I lived with it. I was still ok, all things considered.

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But then there was a diagnosis. And then an emergency surgery. And then the big surgery. And then an infection, and a wound-vac, and a giant scar, and misshapen belly, and then— treatment. Radiation and chemo that completely wracked my system. And from March to August, nearly 50 pounds lost. To lack of appetite, to nausea, to diarrhea. To the ravages of radiation.

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And then a break. To recuperate. To recover. To reassess. But now, treatment again. Chemo only. But oh what a wallop this one is. One treatment in out of 4 and I am reduced. Crippled by pain, enraged by frustration, I am worse than useless these days. I am a black pit of anger.

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I am seething. Because this is not what my life was supposed to be this year. Or last. Or however the fuck long this goes on for. I’m supposed to be done in November. I’m not holding my breath.

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I am black with my anger. Furious at the life I was building for crumbling so quickly and so completely. My good, stable job- gone. My passion, my vision- stuck at home… shelved and collecting dust. My family- too far away to touch and hold me with any real regularity. The saddest part of that of course that aside from my dad out of state- the rest of them really, distance wise, are NOT actually that far. But try driving a car on narcotics— or the sheering, tearing pain that comes without them.

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My anger is a thick, syrupy soup. I have thought in my life that I was angry before but it is nothing compared to my Cancer Rage. To have been cheated (even temporarily) of the things I had spent so many years believing I didn’t deserve, only to have them ripped from my hands almost the moment I realized differently.

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But all it does is make me tired- this fury. It adds to my pain physically, and drains me even more emotionally. But it will not leave. It just… slows- simmers. Waiting for a barking dog, or a noisy neighbor, or a stubbed toe, or just- the dawning of realization again that my life- until this is all over at least- is owned by Cancer.

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And I’m lucky. Because theoretically, there are only 3 treatments left for me. 3 sessions between myself and that magical status of “Cancer Free.”

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If my heart isn’t eaten away completely by my rage first. I will be one of the lucky ones.

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But even in my gratitude, my anger writhes… seeping around the edges of my thanks and making it heavy and insincere. I find it hard to be genuine around its considerable sludge.

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But I don’t know how to make peace with all of this Cancer… while this mess of emotion trudges alongside it. I don’t know how to stop feeling angry. I only know how to hide it…

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most of the time.