“Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die,” is the response from my ‘still, quiet voice within’ when I question myself today. I’m not familiar with Tennyson’s poetry (I had to google), but I do recognize my voice of good orderly direction (g.o.d). Though soft, this voice cuts through my pea soup of internal disturbance like a fog horn. Maybe it’s the voice of my gut or my heart or my spirit guide, I don’t know. I only know that it has served me well over the many, many years of feeling rudderless, so I listen to it today and determine to type right through the whining in my head. Since writing the three segments about lumpectomy day, doubts have begun to nibble at my psyche like no-see-ums. They sound like zzzwhyamIwritingthisblog zz whatztheuze zzzzz???
Earlier this month a friend, an up and coming literary agent, told me that he liked my blog so he mentioned it to his mentor, an established literary agent, who advised, “If you search Amazon for books on breast cancer, you’ll come up with 2000 titles. So…”
I thought, “So, I didn’t set out to write a book, I set out to write a blog.” And, so, I kept on writing. I was in the thick of composing The Penultimate Hump, immersed in the flow, and didn’t even twitich when those no-see-ums flew into my ears – zzzztwothouzandtitlez zz whoneedzonemore z? But, now, in the pause, while gearing up for the next hump or whatever comes next on this journey, those pesky flies are audible and I’m doubting my right use of time and energy again.
Also, a few nights ago, a friend, another writer, told me about a blogger with real, serious cancer, an enormous tumor in his neck, rigorous chemo, and, “he’s writing now, in the moment, the ‘I just threw up for three hours’ kind of raw writing. Not like your reflective tone.” My friend added that he can’t wait to check this blogger’s posts each day.
And I said, “Wow. Great. Please send me the link,” and walked off with my head hanging low for doubting my blogability.
This is what my hang-dog voice sounded like: “That blogger guy is a better man than me. God bless ‘im. I couldn’t write when I was in treatment. Only journal entries. Maybe I could’ve written, but I didn’t. Damn. Missed that boat. I didn’t even know what a blog was then.”
Well, I reckoned with the issue of the delayed telling of my healing journey by recalling that Hemingway in A Moveable Feast wrote that he could not write about Paris while in Paris.
Salvation
Like Papa, I reasoned, I need time and distance on a thing for my grist mill to churn, so I’m satisfied that now is my time for “more to be revealed” about the happenings of last year, and that writing now is helping me to gain greater consciousness – it’s a spiraling and deepening of the healing for me.
Also, my friend sent me the link and I let go of my compare & despair self criticisms to stand in awe of this blogger’s courage & creativity. This man writes daily from the front lines, and he writes poignantly, eloquently, humorously, honestly. Pennsy is his pen name and I want to shout it out – here’s the link to his blog. His wife writes too from the caregiver’s stand point. Her blog is called MaryMarthaMuses. Somehow in reading their blogs, the beating of my heart became louder than the buzzing in my head. I think their expressed love for one another and the folks in their lives, their grace and undying gratitude shifted me.
Plus, the friend that told me about Pennsy’s blog sent a lovely email extolling the virtues of both blogs. He said, “Please know that I was not making any sort of qualitative comparison between theirs and yours … I’m sure people experience and respond to these life-altering events in unique ways and those expressions are all incredible in their own right. Theirs and yours. I am learning so much about life and death and fear and love from all of you. Thanks so much for the beauty and love you are pumping into the universe right now. Keep it up!”
Well, that was one big no-see-um squasher.
(Thank you, Verne. BTW Verne writes a useful info blog called Teacher Tech Times)
So, in summary, the upside of this particular swarm of doubts is that I checked my motivation. I really asked myself the question: why am I writing this blog? And honestly, I don’t know why or have expectations for where it’s going or what I’ll gain. I only know how the whole thing started.
Toward the end of my treatments last year, I took my daughter to see the Nora Ephron movie Julie & Julia because my daughter, Acadia, loves to cook.
Inspiration
I don’t love to cook, but I do love to write and, like I said, I didn’t write creatively while I was in treatments, so I salivated over the challenge that Julie, the blogger, set for herself. I wanted a discipline. I left the theater all fired up to write a blog, and had trouble sleeping that night for all the idea bubbles popping in my head. The concept, the title Lump Lessons came to me before I even hit REM sleep, and, the next day, I jumped on wordpress, discovered it was easy to use and dove right in. Voila, a blog. Of course, I made mistakes because I dove right in, but perhaps my impulsiveness has served me. The love-at-first-sight romance with a writing discipline tricked me into marriage and the rigors of the long haul where the true riches are. My commitment to my readers is helping me to maintain my commitment to myself. Plus, having readers somehow forces the true confessions out of me like this post, for instance.
Anyway, when I first started writing, I told myself that maybe I’d help someone. Well, with 2000+ titles and so many helpful organizations like Gilda’s Club and the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the American Cancer Society, my little Lump Lessons may not make a lick of difference to society; but it’s helping me. Blog talk has introduced me to folks like Pennsy and another brilliant young man named Jonathan who is blogging in the thralls of rough chemo, and I’m learning and growing and there’s a momentum to this that’s swooping me along – ours is not to reason whyyyyyyyyy – and the Penultimate Hump is heading for the Loop the Loop – WHEEEEE – hang on.
the examined life is the only one worth living- tell all the noseeums to go fuck themselves
Thank you, Das Boot the Beloved, for the encouragement and the pest control assist.