If the future could speak...

A year ago I had no idea what 2022 had in store - I still had hopes for a positive outcome, being at home recuperating from a difficult and painful surgery. There was no Christmas to celebrate, but there was Life and that was good enough. No idea I'd be diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer two months later, that I would be forced to sell my beloved church condo, that I would move not once but twice in the next nine months and end up in Quebec City. Had you told me all of this a year ago I'd have asked you to have your head examined. Yet, here we are.

We are all faced with difficult choices at some point in our lives. The primal responses to a threat can be to freeze, to flee or to fight. I'll tell you what: for those of us who usually freeze or flee, well, you find yourself wanting to fight when your life is at stake. I think that's also built into our DNA, the self-preservation gene or something. You find strength you didn't think you had to fight enemies you never imagine existed. And then people tell you "Wow you're strong, I could never do that!" and I think to myself "That's funny, I think the same of people going through worse than I am".

You never know your true strength until you have no choice BUT to fight.

Life is strange that way.

In a way I would like to know what the future holds, so I could plan properly. What does the countdown clock look like? How many months/years do I really have left? This slow slide into cumulative physical weakness is driving me bananas. My legs can hardly hold me anymore and I'm angry at myself for not fighting harder. For not finding the strength to push the limits, for not doing more, for wasting days just being too tired to do anything. 

I know the less we do, the less we are able to do. I know this. And yet it's still so damn difficult to put thoughts into action. I feel like a beached whale most of the time. A tired one LOL.

I don't want to worry my parents, who already so sooo much for me. I don't want to worry anyone. I do still have good days and we're in deep winter for another four months, need to wrap my head around it and just find ways to cope. It's my second winter being incapacitated, I don't remember much of last year - it's a blur. I'd like to make this one memorable but I don't know how, if you have any ideas I'm all ears! Kidding, I only have two. But they work well (unlike my eyesight which has plummeted to dismal, I'm getting glasses next month). 

Yes, my body is falling apart. I see the accumulation of bruises that won't go away, of puncture marks from incessant needles. Veins getting tired. Scars from surgeries next to scars from scratching at dry skin. My bloated belly, face and neck from medication and inactivity. The dark circles under my eyes. Hair that won't grow back. I've also shrunk a good inch from disintegrating vertebrae. I've lost all muscle tone and my fingernails are soft like paper. I look in the mirror and see an old woman, wasn't expecting to see this for another 20 years - but since the odds are stacked against me that I'll make it that long, well, at least I'll have glimpsed the future. Just wish it could have spoken to me two years ago so I could have caught this disease before it spread.

Ah, wishes. Where's that genie when you need him?