Life is like a box of chocolates. No, life is like a bowl of cherries. No, life is like broken glass.
Why yes, I did drop off the face of the earth. It was quite a ride.
Many people don�t know this, but glass is actually a liquid. What appears to be solid is actually slowly moving. As slowly as the continents drift towards or away from one another, the glass is moving downward, pulled by the relentless tug of gravity. You don�t see it with newer houses, but in very old houses, if you look at the panes of glass, they are thicker at the bottom. Gravity eventually takes it�s toll on everything.
Sometimes glass can amaze us with its strength. We are elated when we drop a treasured item on the floor and discover it did not, in fact, break. The tension that entered our body when it slipped from our hands slowly drains from us. Sometimes we are surprised by the fragility of the glass. A small pebble thrown against our windshield by passing traffic causes a crack in the glass. Our sliding glass door once shattered in to tiny cracks of glass for no apparent reason. One minute, the window appeared perfect and strong. The next minute its surface was all crackle and lines. It had finally given up the fight of contraction and expansion caused by shifting temperatures.
Once broken, glass can rarely be repaired. It must usually be replaced. You might be able to glue the pieces together, but the break, the crack, the damage, will always be noticeable.
Sometimes the glass is changing slowly in imperceptible ways drawn downward by life forces such as gravity and sometimes it changes suddenly and forcefully by objects that plummet into it. But the one guarantee that we have is that it is always changing.
Lately, I�ve been waking up in the middle of the night (or maybe not always waking up, sometimes this happens before I actually fall asleep) and I�m filled with a fear of dying. It grips my chest and makes it hard for me to breathe. Even just writing about it, I feel the panic growing inside of me. As near as I can tell, I�m having some sort of mid-life crisis. The scary thing is, since none of us know the exact day and hour of our death, we don�t really know when we�ve reached our own midlife. But somehow, our bodies and minds just know that at a certain point, we�re supposed to panic.
I think about the friends that I have lost at such a young age. I think about stories I hear of people that I know that have died young. When I was a preschool teacher, there was this parent there, we�ll call her R. She had 2 sons (2 and 6 at the time, though they are much older now) and a loving husband (who fathered the 2nd child but was raising both of them as his own). She stayed in contact with several of the teachers at the school who remained my friends, so I heard of her from them. Several years ago, her husband was paralyzed in a car accident and is now a quadriplegic. She remained a devoted, loving wife and mother, raising her sons and caring for her husband. One morning, her sons woke up and realized they were late for school. Their mom had forgotten to wake them up. They went into her room to see what happened and found her still and cold body. She had an aneurysm that burst during the night. She was, by all accounts, healthy. She did not know that her days were numbered by a swelling blood vessel. She was in her early thirties. She left behind two young sons and a quadriplegic husband.
My good friend Jana just found out that she has uterine cancer. She has been trying to have a baby for several years and was starting to begin the process for IVF. In order to begin IVF, they have to run a gazillion tests to make sure you are healthy. This is how it was discovered that she has uterine cancer. It was so unexpected and dashed her hopes of ever bearing her own child. Jana wants to be a mom so badly, I feel her pain as we both experience the same intense longing. Jana is adopted and really wanted to bear her own child so that she would have a biological connection with SOMEONE. That hope is gone forever.
It�s these stories, and others like them, that keep me up at night, wondering what time bomb is ticking inside of me. I wonder, if I fall asleep, will I wake up in the morning. Chances are good that I will. More people wake up each day than don�t. But still, we don�t really know when it�s all going to end. Or how. I feel this panic at knowing that each moment could be my last. It doesn�t seem to be motivating me to make my mark upon the world, or to live each moment as if it was my last. Rather, it is just filling me with fear and panic. The panic always passes after a few moments, but it also always returns. I start to wonder, is this all I�m going to get out of life? Is this enough? What was the purpose of my life? Is this as good as it�s ever going to get? I think I need Lily Tomlin�s existential detective agency.
In other news, I have gained 10-12 pounds. For a while, on the gym scale, I was as low as 206, but as of last night, I weighed 218. Shocking. And right on the margin of what I can allow. I know that some weight fluctuation is normal, but if I accept a 10 pound weight loss, then I�ll accept 20 pounds and pretty soon, I�ll weigh 366 pounds again. Somehow, this weight gain has not motivated me to improve my eating. Lately, I�ve been eating like crap. I would say, generally, that my eating during the day has been fairly healthy. On the advice of my doctor and due to plummeting blood sugar levels that leave me dizzy and occasionally cause slight lapses in consciousness, I have begun eating every 2-3 hours. In general, my mini-meals are healthy � apples and peanut butter, apples and cheese, cheese and crackers, yogurt and crackers, etc. My downfall seems to be in the evening. After arriving home, I just start snacking and don�t seem to stop until I fall asleep. I also find myself hungry more often. And I feed the hunger. I stopped working out.
So rather than overwhelm myself with trying to fix everything all at once, I am starting with a few small changes. I have started taking my calcium supplement once again (because calcium helps you lose weight AND I fear osteoporosis � a common side-effect of gastric bypass surgery for those that do not supplement with calcium) and I am also taking my thyroid pill again. And as of last night, I am working out again. I had to bribe myself to make it happen. I gave my friend Danny a $50 bill and told him that if I don�t go to the gym that night, he gets to keep it and do whatever he wants with it. $50 is a very good motivator. I know that once I get on an exercise groove, I�ll be good, but for now, while I am getting started, I need that $50 to motivate me. I called him last night and told him I didn�t lose $50. Then I told him to hang on to it and if I don�t go Wednesday, the same rule applies. So, I�ll keep using that money to keep me going until the exhilaration of exercise becomes reward enough. And, as long as Danny is holding on to that money, I can�t spend it frivolously either.
On the subject of my friend Jana, her spirits are pretty good. Right now, she�s still in shock and mostly upset that she won�t be able to bear children. She is planning on starting the process of fostering and adopting (as soon as she gets a better sense of her physical health � meets with the oncologist, has her hysterectomy, etc), but she was, and still is, upset that she cannot bear a child of her own genetic makeup. I have offered her my uterus (not my eggs, I could not carry a child of my genes and give it away) if she wants it and she is thinking about that as well. We have spent a lot of time together in the last week and, though she was one of my best friends prior to this, she has now become irreplaceable. Jana is one of the most giving, loving people I have ever met. She is not about lip service. If someone has done her a favor, even something as simple as one of her co-workers working an extra hour, or someone bringing in a coupon for her, she thanks them with a card and a trip to the coffee shop or a gift certificate to St@rbucks. She is genuine in her gratitude and pure in her heart. I have never had a friend like her.
This diary entry is brought to you by the letter A. Which stands for Awake. Which is what I am and have been since 4 AM.
