From the Chair #2

Today I am:

• going to let myself feel worth it all, accept love and care
• not going to let all the little things get me down. My heart is still beating my breath is still deep, I am still strong.
• going to laugh and smile for no reason
• going to tell people I am good and say it with honesty. Because I am still strong – and “fake it til you make it” is still a thing and I want to truly feel good again.
• giving myself permission to forget all the friends that came before me and didn’t make it through. This is my fight and while I will always cherish them their battles, victories and losses do not influence mine.

Ya, yeah. I know its misspelled – Believing. I like it anyways.

My heart is still beating (despite the fact it refuses to beat at a rate appropriate for waking hours)… it’s still beating and my lungs are still working. I am still strong, and I am worth something. At least to me, I am worth something.

Hanging my Hopes on: Breath

Today I’m hanging my hopes on my air. Trusting that one breath will come after another. Closing my eyes and hoping that all the drugs working to keep my heart beating at an appropriate speed will work. Trusting that I’ve got the best possible team around me whose goals are in line with mine. To just keep me breathing.

For a year and a half I got through the day by knowing that no matter what they threw at me I could survive because my heart was strong, it hadn’t yet taken a beating. Brain cancer doesn’t effect your heart or lungs. I could go to my happy place every day and spend hours on the river rowing because the best feeling in the world was stoping after a 4-minute high rate piece and taking a full deep breath. Now its in my lungs, and my heart hurts, and I’ve spent the last 8 months going to every single practice and standing on the dock or sitting in the coach boat. I don’t have a crew anymore, half of my identity as a rower is gone.

But today, to get through the day today I’m going to hang my hopes on the idea that eventually breathing will be easier. That I’ll get to be me again and that this is not the new normal. This is not how I’m going to live until I die. This is not it.