Journal

It's been a long time since I wrote an entry in my journal; and I was once an inveterate journal writer. I never missed a day and I kept my journals; all of them from the late 70's up to maybe 2006. Once in a while I take one out and glance through it and there's a part of my life. Now that I'm considered a terminal patient by my oncologist, it feels wierd to read about the person I was in my late 20's. I read about the person I was when I went back to school at the age of 31 to finish my undergraduate degree and I feel like I'm reading about a stranger. The other day I took a journal off the shelf and it covered some of the time I was doing my graduate work; going into the city to Fordham nights and Saturday mornings. I was so much younger and I was healthy then. I never dreamed then that at 57, they'd be telling me it's almost over. It's all gone by so quickly. And I wonder if I did enough while I was here. Did I use whatever talents I was granted or did I waste them. Did I do enough for my family, my friends, my community...or did I just take up space? So this is what it's like to see my life flash before my eyes. And this is what it's like to face my own judgement. Only I'm the one that's judging me.

I'm afraid. And I'm the first one to admit it. I'm confused. I've lost my bearings. And I'm in a place where I'm alone. In every other experience in my life there were other people with me that I could relate to. Not to say that that no one else on this planet is dying. But this is one experience I have to go through alone. There is no one to hold on tight to, no one who can go with me. And I guess that's why there's fear. Yet who hasn't faced this? Everyone does. I'm just facing it fairly soon.

All my adult life I feel like I've been wrestling with God. A love/hate relationship; and even my journals were my letters to God. It's been a pretty intense relationship but my relationships are usually intense. That's just the way I am. Superficiality couldn't keep me interested very long. And now I feel like I'm struggling to say something. Or struggling to understand something and it's a battle. I'm wondering if I can remember a time when I truly felt a connection with this God that I've searched for. And I've searched for such a long time.

Enough. Enough for tonight. Chemotherapy was very bad this time. I have to gather all my resources just to stand up. I can't pick up my cat. Why are they making me go through this if my chances for survival are so abysmal? I don't feel as if I'm in control of my own life anymore. Or maybe all this is just "chemo fog". How else could I feel so irrational and helpless. And it isn't like me at all to feel like I'm drowning in emotions so powerful that I can't even express them. Instead I feel as if they're choking me. So much for the good and peaceful death. This must be the wrenching feeling of realizing that I have to begin letting go.

This will be short because by now I'm practically falling asleep on the computer. It's happened in the past, more times than I could even count. I wake up to a screen covered with inch after inch after inch of all the same letter, then maybe a few inches of blank screen and finally more letters and numbers. I have a hard time finding where it ends. Maybe it just keeps going on and on into infinity. I think I just hate going to bed. I hate the idea of going to sleep. Now I know that time is limited and I know it in the most authentic way. So I hate to waste time sleeping. There's always something I want to do or I wish I'd done. But now I have to give in. I have a feeling that there will still be tomorrow...

I ramble so that's an appropriate description for my 1st journal entry. I've wanted to start a journal for a long time and keep it on the computer; now I have an incentive. Two days ago, the 24th of February was the 29th anniversary of my mother's death. 29 years! I was 28 at the time, married and the mother of a 4 year old daughter who loved her grandmother more than just about anyone else. I can scarcely remember what it was like to have a mother. I can't remember the sound of her voice or what it was like to see her or call her on the phone... And now, apparently I am considered a terminal small cell lung cancer patient myself. I just found this out on Thanksgiving Day. Pretty ironic. I find that my husband and daughter refuse to acknowlege that I probably won't recover. They only want to hear that I'll HAVE A POSITIVE ATTITUDE and fight. But I've spent the last 19 years in and out of the hospital for fusion surgeries, staph infections, an illiostomy, blockages of my intestinal tract and now this. I always fought to get well, and it was always a hard fight. But now I'm running out of fight. I can't even think of a goal. Maybe by tomorrow I'll come up with one.