There are a set of comments and responses that I have found to be especially galling these days. "I hate my life," is one of them. "I want to die," is another. "Really?" I want to say back. "Really? You're saying you want to die because you had a hard day and that guy at the gas station really pissed you off?" I just want to slap the other person silly when I hear crap like that. I want to say fine, great, let's switch places, and you go through chemo and surgery and descend into the underworld for days and weeks on end in an effort to stay alive... and then let's talk about how much you want to die.
Phrases like that are profoundly insulting to someone going through cancer or cancer treatment. I advise against using them.
Here's today's pet peeve. "Tell me about it." One of the most annoying responses ever. It dismisses whatever the other person is saying and trumps it with a bigger fish story. So I say, boy, I'm tired, and the other person says "Tell me about it." And I think... really? You really want me to tell you about it? OK, then, I will.
Having cancer and going through cancer treatment is like going through an advanced degree program in fatigue. There are so many layers and types and colors and harmonies and syncopations of fatigue, it's hard to know how to classify all of them.
For starters... fatigue is not the same as being tired. Being tired is to having fatigue as being a bit peckish is to dying of starvation. They really shouldn't be grouped in the same category. Being tired can almost always be cured by taking a nap or getting a better night's sleep. And, don't get me wrong, I know fully how hard those two things can be. Getting a good night's sleep is as elusive to me these days as getting a good boyfriend was in my 20s, and entering into the mainstream of the day without a good six or seven hours under my belt is hellacious. I feel like bugs are crawling under my skin as I approach the day like a recon patrol... point to point to point... make it to breakfast, then maybe to lunch, and if I can make it to lunch maybe I can make it to the end of work... and finally I see the end in sight. It is oh so true. Tired SUCKS.
Fatigue is really different. And it's not just like being super tired. It's more like being super tired and knowing that no nap or good night's sleep in the world will ever... ever... help. Its like being so tired that I don't even try any more to get some sleep, if that makes sense. I've just turned into this night owl quasi insomniac because the fatigue is so uncomfortable that I don't even really try to sleep through it any more.
There are several layers of this feeling. If the fatigue is in your body, then it's like your muscles have been replaced with quivering bands of aching glue. Remember those horrible fitness tests in elementary school? (Well, if you're lucky you did not grow up in the age of torture to children... or maybe they still have them.) There was one where you had to run 660 yards, or feet, or inches, or miles... I forget.. but it was a number that sounds very close to the mark of the devil and it was H.I.D.E.O.U.S. Awful. The worst days of my life were those testing days (Yeah? Tell me about it.). But, seriously, they were awful. And at the end of the three or four hours, or days, or years it took me to run those laps around the track, long after all the other little children were at home snug in their beds, long after the person who was supposed to be marking down my time in the little book that made the State of California happy enough to provide funding or whatever to the school system so it could make us do it all over again next year had given up in disgust and left the field and was now on his or her fifth Mai Tai at the tiki bar down the road... that was fatigue. That feeling in my bones and in my muscles and in my... spirit... that was fatigue.
And then there's soul fatigue. That's what has been weighing me down yesterday and today. Soul fatigue has long fingers that go in deep, seeking out the light inside my molecules that gives me a sense of optimism or hope and crushing it like a bug. It laughs at my resilience and shames it into skulking away into the corner. Soul fatigue comes from month after month of body fatigue, and knows that there is month after month to go. Soul fatigue has a whole mental component. Soul fatigue is body fatigue on steroids. The embers of willingness to go on flicker and dim, flicker and dim. In those rare instances that something penetrates the gloom... there is a brief lightening... but then it flickers out. I look at the hideous goblins and wraiths hanging from the trees in my neighborhood, bedecked with spiderwebs and blood, and I think there... there... there is the face that belongs to this feeling. It's a fatigue so close to death that waking up to the here and now is occasionally surprising, disconcerting.
I haven't been writing much because both these types of fatigue are weighing heavily on me these days. My body is still recuperating from the surgery, resisting getting fully well by holding on to lingering muscle aches and treating me to random shooting pains and itches and (yes, I'll say it out load) even this weird sense of phantom lactation... as my nerves decide to wake up and spark like downed electrical wires after a hurricane. The soul fatigue is the worst: I look at my life going forward and see no rest in sight, no possibility for change, no moment where I can hope to lay my head down and find as much true recuperation as I need. It feels as though I will always be trying to catch up, and failing, and the rest of my years on the planet will be forever in search of a feeling of health, and relaxation, and deep peace.
I do know of some antidotes that work, at least temporarily. Nature is one of them. The smell of sage in the sun, the blue of the mountains rising above Altadena, the coolness of fall in the evening air... all good, all things that infuse body and soul with a little extra energy. Exercise is another. Walking the dog always helps. I count the days when I can get back to yoga. I seem to want to drink in solitude like a desperado crawling across the desert. When I feel like this, most people drain my battery faster than I can recharge it. Good content helps -- I'm scarfing down books at night when I can't sleep, and occasionally latching on to a good cable series which I indulge in in big time-consuming chunks. Writing helps. And even doing some of the bathroom remodeling project (oh dear god don't get me started with that story... the fact that I am now sealing my own grout at the end of a long day and in the spare moments of the weekends should tell you enough). Even that helps.
It's not all futility. There are moments of lightness. I know I'll get through. But this is the middle days reality I seem to be in these days. Fatigue so many layers deep that it has become my constant companion. The day would not seem complete without that feeling of leaden doom following me around everywhere. And even though we sometimes share a laugh or two, that ghoul drags around after me, hanging on my flesh and dulling my senses.
So that's what this time is all about. You need a cup of coffee? Tell me about it.
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