The Third Plunge

Juliet has now been diagnosed with melanoma.

Drop everything.

Full stop.

Once again, last weekend I found myself narrowing my vision with a razor-sharp focus on the only things that really matter. Survival. Family. Responsibility. Security.

We found out last Friday evening, when the dermatologist called with the results of her biopsy. The week since then has been... hard. We were already weary from the breast cancer and the devastating car accident. Seven months on, and she is still recovering from the accident. I never personally recovered from that dread, and now a new episode was thrust upon me, with no energy reserves. I felt like hope was futile.

After a second surgery, with more to come, she was given an optimistic not-quite-prognosis that we caught it early enough that it probably hasn't spread from the skin yet. It spreads outward before it deepens and spreads to organs, at which point survival rates drop dramatically. There's more to do, but we were told some reassuring things at the end of this week.

But that's not enough for me.

We can't be tested like this again. Especially not so soon. Consecutively, really. I was going to try to explain what it feels like, but it's impossible. You can't imagine. Looking at everyone else's easy lives and insignificant little problems, as they got to enjoy the tribulation-free first three years of their marriages with Pinterest-worthy abandon.

A portion of my sense of humor permanently died two years ago, and another piece this past March. And now... I can't explain how weary I am. I feel like we are doomed. I feel like this is not the last of it, that something dreadful is always on the horizon. There are reasons for this, but in order to explain the medical evidence, it gets very confusing, very wordy, very technical, and very personal.

So let's cut the feel-good bullshit, shall we? Let's cut the trite, wannabe-inspirational-poster, shoulder-patting platitudes, and let me articulate my unspoken fears. The reality i that there is a chance--perhaps even a likelihood--that one of Juliet's cancers will return, or a new one will crop up, within even the next five years. I have no reason to think we will go five years without another cancer diagnosis. And don't give me that superstitious "don't say such things out loud!" because all that does is cowardly force me to suffer in silence. This is what I am coming to believe. To expect. I am not accepting of it, but I am starting to become resigned to it. I don't know what will happen, or what we will do when it happens, but looking back on our lives together, we never had an easy year. We never even had a normal year.

It is October, but all the festivities died last Friday with bad news. I am in the entertainment business. Making others happy. Participating in events to that end. Face painting, balloon twisting, glitter tattoos, costume characters. My job is to put on a happy face for others. My job is to make sure even the most overly entitled, pushy people of all ages are mollified if they get impatient. I create the most ephemeral moments of levity you can get. The only thing more ephemeral would be blowing bubbles, maybe. So, if someone who chose to wait in line at a fun event is having a negative experience as a result of their own bad attitude, while I am hastily making something for them, on the inside I am appalled at the low stakes and the frivolity of it all, thinking, "Who fucking cares about your non-problems?" But I smile and make them laugh.

It is October, what should be our busiest and most lucrative month of the year, but we are missing a lot of events.

It is October, and I don't even feel like carving a pumpkin anymore. In a heartbeat, all the seasonal joys turned to crumbling ash.

I should be blogging about everything else that has happened over the summer, since my last post. I can't believe I let it go this long without a post, and I should be catching up. I should be blogging about how my mom spent the whole summer here to help while we tried to get back on our feet, but the home repairs are stuck in neutral while all our stuff is still in rented storage pods. I should be blogging about how I was able to spend almost every night of July working on a just-for-fun "fan soundtrack" project that I started two years ago and finally completed something for once. It was good to prove to myself that I can get something done, especially such a massive project. I should be blogging about my attempts to reconnect with people from ten years ago in Kansas City, and my thoughts on our bonds since then, and how these retrospective feelings tied into the musings I had while watching the fifth installments of Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean this summer--franchises that, once upon a time, we would have waited in line as a group to see on opening night. I should be blogging about how I intended to finally take that stag trip to Kansas City this November, which now is simply not going to happen.

I should be blogging about how now that October is here, Juliet is finally recovering and we can pick up where we left off in our lives way back in early March. All the good things. Spring. Renewal. Ambition. Victory. Success. Joy. Rest and recreation. The sweet nectar of the best of times.

I have altogether abandoned the October that I was trying to have. I am already thinking ahead to New Year's Eve. This whole rotten year can just shrivel up and die. I have given up on trying to accomplish something in order to be able to say, "2017 wasn't all bad..." Instead, I am remembering last Christmas, and what I hope will at least feel better when I drive up for this coming Christmas. I am asking myself, "When I am visiting my family, and we are strolling around the farmstead in the cold, what will I wish I could say about 2018?" I have set my desktop wallpaper to be a slideshow of pictures I took of that exact thing: scenic photos from walking around outside my parents' house in late December from the past several years.

That last sentiment wasn't explained very articulately, but it's kind of abstract at this point anyway.

I am tired. I don't want to do this anymore. I thought we'd earned a few years of contentment. I am tired of being someone else's inspirational story. When someone tells me, "I don't know how you do it," I don't have an answer, either. The answer is that I don't have a choice. Time simply marches forward, with cold indifference, against my will.

I have one more bleak thought to spit out. I feel exceptionally resentful of those few friends who have abandoned me in my times of need. I am talking about something which under normal circumstances would be only slightly vexing.

I will give you an example. There is one guy I was good friends with at BGSU. One day, last year, I think, I noticed that we weren't friends on Facebook anymore. That bothered me, so I messaged him with regret that perhaps ideological differences have created a rift. He responded that he simply culled the herd, dropping people on his bloated friends list who weren't actively involved in his life anymore, but he happily added me again. I felt like we were rekindling an old alliance. And then, unfriended again? This time, there's no way he didn't know damn well what I was going through. He couldn't have been oblivious. Plus, I saw that he had recently interacted with mutual friends of ours, so I know he wasn't just dropping everyone he knew from BGSU because of some kind of statute of limitations on friendships. It was just me.

See, it's such a passive thing, something that ordinarily wouldn't be something to be bothered by let alone mention in a post. I normally wouldn't be bitterly analyzing it like some stereotype jilted high school girl. It's just Facebook, not real life, right? But the second time he unfriended me, it really stung, because it showed me that my traumatic burdens are best ignored, not shared. It told me that he was never really much of a friend to begin with. And since the affection now appears so one-sided in retrospect, that makes it feel like an outright betrayal to me. That might sound severe to you, but that's how I took it. This time, he really let me down. Old friend.

At a time when I needed friends the most, a few fair-weather people quietly slipped out the back door. Those people are marked.

Meanwhile, circumstances keep piling up the problems. A Catch-22 with fixing the house. It seems like literally everyone we hire to do something lets us down or altogether fucks up the job. The guy we hired to fix the foundation a second time, we threatened to take him to court. That's a whole sage of blog posts best left confidential. The list of ways people have let me down became almost comical, and recently there was a point where Juliet said she was impressed with how I didn't seem to be as bothered by it as she was, and I said that's because I never expected it to work in the first place. Now I wish I had turned this list into a blog post of its own, just so you'd see how understated I am being right now.

Then there's the car trouble. Both cars. Health. Hers and mine. During all these months of trying to take care of her, I haven't really taken care of myself. And problems with the business. Everything. I can't truly illustrate how ridiculously thorough our screwing-over has been without writing pages upon pages, but the trials have been absurd.

And then there's the world around me. So much to write about. So much... wrong.

The world is darkening. I need a season overflowing with joy, but I will settle for a long rest.

First, breast cancer, a crisis that occupied all of 2015 and beyond. Then, the car accident on our third anniversary, after which all the doctors said was a "miracle" she was alive. Now, the third plunge into the abyss: blindsided by the deadliest form of skin cancer, more aggressive even than invasive ductal carcinoma. But it might still be okay. For the short term.

Before I came along, Juliet had experienced being stranded in a hurricane and even a bombing in Israel. In all seriousness, I wouldn't be surprised if she were the victim of the next mass shooting. That's just how lucky she is. You see those things on the news and think it couldn't happen to you? It happens to someone. And even doctors would tell you Juliet actually has better odds of winning the Powerball jackpot than having the medical problems she has already had. She's not even forty.

But I feel like William Wallace at the betrayal and desolation at Falkirk: just lie down in the mud, give up, and get run over. It seems inevitable anyway.

Yes, I need a long season of recuperation. But this might be only the beginning. And even in the best-case scenario, life isn't about to hand me lemonade for twelve months straight, so I don't get to rest. I get to keep carrying the weight of the world even when I am sitting down to catch my breath. Since I am not allowed to rest, instead I have to find new ways to harness the negative energy and get it to work in my favor. No platitudes. Just a judo match with the Fates as my opponent. Either redirect the energy or be simply overwhelmed and defeated.

I have further thoughts on the matter, but I have gone on long enough for now.