Clutter

It has been too long. I want to thank the anonymous commenter on my last post for inspiring me to get off my duff and try to put into words what has been going on for the past two months. So much, and yet so little.

I've been very busy. But that's hardly an excuse. Aren't we all? Work, kids, career change, yada yada. For the most part, returning to work has been a good thing, and so far I'm pleased with how the semester is going. For the most part, I'm in a good place mentally.

Except when I'm not.

I couldn't put a finger on it until I got a packet in the mail from Cheri, Dr. L's nurse navigator, whose job it is to guide patients through the murky world of breast cancer. (In all honesty, she was pretty useless.) The packet contained a summary of all of my treatments, and a guide to life after cancer (which seems a little presumptuous, no?). Then again, I guess 'life with cancer' would be too depressing, and apparently depression is normal even if you believe you are living life after cancer. For some reason I actually read the entire informational sheet, as if it could tell me something I hadn't already read on the Internet or someone's blog. However, I do think this bit pretty much sums it up for me:

Survivors are often surprised by their emotional reaction at this time. They anticipate jumping for joy and throwing survival parties, and instead find themselves crying in the parking lot after their last treatment, feeling vulnerable in unexpected ways. Some find it disconcerting that they are no longer receiving active treatment to attack rogue cancer cells; furthermore, their treatment team is no longer giving them much needed daily or weekly support. 

To say that I'm feeling complex emotions at this time is a massive understatement. Some of it is centered around my still strained relationship with my parents, and some of it is because it is truly difficult to go from a time when you're in weekly contact with doctors and receiving daily support from friends and family to, well, back to 'normal.' I went out with a friend the other night, and she commented that since I finished my cancer treatment, she has missed me. It may sound silly, but I've missed her, too.

Some of the other complex emotions I'm feeling I truly don't understand. And I think, in a way, that is not helping my relationship with my parents, because they don't understand how I've changed. And I don't expect them to. I mean, hell, *I* don't even understand how I've changed, I just know that I have.

One of the most intense changes I have felt over the past few months is that I absolutely, positively, cannot stand clutter and disorganization. I've always been a fairly organized person - I am VERY organized in my professional life, less so in my personal life - but lately I've been HYPER-organized. At first I just thought it was my anxiety about returning to work causing my obsessive behavior, and I'm sure that contributed, but now I feel like my brain has actually changed. I used to get organized just 'cuz, you know, it's fun or whatever. Now I get organized because I will loathe myself I do not. The same goes for clutter. My husband is a bit of a hoarder, and I'll admit that I keep too much stuff, mostly because I feel guilty throwing things away because landfills are bad and all that. And because I'm cheap. Seriously, y'all, I'm still wrapping gifts in wrapping paper and ribbon from the wedding presents we got 15 years ago. Add in two kids to the mix and put us in a big house, and voilà, I present to you: WAY. TOO. MUCH. FUCKING. SHIT. Pardon my French. Whereas before, I was always like, yeah, I need to clean out that closet, now I am like OMGICANNOTSTANDTHIS! And so in my spare moments, and I do mean almost all of them, I get rid of things, and I organize what's left. I've been doing this obsessively for about a month now, and I think the only reason it hasn't evolved into full-fledged disordered behavior is because with everything else that's going on, my spare moments are few and far between. However, it does leave little time for blogging.

Part of it, I'm sure, is that this is my way of dealing with anxiety, both the anxiety that stems from things I understand, and the anxiety that is of unknown etiology. The other part is a little deeper, I think. The other part is that little feeling I have that it's possible I might not live much longer. I mean, maybe I will, but it's possible I won't. At the very least, I am in touch with my own mortality in a profound and almost primitive way; I feel it from deepest parts of my heart and soul and gut, and oozing from every cell at every moment. I had always pictured myself as an old woman, going through my parents' shit and my husband's shit and my kids' shit after they moved out of the house, but now I know there is a real possibility that my parents and my husband and my kids will be the ones going through my shit. I mean, I always knew this on some level, but now I really know it. And OMG this shit has to go. No one should have to deal with all this shit.

It's a delicate balance, though, trying to find that fine line between being completely morbid and doing a healthy dose of de-cluttering. There are a lot of complex emotions that accompany each cleaning episode. Am I throwing away all of my children's artwork because it's truly taking up too much space (not to mention it's ugly), or am I throwing it away because I'm the only one who ever looks at it, and pretty soon I'll be dead? Am I beginning the process of detaching myself from my life and the things I love that make up my life, like papier-mâché tiger heads?

In one of my favorite movies of all time, The Shawshank Redemption, some of the prisoners have a mantra of Get busy living, or get busy dying. While the poster child breast cancer survivor screams I'm busy living! as she hikes the Appalachian trail or whatever, I'm not that kind of survivor. As Katy Jacob would say, I'm the wrong kind of survivor, with the wrong story. I am busy living, trying to make the most of each day. I've always been this way, I think. It's not the cancer. The difference is that now getting busy dying is a part of my life, too. It's both pessimistic and practical at the same time. And it's a delicate balance.