I have a future… ?

Last week, for the first time in over a year and a half, I was able to take the advanced version of the power yoga class that I went to almost daily until my cancer treatment, subsequent surgeries, and recovery. And there was a moment during the class when I just started to cry. Tears streaming down my face as I’m trying to hold a half moon pose. I tried to pass it off as sweat… (What? I’m not crying, you’re crying).

At first, I thought they were tears of relief; during the past few months, I had some huge swollen lymph nodes that wouldn’t go down, which the doctors were very worried could be a cancer recurrence. I had just gotten the news that my scans were all clear, so I thought the tears were releasing the fear I had been living with since May. But the tears didn’t stop there…

Oooh, that’s it! They were tears of gratitude that my physical strength had come back. That my body was strong and able to move like this again. When you’re down for the count for so long, there are days you think that strength never will return, or that your body will never recover. Yes! Tears done. Return to yoga flow.

Um… tears done for only a minute. Apparently, there were more. It came time for pigeon pose, which is a hip opener. In yoga, they say we hold a lot of emotions in our hips, and often, during a hip opener stretch, any suppressed emotions can come pouring out. The song playing during this pose was Wildflowers, by Tom Petty — go ahead, give it a click; listening to it will make this post ever so much more poignant (and palatable). Combine that with the hip being opened, and BAM, the dam of tears broke again.

Hearing those lyrics immediately took me back to my freshman year of college, in my dorm room, with my roommate. We were obsessed with that song (I think because it was a love song between Julia and Jeremy London’s character on Party of Five?). I could smell the fake wood, my too-sweet vanilla scented perfume, the frost beginning to form outside our window. I could feel the cold linoleum floor through my socks on most of my feet, but the warmth of the shaggy rug that was under my bed on the tips of my toes. I was there again. I was that naïve, excited freshman with her whole life ahead of her.

This girl had her entire adulthood planned out: she was going to be married to the love of her life, they were going to live in a beautiful house, they were going to have kids, and she was going to be an actress… oh, was she going to be an actress! (well, she already was an actress, but she was going to do it for her career). Dang, was this girl excited about the life she had ahead of her!

As I half sat/half laid there in that awkward pigeon pose, tears (it’s sweat, damnit!) streaming down my face, I realized that these particular tears weren’t for me. These tears were for that girl. Because she didn’t get the life she wanted. None of what she wanted has come to pass. No husband, no kids, no house, no acting career. I think the 17 year-old me would have had a panic attack, and been devastated, seeing the 40 year-old her’s life.

After a few minutes of playing the victim, I decided to take responsibility. I mean, it’s over 20 years since then. There had been plenty of time pre-cancer, so I can’t use cancer as an excuse for keeping me from having all those things; if I really wanted those things that badly, wouldn’t I have just done them? Wouldn’t I have married one of the men I could have even though I knew it wasn’t right, or gotten out of relationships I knew wouldn’t end in marriage more quickly, or have made more appropriate choices? If I really wanted children that badly, wouldn’t I have just HAD them, regardless of whether or not I thought it was the right partner, or just done it alone? If I really wanted them that badly, wouldn’t I have frozen my eggs right before I started chemo, or later, before having all my lady organs removed? If I really wanted kids that badly, wouldn’t I start the process of adopting, since, let’s face it, I’m not getting any younger? If I really wanted to have a career as an actress that badly, wouldn’t I have not given up in my mid-20’s because I couldn’t handle the rejection or ruthlessness of the business? Wouldn’t I have just gone for it and not let fear or insecurity get in the way? If I really wanted to own a home that badly, wouldn’t I have made better financial decisions or career choices?

Were these things I really wanted deep down in my soul, or were they things I was a) conditioned to want, partly pre-disposed simply by the genetics/biology of being a woman, but also because they were what life and society tells us we should want and are supposed to have, and b) wanted for the wrong reasons, like for validation, or to feel loved or complete or something psycho-analytical like that?

The answer is, it doesn’t matter. Trying to figure out why does no good, because the reality is I don’t have those things. So, I have to accept that.

Facing that then led me to facing all the shit I’ve gone through over the past two years. To get through everything, I haven’t stopped to think. I had to just do. Because if I stopped to think about what was happening, I wouldn’t have been able to function. To stop and think about the fact that I had lost my ability to have children… that I had lost, essentially, two years of my life… that I had to call off my wedding and was no longer getting married… that I had to move in with my Dad until I figure out what’s next… that my body had changed, both internally and externally… I just couldn’t. I’ve had to be in survival mode, which means putting walls up and keeping blinders on so that I could just do what was right in front of me, while at the same time try to protect myself from getting hurt again or feeling more loss.

I had never fully grieved any of those things. I had never looked that shit in the face and acknowledged it. Probably because I always thought it would be too painful. So, I came face to face with the reality that everything I had previously wanted (or thought I wanted) has been washed away, and it is as though I’m starting from zero. I have to rebuild my life, from literally the ground up, as I’m not even living in a home of my own right now.

But here’s the kicker: I don’t even know what I want anymore. I don’t know what to build. Like I’ve written in other posts about post-cancer life, I often don’t even know who I am anymore, so how could I possibly know what I want?

A friend said to me the other day, “Holly, you have a future. I want you to say that out loud to yourself all the time. Say to yourself, ‘I have a future.’” And I curled up into a ball and started sobbing. Because I realized that I have spent the previous few months paralyzed in each moment, not willing to see any future, not believing I have a future, because the future I would see was empty. How could I want anything when so many things I had previously wanted were taken away in a matter of minutes, or when I knew that I could get a call at any minute saying my cancer had returned? It’s too painful to want.

But it’s now time to grieve all those lost wants. It’s the only way to move forward. I need to grieve the life I lost and the life I thought I was going to have before I can start to build a new one. Who would have thought that a simple hip opener and a little Tom Petty could start that process for me? Gee, thanks, pigeon pose.

Yes, I know, I know… what about gratitude, you say? What about focusing on all the things you DO have in your life, instead of all the things you DON’T have? Trust me, I do focus on those things, quite a lot. I am insanely grateful for my amazing family and incredible friends, for my great job that I love, for the chance I just had to be in a 6 week run of a play, for my health and life, for a roof over my head… I do spend a lot of time in gratitude, I promise. But sometimes, things feel bad and you just have to go down to the bottom. It’s the only way to mine something good out of the shit. You have to “feel it to heal it,” as they say.

So, OK, yeah… I have a future. I don’t know what that’s going to look like yet. My life will not be what I thought it was going to be. But, can that be an exciting thing? Can that leave me open to surprises and possibilities I never would have expected or even wanted in my “previous” life? I don’t know. I hope so. I hope I can be like that freshman year girl again — excited about the future. Excited that there is a whole life ahead of her, among the wildflowers, somewhere she feels free, somewhere all bright and new, a place where her heart is her guide and her love is on her arm…