This is Me

Hello and thank you for being here! I’m Margaret and this is my first publication of a new writing venture — 30 and Loving Life. Sounds cliché, but the concept is relatively new to me and was not easily won.

Is it a choice to love life?

Is it a privilege? Or a curse?

What does it mean?

I can only try to answer these questions for myself. “Love” and “life” are themselves loaded words. Notions larger and more unpredictable than we could ever understand. But I implore you to never stop wondering about either. Thinking about life inherently moves us forward in the universal journey of discovering the meaning of life. Thinking about love compels us to expand our definition of the word, requires us to reassess what it means to love, be loved, give love, and receive love. Love is never insignificant; it is at its core infinite. Life, on the other hand, has limits. The control we wield over life, I’ve learned, is limited. When I was a teenager, I believed myself invincible. I had my fair share of terrible ideas as well as a brush or two with death (no exaggeration; I might be convinced to share a story someday). Even well into my twenties, I had this passive idea that life was infinite and that I was untouchable. I imagine many people realize this is not the case through a culmination of time, age, experience, and looking in the mirror one day wondering how the hell you got to this point. I had a slightly more aggressive awakening.

October 9th, 2017. I’m terrible with dates, but I remember this one. It is singed into my memory. My parents left early that morning for the trip of a lifetime: travelling across Europe, skipping from Venice to Tuscany to Florence to Rome. I was twenty-seven. Still not acting my age. I was one year married and recently moved back in with my parents in St. Louis so we could save money and be closer to our young nephew. My parents had just left. I had my usual cup of tea: Earl Grey with honey and cream. I was working (from home — a corporate 9 to 5 job that paid the bills and kept me stagnant). My doctor called late morning. Odd that he was calling and not his nurse as usual. Naively, I clung to blissful ignorance and immortality until he said it. The C-word. More specifically: squamous cell carcinoma (cancer). I remember feeling my heart bang against my chest, the impact reverberating up into my ears and seeing my wife’s face as she read my eyes. The numbness and tinnitus set in quickly. I was in a vacuum of unknown and my world became something different in a matter of seconds.

That day, I found out I had cancer. My parents were half-way across the world. And circumstance brought me to my knees.

I invite you to join me as I reflect on how life has changed since that day. I do not wish to give anything away, but for the sake of avoiding unnecessary concern during trying times: I am two years cancer-free as of February. And grateful to be here.