There was something expansive in my illness. It forced me to open out into the world and confront things head on. Guilt and self-recrimination evaporated – there was no time for it. I took on the world, drew it into myself, embraced it.
This last month has felt like a sort of contraction – a narrowing, a closing-in upon myself. And there has been a resumption of guilt and self-recrimination.
It all seems to run like a stop-motion movie of a flower growing, opening, then wilting and dying and falling away. Cancer flower.
Seasons for the wrong reasons: spring becomes fall, through a summer of desperation.
Yet from a standpoint of my simple physicality, doesn’t it seem like the effect should be opposite? Shouldn’t I have plunged into a temporary field of decrescence only to rise out and emerge whole again afterward?
The psychology of this thing has me puzzled.
I have indeed been in a very strange mental place, this afternoon. I’ve been listening to classical music continuously. I guess what’s called “contemporary classical”: John Tavener, Arvo Pärt. Bobmusic, I have called it in the past. When is the last time I did that? Many, many years.
What I’m listening to right now.
Arvo Pärt, “Silentium.”
[daily log: walking, 4.5 km]
Caveat: Expansion. Contraction. Silence.
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You might also be experiencing the sudden withdrawal of visits of persons who love you, disappearing back into their own lives. Speaking for myself, I talk to you often in my mind, but have been so absorbed with my own sickness, and the IRS, that I barely have time to read posts, much less respond to them. You are always close to me, however. It was an excellent time, that which I spent with you. In so many ways. I am just glad that I did not have to go back to full time work in addition to dealing with daily issues! I will find out tomorrow about the audit. I just spent a week of very intense, accurate accounting of every penny spent in 2011. Glad to know I can do it, but I still hate paperwork! Take care. If you get too lonely, invite me over. I don’t have to wait until May! Love, Wendy
Hey Jared,
It sounds like you’re experiencing post-partum depression from having cancer. A bit bizarre, perhaps, but why not? It was an intense, life-changing experience that put things in a different perspective–it certainly knocked you out of your routines. Sort of like when one is in an unexpectedly stressful situation and you don’t get a cold until after the stress is past, when your natural defenses relax a bit.
I wonder whether you can recover some of the positive aspects of your cancer experience in time? Or do you even feel that it’s in the past, at this point?
Anyway, I’m honored that you refer to contemporary classical music as Bobmusic. I’ll check out the Arvo Part track you posted…
Bob
Of course, this is assuming that you actually do feel this is all behind you