I'm tired of the Fear. (Which I think means it's losing its power over me, but not this day.) I'm tired of being cancer boy. I'm healthy and fit — more so in both cases since last year's illness than any time since my college years. Life is good. I have the love of
the_child and calendula_witch, I have an interesting writing career, I have a stable Day Jobbe. I don't want to go back to cancerland. I want to keep this normal life I won back at such cost.Nobody thinks I'm going to get a return ticket to cancerland. My doctor is optimistic. My baseline health is a terrifically positive indicator. But until they've gone in and looked this Thursday and Friday, we don't know. And the Fear has developed a conjoined twin; the Doubt. In some ways, the Doubt is tougher. I can shrug the Fear off, I know it for what it is. The Doubt has a tinge of reasonableness to it which the Fear never achieved.
I grow my own monsters, thank you very much. Both in my gut and in my soul. I can slay them. And I will.
But they're still real.
| Originally published at jlake.com. |