I did the Google thing and stumbled upon Jeri-Lynn Johnson’s book 52 Things to Do to Make Someone Happy. What attracted me was not the Mother Teresa-factor to the title but the fact that she’s made the out-of-print book available online, presumably so people like me and you can actually make use of it instead of merely clicking like on Facebook.
So I shall be a noble knight and pay tribute to this lovely gesture, and maybe warm a couple of hearts a few degrees in the process.
I joined the Day Zero Project just under a month ago, and having fun (or just any) goals to strive for has gone a looong way towards putting a smile in my step. So much, actually, that I ended up listing about a hundred more than the original 101 Things in 1001 Days called for.
Some of them got bumped off and onto a 52 Things in 52 Weeks list to make things more manageable and reachable (some damn fine key words right there).
Some are super simple, while others will be major ball-breakers until I get to tick them off and feel all ‘Take that, sucker!’ Most importantly, most of them are in one way or another fun, playful or nice-to-do. And doing the hokey pokey’s what it’s all about. So for the next 52 weeks, in no apparent order, I’ll be tackling these babies:
‘Course this’d be noble too…
Background:
Pregnant Babycat likes playing (perhaps pregnant) babymice to death, then leaves them in the lounge uneaten.
Incident:
Babycat attempts a jump through the window, guts-hanging-out dead mouse in tow. Clearly she’s added scavenger to her repertoire. Frantic runaround ensues to make sure all doors and windows are inaccessible to this hyena and her find.
Young Soul Wisdom:
“She was just bringing us a gift, Mom. And cats are different from people; they don’t like the same things humans do. Don’t be mad at her. She does this because she loves us. Be grateful.”
The sage 7yo thinks for a second…
“…but I don’t want her to come inside right now either.”
Dharma the Cat
Some days are other-side-of-the-sky days. Was it something you smoked? Or did the world just turn against you overnight?
Humanness being what it is, it gets on the way of all that Buddha breathing and says – after a great long while of saying silent ‘Namaste’s‘ to all them fools – FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE. And then the trouble starts!
One day, I discovered a whole other world as I fell through the closet (having been kicked so my persecutor could lock me in, no doubt). Though it might have taken more than just that one day. And the brave new frontier came at my in sections, like I was doing the Macarena and could shake just one limb at a time.
Step 1
Start saying the Big F.Y. silently, in your head, instead of grabbing the loudspeaker so you can boom it over the intercom (what can I say, shopping makes me maaaaad).
The benefit: you won’t be considered such a fool when you reach step 2.
The requirement: you need to believe in step 2 before you’ve even seen it. If you’re religious, this should be apple pie.
Step 2
Realise you’re the idiot.
“Oh what is life but a play orchestrated by thine own mind.”
– Me (19 April 1986 – 2 August 2013 – so far)
The benefit: Buddha Breath comes back to hug you, saying not a bad word about you kicking it in the guts (Buddha Breath is like that).
The requirement: letting go of that little naggin’ ego-animal clawing at your aorta.
Surgerise that thinking cap!
Image courtesy of LifePositive.com, a site that houses a wealth of info for personal growth or, as I like to say, ‘Oh come one, change already!’
See, lemme explain. And nope, no wishy-washy good vibes-bad vibes talk. This is simple arithmetic. Which I’m qualified to talk about on the grounds that I wrote that word without using spell checker.
Sum 1:
1 car (yours)
+ 20/47/119/308 irate cars you encountered on the road this morning
x how many cars you’ve passed since you started driving illegally
Sum 2
1/2/7 crazy kids (yours)
+ 8760 hours a year
x how many years they’ve been alive
Sum 3:
[Amount of colleagues] looking the other way
x times you’ve gossiped together
x drunk incidences
– PMS incidents
– hangovers from said Bacchus indulgences
Sum 5:
Cashiers: the friendly ones are always friendly; the rest are always acting like you stole their shoes
Sum 6:
Friends: up x down x up x down x up (which is why you still call them ‘friend’)
Sum 7:
Life partners slash husbands slash boyfriends slash anything you might or might not have had sex with in the last six months: there’s ‘OMG I’m gonna cum’ days and ‘You’re the biggest pig [of course knowing which words we *really* use – or want to use – here] I’ve ever met’ days (unless you work in maximum security or customer service, in which case I suggest you keep things in perspective)…and scientists are still busy working on the secret of how to tip the scales from the one end to the other.
So what’s the common denominator between having many frequent encounters in relative normality and being hit by the Freak of Bitchiness outta the blue…? DWYMD (Do What Your Mother Did). Ask, “What did you do to deserve this?” Because the victim card isn’t going to fly. I find that mostly works in the emergency ward and not much else…not if Love Joy Health Happiness Sparkle and all the other capital letters are your end goal. This is were that big word responsibility comes in.
Because as per my excellent maths lesson (which, if you didn’t understand it, is because I clearly have advanced numerical-genius skills), you are what binds all these people and experiences to you. It’s difficult accepting the fact that you are the cause of everything that happens in your life if you’re doing the Running Away from Awareness sport.
But ultimately you’re going to come back to this realisation and it’ll bite you in the ass when you remember that I was right and you chose not to listen. Because I myself have been bitten, and even though it was by the Hawaiians that doesn’t mean it stung any less. They have this super long word that, thankfully, I’ve never tried pronouncing in decent company. Ho’oponopono. You can google it as an excuse to not do the dishes. The long and short of it is that life is in the mind, with its good and its bad, its bold and its beautiful. There is no blame “out there”. There is only blame inside that little person of yours. But there’s also love there, light, forgiveness and power.
Exactly like Buddha Breath has been whispering in my ear all along.
Image courtesy of LiveintheGrey.com, an excellent website for all things grey matter.
Late last night, three weeks into my diagnosis, the brave face gave way. It had to. I was alone and in miserable pain. I’d just discovered a lump in my breast (my cancer of choice being ovarian); that after many weeks of intermittent pains in the chest area, while the literature reassured me that if it was sore, it probably wasn’t a cancerous problem. Sitting in bed reading to my son after a day of futile “sleep therapy”, I found that I could barely move my arm so great was the pain, and the shock that overrode it.
To my mind came the comment a friend had made earlier in the evening when I had told him about my diagnosis: “You’re taking it remarkably well.” And I was. I had no other choice. My partner and my best friend, the only two people I’d told at first, both thought I was going to die. I had had to be an Amazon woman in order to reassure them. But in that moment, the cancer death-wish came at me and I struggled for all I was worth between a big huge fear of death and the relief I knew would be found at the other side of all this ‘life crap’.
I recalled an old Bible saying that it’s not a fight of flesh and blood but between the light and the darkness. And it was. Did I really think I could heal my way out of a death that was, rapidly it seemed, taking over my body by hopping, skipping and jumping? A lot of dark emotions got me into this predicament in the first place. And a lot of conquering them was the only thing that was going to save me from drawing my last earthly breath.
If you’re going to be a phoenix, you have to be willing to burst into flames.
I don’t know what cancer means to you. Cancer can imply many a thing:
a) Attention
b) Sympathy
c) Special treatment
d) Care
e) Love
Let’s be frank here, shall we? This post wasn’t written for everyone. You need not identify with what I’m saying, you might hate me for being so [fill in any number of bad words], or perhaps you’ll leave me a stinky comment.
Maybe you recognise the truth of what I’m saying, much as it hurts.
Maybe it only comes to you six months down the line.
Maybe never.
And who knows, perhaps this applies to only a select few.
I don’t know – I’m no expert, cancer or otherwise. But this is my truth, and if it happens to resonate with you, then my reason for writing this post will have been justified. If you don’t like what I’m going to say, don’t read it.
Cancer is a get-out-of-jail card. Not free, of course: the price you pay is high whether it be physical, emotional or fiscal. But it’s a pass nonetheless. The biggest choice you have to make, from the onset to…well there is no real end to this particular decision, is there?…is this:
Am I victim?
Am I victor?
Warning: Most people will (want to) treat you as a victim. I know I did, many years ago before I had the sort of sense I do now. You’d hear about one of the “poor cancer victims” in your life and your heart would overflow with pity. It usually would be “the last person something like this should ever happen to!”
Double warning: Being treated as a victim will feel really good.
‘Oh life! How cruel thy be! On top of it all, you give me *this*?!
Bring on those damn get well soon cards and pray hard for me now, hear?’
Some of us will be all Sleeping Beauty, falling asleep until the prince (of death) wakes (picks) us up.
Others will be little Rapunzels: maybe we’re locked up in a castle, but we sure as damn can let our hair down to help save the day. “Just look at her! How well she handles this! Such a strong brave one…” I’ll admit; this was one I very easily identify with whenever I let my guard down.
But, sweet lovely person…if you manifested this, dear one, then you’re going to have to be the only prince among the troop of white horses. See, this is the other side of the jailer’s card. And this is the really cool side. Because instead of little pink roses and a lovely frilly border that just oozes how everyone doesn’t want you to die’s and yes we all love you’s and now you know you’re important’s; instead of that the crazy little jailor has gone and given you The Key!
This is your chance to die. To die to the self you were, die to the old ideas that no longer serve you, the old beliefs that no longer fit, the old habits that, let’s face it, probably contributed to a lot of the messes you have found yourself in, life-threatening dis-ease aside. If you don’t share my ecstatic joy at this amazing gift given you, tell me one thing:
How long have you been trying to “change”?
For most of us in the poor ol’ West (that part of the world that always gets blame whenever anybody is trying to write something that sounds like it makes sense), we’ve done the best-ever self-help book, listen-and-relax guided meditation audio, who’s-who-of-who-is-doing-it exercise video, revolutionary armband, change-your-life water bottle runaround…thrice over. And yet, lo and behold, here we are, on the edge of the grave, all dying and shit. So darling, might not you see that since nothing else seems to have worked, this is your final little nudge? And what better motivation is there than the Grim Reaper? I tell ya, this one I have breathes down my neck real good the minute I *consider* doing / thinking / being remotely bad-vibed. So I smile ‘n laugh ‘n dance ‘n sing just to get away from the bugger. Funny in an awesome sorta way how I end up totally becoming that which I pretend-embodied, isn’t it? =)
I read about cancer being a subconscious wanting-to-die wish. And cried cried cried because bloody hell, it wasn’t subconscious with me! I *knew* I wanted to die. I mean seriously, who wants to deal with all this crap day-in day-out when every-fucking-thing seems to be an upUpUP hill battle? Alas I have those I love and who are crazy (but awfully sweet) enough to love me in return, and so I stick around and work with those parts of me that are eager to see new tomorrow’s. All the while knowing that seriously death would feel super good on me right now. After I read and cried and thought ‘There! Got your wish now, didn’t ya!’ I sat back (I might have been in the loo at the time, illustrating just how glamorous aha! moments can be) and realised ‘Oooooooh my goodness! I’m gonna die! Holy mother of all that’s good and grand, that’s wonderful! Because obviously I can’t *die*, like keg over, dead. After all, I do have a beautiful little earth-family whom I happen to care for too much to let go of just yet (and you – yes, you – know I’d have just blown right back to you and haunted the life of you for the rest of all eternity if I did).
So, conundrum: if cancer means death (go on, ask society, that’s its very definition), and I’m not going to medically die (because it’s what I decided and that’s the end of it, thank you very much), then what’s left to die? Why of course! Crappy thoughts will die! Emotional teary-eyed baggage will die! Ridiculous putrid fears will die! The me-who-wants-to-die will die!
So look me in the eye and tell me you’re bonkers enough not to realise this is a spectacularly *great* thing.
Some people get snapping armbands to mutilate their wrists with whenever they think negative thoughts or WWJD’s when they feel like judging their neighbour’s shoes. I’m going to get me a bouncy ball-room (a la Mister Magorium) to do a Quasimodo on my back whenever I get too serious.
If cancer is a gift (automatically I wanted to write ‘bitch’, but she be one of those uber-bitches who conquers her world, ok?), then its prezzies are highly individual. It brings attention, I believe, to things that were lacking in your life before. For many people, their spirituality comes to the fore, oftentimes for the first time in decades. Or if they were ho-hum before, they now become seriously committed. As for me? Joy. Silliness. Laughter. Light-heartedness.
I’ve bowed and prayer and chanted and believed since the good ol’ doc first slapped me on the bum, just about. I was the one contemplating the nature of the Universe when the rest of the crew was out playing volleyball. So I’ve had my fill, and then some. What I needed now was pure unadulterated OMG-it’s-good-to-be-here FUN.
Can’t blame the kid-me for not opting to write a letter of complaint rather than setting my healthy cells on fire, either. I was being all kinds of serious and discussion hours were closed until further notice. So the industrious little thing had to be all gung-ho and take out a hit on my life instead. Tenacious, isn’t she? 😀
So I shall write for me a tale of fun and games when all the world is telling me to sober up because “Cancer!!! This is your life we’re talking about”. Yep, indeed ’tis. I never did do a good listen when people had no idea what they were saying.
Welcome to my world. The one whose script *I’ve* start writing. It’s like a self-replicating mirror out here!
For a number of years until I was recently diagnosed with ovarian cancer, I have been battling with systemic candida. For those of you who have the fortune of not knowing what this is, let me tell you a little something about this most silent of killers. Except that, no, it’s far from noiseless. I think of it more as a sexy vixen vampire of sorts, the short-skirt tight-top kind splattered over our TV screens today drawing you in with their lure of passionate lust and desire, of immeasurable pleasures…until they sink their teeth into that neck vein of yours and suddenly you find yourself doomed for all eternity: immortal, but feeding off the blood of the shopkeeper you bought your new shoes from just this afternoon.
Candida albicans, the one I play host to, is a fungus found naturally within all our bodies. Its usual function is helping to detect and destroy other pathogenic bacteria that may enter the body (why do think fallen angels do their jobs so well?) and decomposing your body once you say adios to this here life. Put simplistically (though as the majority of doctors still choose not to recognise its existence, I shall have no fear of many medical experts judging liberties taken), once it grabs hold of you in that ‘I’ve got you now, sucker’ kind of a way, it’s you or them. Because see, they literally start eating you alive (here’s where the artistic license comes in). Seriously though, gone rogue it still keeps up the good little soldier boy act it had as a decomposer, except that, oh shoot, you’re not dead yet.
That which feeds me destroys me…
Four years before I got the Big D (or ‘Ma’am, I’m sorry to have to tell you: you have cancer’ diagnosis), I nearly died. I just curled up one late night, screaming in pain, and decided this was it: since no one should ever have to suffer like this, unexpectedly and undeservingly (I had been hard at work doing *good* deeds all day) I was giving myself over to the Eternal side. I rolled over – whether to play dead or attempt an escape from the force that was ripping my abdomen in ten, I don’t know. Of course, the sensible thing triumphed over its cowardly counterpart, and off to the emergency ward it was. Four nights in a row, as it happened. The diagnosis was the same at night as those of the doctor’s visits during sunshine hours: bladder infection. All it was, all it could be, all the medical journals would talk about. So I was shooed off home with packets of antibiotics in tow.
That started me on a quest to find The Answer. Little did I know at the time the light at the end of the tunnel was so much brighter than I’d set out for it to be. I was determined to find the answer to a health issue that was becoming more serious by the day: from delirious pain attacks, it digressed to sudden and mysterious weight gain (that would last and last and last forever and two days); hair loss – the dry lifeless tresses it had become, anyway; adult acne, a pale dull grey complexion to replace the ruddy-happy face I used to sport; fatigue so great that it became near impossible to eat without taking a death-becomes-me nap straight afterward; and memory loss so inexplicable – and substantial – that I seriously started to believe one’s IQ might have an expiry date after all.
In retrospect, these are all issues of a serious nature that should propel one to find a cure and damn well *cure it*. Seek I did. “Cures” I tried. Doctors and specialists alike were ‘baffled’. Now, in the past when I’d read that word, I took it to mean someone would be left wondering about the question at hand until they Eureka‘d! the answer and then we’d have a happy-ever-after. In my own experience, though, it simply meant plucking a diagnosis out of the air cabinet closest to you and hanging a diagnostic tag around the patient’s neck with symptoms that most closely resembles their own.
So the underactive thyroid and related meds didn’t fit, and neither did Metabolic Syndrome, the pills of which made me both incurably sleepy and a total insomniac at the same time – a sensation I suggest you try only if you’re trying to trigger a psychotic attack.
In the mean time, life went on as usual. There was stress, chaos, disorder and mayhem in my life: typical modern existence, and a little lot extra as I waged through the number of life crises thrown my way after someone seemed to have had too heavy a hand when doling out karma-spice.
Finally the big sky veil lifted, in part, and candida became part of the dialogue. Ah. Now I understood. This was what all the symptoms was pointing at! Finally! You won’t know the sweet bliss of figuring out what the hell was wrong with you all that time unless you’ve tasted its intoxicating fruits yourself.
Cucumber Quest, a comic housed at http://cucumber.gigidigi.com/
But that’s when the true battle started. And I do mean battle in the bloodiest sense of the word, for that was exactly the kind of senseless war I waged with my insides. Learning about these little thingies inside me wanting to hurt me by eating my body’s glucose and getting fermentedly drunk on it – making me just as intoxicated* in the process – was one thing. Having to go on the rampage and kill them off like the blood (or sugar) thirsty brutes they themselves were? Quite another.
* Candida is like a mean girl in high school: it creates and releases shit like ethanol (a.k.a alcohol) and acetaldehyde (the stuff hangovers are made of) in your unsuspecting bloodstream, to the utter worried confusion of your boss.
You might wonder what I’m getting at. It’s not because of a dutiful obligation to share battle scars with a fellow sick one. It’s because four years after I first experienced their siege, that night when they breached the walls of my insides and gave me the worst pain I have ever known, their empire had so extended that they gave me cancer.
And they “won” – though I shall win this cancer-thing, and the candida alongside of it – because I wouldn’t, couldn’t, fight them. For one born under the sign of the god of war, I prefer my battles when they don’t include killing any other organisms – innards and their pathogens included.
What was the solution? What was I to do instead, when there was no road ahead *but* to rid myself of these lethal invaders? I didn’t know. And so I got cancer, as yet another puzzle piece in the Great Quest to find the (bigger than I possibly imagined) Answer. And only when I heard that death was suddenly a very real possibility for this youngish mother who had an angel-boy and heaven-man to live for, did I come face to face with my salvation.
This blog is the result.
Years of self-hate, of bitter, black, festering loathing for everything I was, gave way when I voiced the realisation that I sure as hell couldn’t *hate* cells, cancerous or not, when they were my own!
Explain to me how you would be filled with dark emotion for tumor-clad ovaries that had given you the miracle of a lovelier-than-life baby just a few years ago? A pelvis, now swarming with evil-eyed foreign bodies, that made you woman? A tummy that, ineffective and downright dangerous it had become, is still keeping me alive (for who has ever seen a two-legs without a middle section to sustain them?)? I can’t hate! No, on the contrary…I am filled with so much love for these poor parts of me so sickened by the ABCs of illness.
And so I love. And so, in turn, I heal. This is my story. Yours are in here too. Let the days begin!
Castleville, a game I’ve never played and if all goes well, never will…
An Awesome Woman in Africa 