i'm a blogger in the same way i'm a runner...


...which is to say, i am not much of either.

i wonder, once the girls come to this place and start to take it all in, if the massive lapses in posts in 2012 will be every bit or more haunting than anything they read before.

after the move and after starting therapy, it's been hard to motivate myself to do much of anything other than swim, enjoy the house, enjoy the family, enjoy a few of my friends, and put whatever is left into my job.

starting cycle three this week, this much is clear. chemo sucks, man. no other way to slice it.

i've tried to use and emphasize perspective during my whiny moments, but it doesn't help a whole lot outside of those brief periods. "it could be worse". sure, man. it could. i have a friend at church that has it worse. his cancer is worse. his treatment is worse. i get it. and i hate it, more than anything, for him.

but he's not me. and i'm not him.

i get it, but i can't actually get it, and i so i have to come back to me.

my fucking feet are peeling, man. what the fuck is up with that? i put pictures of them up on facebook over the weekend, and my brother in law texted me and told me that i looked like i had run a marathon barefooted.

he also told me to keep my feet off camera, which i thought was funny. i've gotten a lot of "i've never seen feet on facebook" feedback. my thought has been, yeah, well, i have never had cancer that led to treatment that led to this kind of pain that led to my foot skin ripping away from the rest of my body. it's a selfish thought. it was a selfish act. i told someone the other day that i put them up in a dark moment. i wanted folks to see what cancer and treatment was doing to me. people tell me all the time that they are thinking about me and praying for me, and i know those comments are genuine. in my dark moments, though, i think, "no you aren't. it sounds good to say, but you don't know even know what you're praying for." i put the pictures up so people could see and know what they were praying for, so people could see what cancer and treatment was doing to me, so they could understand that when i see them and smile at church and at work and on the street, it's an act. that i am hurting. and tired. and angry. and sad. that i am selfish and wish that it was 2008 again, when none of this shit had happened yet, experiencing the blissful ignorance away from what was to come.

it's hard line to balance. i haven't figured out how to do it yet. i can't go around being miserable all the time. every time someone asks me "how are you doing?", i can't say, "shitty. you?" even if that's how i feel. i want to. i want to tell the whole world to stop asking. i want to accuse them of not really caring. of never calling. of never emailing. even if they do all of those things.

it's one of the reasons i haven't come here much this year. as much as no one else wants to hear me whine, i don't want to actively hear it either. i'd rather take the "if someone is on chemo and never complains about it, are they really on chemo?" approach. if i don't talk about it. if i don't write about it, it doesn't feel so bad. i can pretend my way through the day, and i can get to the next one.

it's ridiculous and disheartening that june has been barely mentioned on this, the girls' blog. there hasn't been the first "june and me" post and i haven't talked about the other girls in months.

i can't get away from myself, and i can't get away from chemo as much as i want to.

and so, i guess i have to keep wanting to and hope the want eventually outweighs the excuses. the want to talk about what a beautiful and perfect little baby june has been. the want to think about and process both of my older girls riding the same bus to the (relatively) same school. the want to longform-ish talk about stupid chick-fil-a and stupid guns and stupid politics and stupid "my" obama is going to destroy "your" romney in november and stupid football.

i'll keep wanting.