the year in fears

Well, here's my second annual year end recap. all the news you can use and plenty you can't in wildly truncated form. I started bloggrilla last year at just about this time, and the 2005 recap was, in hindsight (i almost wrote "hindi-sight"), almost heartbreakingly touchingly sweet and naive, full of hope for the brand spanking new year that was 2006, a year that, we now know, will go down in the annals (yes yes, anals...) of abigail history as the year voted most likely to be expunged from the memory as a very very dark time.

However, expunge we do not, not yet anyway. before we expunge, we must memorialize. So here it is folks, I bring you, that annus horribilus, that dark year, that era of bad feeling, that era when the dark lord lifted his hand over dead sea and withered land -- 2006!!!

January: I enter the ranks of the gainfully employed for the first time in three blissful years of scholly-stipend-supported schooling. The BF and I go see Morris Day and the Time at BAM, and shake our stiff white butts.

February: I become acquainted with life as a bona fide, 9-5 (or, lets get real, 9 - whenever) proto-attorney (proto because I'm not sworn in until ....)

March: I am sworn in as a lawyah. Other than that, absolutely nothing happens.

April: I hit my first double digit run (10 miles) on the rainiest day of the year. As fate would have it, I catch a flu which sends me to a doctor, who discovers a lump, which sends me to have a mammogram, which sends me to a surgeon, who takes a biopsy, which shows cancer, which sends me to surgery, which involves a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction....shit, wait, back up this is only April. April is the cruellest month. In April, the doctor discovers a lump and sends me for a mammogram. On the last day of april, the EX and I walk the entire length of manhattan, and I convince myself, for one brief day, that I couldn't possibly have cancer.

May: On May 1 I am diagnosed with cancer. On May 19, I undergo a double mastectomy. After Memorial day, I go back to work, and no one is the wiser (not terribly well endowed to begin with...)

June: In June, I start chemo. And I buy a wig.

July: I lose my hair. I lose my eyebrows.

August: I lose my mind. I lose my patience. I lose any self delusion that I like my job or law in general as a career.

September: The Ex and I run the komen race. It is jolly good fun! Chemo ends, and not a moment too soon.

October: The BF and I go to Austin where we run the LiveStrong Challenge, which kicks my chemo-ized butt. I realize what a toll the whole thing has taken on my body, when a simple 5K run almost cripples me for a month.

November: Back to work. It just gets better and better (oh yeaaaahhh). My hair starts to grow back COMPLETELY GREY. I get spanked at work for a job crappily done. I dis and avoid thanksgiving dinner. There have to be SOME perks to survivorship.

December: I go to 2 holiday parties at work where I make nice, try not to embarrass myself, and try to keep my by now overused and severely stretched-out wig from shifting back off my forehead like some 1930s newsboy cap. I get a nice fat cold for xmas and skip another holiday dinner. I begin the foster-ship of yet another feral feline (pix to come...). The BF and I go to see Pina Bausch at BAM. It's nice, but I fall asleep.

Oh baby. From the bottom of my toxic heart, my teflon lungs, my three brain cells, I fervently fervently fervently pray to the deities for a much less interesting, much more peaceful, much less medicated, much less, um, well, terrifying year for myself, for mcuster, for carolyn, for marjory, and for all the other cancer bloggers I've compared notes with over the months. Let's all move on now, shall we?

Mass - X

No, i am not going to dis xmas. even ms. holiday-hater has a soft spot for the whole xmas frenzy, notwithstanding the fact that all of the ads, movies, tv shows and other hoopla raise expectations of the kind of xmas that never existed, and never could exist, for me, or anyone else I know.

But really, this year has been awful, and the crappiness has not quit in honor of the season. No, i just keep getting slammed. I'm still behind at work, and completely worried that I'm gonna get fired. My hair is growing back --- completely grey. I still have no time to do anything other than work and commute and sleep. I still don't get enough sleep. I'm still anxious and depressed most of the time. And to top it all off, I just got a nasty little cold, and took so much vitamin C today that I was in constant danger of crapping my pants, which would have sealed the deal, so to speak, of my unfitness for my current job.

However, I rise to the occasion from my pit of despond, to wish all of you, all my 4.5 readers, a joyful and splendid holiday season. At the risk of giving away my xmas card scheme...i submit the below, to prove that, while there is no god, there are at least cats in the world, and that, alone, is worth the price of admission.

Abigail

in all her splendor...

ma firsss drink ina looooooooooong tahm

tonight we had the obligatory first office xmas party. I say "first" because this is the unofficial one, the one for the plebes. The mucky mucks party is later, and a bigger deal and costs money to go to, and will probably have those little sandwiches that consist of one olive on one half of a slice of cucumber with a sprig of something laid across that is guaranteed to get stuck in your teeth. Or not IN your teeth but between them. I don't know why people say "you have spinach stuck in your teeth" when they mean in between. I mean it would be horrible to have something stuck IN your teeth, you'd need all kinds of really painful dental work. But whatever. I am not to blame for the grammatical and syntactical errors of others.

At any rate, we had this party. I of course, as is my wont, because i am one of the least social people I know, headed straight for the ole merlot, and, within approximately 35 seconds of slogging through a brief on termination of parental rights for mental retardation, i was holding forth most impolitically about penile implants and the absurdity of the case load. (yes penile implants. don't worry, it was a job related discussion...)

I cannot drink, i have no tolerance for alcohol.

However, I am smarter than i used to be, because, after my one (ok, very full) plastic cup of wine, I had the grace to excuse myself, and gtfo, before i caused any more damage to my carefully cultivated "cancer sufferer" persona.

I'll have to be more careful at the mucky muck party if I go. AND I'll make sure and wear some slightly green-tinted foundation, for that "she's had a rough year" look that should save me from getting either fired or loaded down with too much work...

But i did enjoy that cuppowine tho.

saison en enfer

one night, i sat beauty on my knees
and i found her bitter
and i hurt her
(rimbaud)


well, as this annus horribilius (not to be confused with anus horribilus, and don't even get started with "rim"baud...) draws to a shuddering, cranking, lurching, spastic, drool, crap and poison infused close, it is time to reflect on what has not gone wrong this year. Ooops, wait, i think it's too soon for that. After all, we've still got 29 more days in the year, so i'd better wait before i count my cancer-free cells. At any rate, i have got to say that the past couple of weeks since the end of chemo have not been the pleasant garden path that i though i deserved to walk now, after enduring such unpleasantude, and, i have been quite surprised and displeased to find that i am now vulnerable, and seemingly doubly so, to all the nasty viscissitudes of "real" as in employed and 21st century and eastern seabord, life.

Thusly, I am tired, and crazed, and feeling a bit like a bull in the ring after the picadors get thru with him, tormented, maddened and freaked by the constant parade of sharp things coming at me, both literally (needles and surgery) and figuratively (i think i'm gonna get fired. now how does that look? a top 5% law student who can't keep a job? ah me.) I wonder, and keep wondering, what the hell went wrong? Then I remembered. All through chemo I thought, oh well, I can endure this because, after chemo i will get back to normal. Yes, it became my internal mantra. I will get back to normal. Things will get back to normal. The world will get back to normal.

Now I realize that "normal" for me is dark and dismal, I am congenitally that way. Did i really think cancer would change that? Sheesh if it did, i'd have signed up long ago. Well it didn't.

Cancer does change one thing tho. It gives one a sense of urgency that is hard to take. I mean, i've always felt a sort of internal push to keep moving, but now, when, by rights i should be settling down, now, i feel it more and more. There's so much to know, so much to do, so many things to put right, so many things to fuck up royally. And i'm on borrowed time. I mean, i've been shot, i've had pneumonia, and i've had cancer. I'm definitely on borrowed time here. I'm not supposed to even BE here.

So, no, i will not get back to normal. I will continue to burn inside for something, for some way to help, some way to love this poor world... and I'll probably continue to move towards whatever it is, stumbling, hobbling, lurching, ...till death finally does catch me...

Let's hope that's not for a while yet...