Now, I love Florence + the Machine. Love. Adore. Will stop dead in my tracks if she comes on the radio or playlist. But this new one, Kraken, hit me right in the chest with the first line: "Sometimes my body seems so alien to me..."
Anyone that has had cancer treatment can relate, but I think when your treatment involves an amputation like a double mastectomy, it makes that feeling more vivid. My clothes don't fit like they did. I can't trust that I can put things away in a high cupboard or even do things like brush my teeth. My hair was growing back with luscious curls and then when I started on the next to the last phase, Verzenio, it became thin again.
"...so when your hand reached out I just pushed it farther down..."
I've reached the point where I'm starting to be okay with me and I'm finding the tribe that buoyed me up during active treatment has gone back to their regular lives...and while that is okay, I mean if course it is, I do feel invisible. A lot. To the point that Florence saves me yet again:
(No, Tony, I am not making the turn into writing horror...)
This is my latest hyperfixation, partially because he is from West Yorks and his accent makes me homesick but also because he was so close with Ozzy. That makes someone A-OK in my book. But this song took my breath away a little bit, and then more when he said it was for nurses. I remember hearing him say in an interview that it was about his grandparents. For me...it's about me. I'm in a phase right now where the differences Eugene left in me are in the forefront. Not just the weirdly curly hair or the pain in my joints, but the brain fog and the fatigue and everything left by the efforts to yeet Eugene. The lines:
If I was to talk about the words
They would hurt, they would hurt
So if you were to ask about the pain
I would lie, I would lie
To fix my mind, I need time
I want me back, but I am forced to get to know this new me...and I don't always like her. Don't worry...I will make peace with her, it's just taking a longer time than I'd thought.
Enjoy. The lyrics are in TEENY captions on the screen.
I've recently started listening to a playlist I call Music Therapy after seeing loads of fellow Gen X folks financing to "our" music on the clock app. This one came on and it struck me that it was spot on for the past two years of cancer treatment for me. The title, "Kyrie Eleison" which means "Lord Have Mercy" is more than a prayer to God in the Christian tradition, to me anyway. In my mind, it is a general call for help... and it worked for me during those years. I had a tribe, a found family, in the form of a private social media group called "Yeeting Eugene," and those folks pulled me along on days I couldn't do it myself. So here is my reminder to ask for help... and mercy. I hope it helps you too. (The video has captions for the lyrics.)
Today's Music Monday is a little bit about my current WIP and the FMC, but also a lot about me and my current situation. I was listening to it the other day and just reveling in the lyrics as I often do with Taylor Swift's music, but then I saw the video. All those past iterations of her arguing at the end made me think - I am not the same person I was this time last year when Eugene was discovered to be stage III breast cancer and not just a recurrence of my cyst from a decade ago. I've heard Hoda Kotb say that she has two lives now, pre and post breast cancer and that's very true.
It isn't just about the ways in which I look different now, post-chemo/radiation/bilateral mastectomy. Those things are surface level, really. The change that is sticking and that I'm thinking a lot about today is the change that happens to the me that was and the me that is. In early days, I just wanted to be through all the treatment, "so I can get back to my life." That, at the time, meant back to my then normal - hybrid remote work for the DayJob™️, appearance at the Georgia Renaissance Festival with Ciaragh, working all kinds of fandom conventions and other faires to sign my books...getting on with working toward being a full time author. Planning for our move abroad. Hanging out as much as I can with my US based friends before that move happens.
That stuff belonged to who I was before. Some of it has transitioned with me: the friends, the book signings on a smaller scale, the working toward being a full time author, and the DayJob™️ have all remained, just in different guises and on changed levels. But the renaissance festival appearances with the Hounds of East Fairhaven are in limbo at present - Ciaragh's death from lymphoma means I no longer have a rennie hound. The move abroad has been put off for a bit. Hanging out with the friends as much as possible has become keeping in touch as best I can and hanging out once in awhile.
But it's all okay. Eugene...look what you made me do. I am now worth the changes, even though they were awful in a lot of places. Welcome to the second half of my life.
So I survived the last minute surgery and then some. I'm back to progressing fairly normally, though there has been a bit of a shift in the timeline...an I'm not even mad at it, as the kids say. I've been told that I have a positive outlook and if I do, it's because of my tribe. My found family. My people. It's taken me 50+ years, but I have a group carefully cultivated that lifts me up and keeps me moving forward. Negativity? Nope. Criticism? Can't use it. Things I need to hear said with all love? This is what I have been looking for my whole life and what I have now, and I can only hope that you can find them too. Is it any wonder so many of my books have such strong found family vibes? Write what you know, they say. Write what you know.
