my heart.

i feel a little broken today. mostly because i finished this book yesterday and oddly enough watched an interview on nightline with michelle williams about heath ledgers death (weird i know. as they are celebrities). the book is called the middle place. its about a women who is married and has two young daughters. its her journey of breast cancer. and in the middle of her own diagnosis, her father is diagnosed with cancer as well. although it was sad in parts. it did help me begin to process cancer. and what is means and what is does not mean. and that its okay to feel the way i do because someone else with cancer has felt that way too. and in the interview how everything in life can change in a mere instant. not something i recommend obsessing about as it could cripple your life. and the joy in it. to live in such fear. so its not that it made me scared. it reminded me that its true. and part of me is beginning to mourn the loss of the past five months. for what i thought they would look like. and feel like. and what would happen. and how it looked terribly different than i ever imagined. and as you know. if you read this blog. i am joyful. i trust God. i know He is using our cancer. but at the same time i think its okay and normal and possibly therapeutic to feel sad. and angry. and to really begin to talk about the parts of my heart that hold lots of pain. and simply deep deep sadness over cancer and what it does to you and how it changes you. forever. that this morning for example. life with no cancer would mean ava would eat her banana nut cheerios in her highchair. justin would make coffee. and we could talk in the kitchen about what we had going on today. and if ava slept through the night...

and all that is true but this conversation was added. today justin said...i think its time. time to shave your head. to which i respond...what? really? you think? why? i mean i am almost done? to which he says...babe, you told me to tell you when it was time. to which i say...i hate you (but i don't really. and i told him that after i said it). to which he said...do you really want to wait until you only have three hairs left? i laugh. because that is funny...but maybe i do. we go back and forth. i even try my wig on for the first time. i hate it. he says i look beautiful and that i would no matter what. to which i say...thank you. but come on i hope i look better with hair. and because i am in denial and will continue to be i say...babe, everyone tells me it looks good and they are surprised i still even have some hair (but as i type this i am thinking...possibly everyone who has said this is lying). so he says...okay. don't shave it then. so we/i opt out of shaving for today and instead use my trusty old hats.

what is interesting to me is that last night before bed. for the first time in a while. like a while while. i took out my handheld mirror and checked the back of my head out in the mirror. since i do not check it out that often i was a bit shocked at what i saw. wow. getting pretty thin. but put the mirror away and went to bed. and then we had the conversation we had this morning.

so that is was what our conversation over breakfast looked like. and its fine. because life never turns out exactly the way we thought or imagined. at least not every detail. and that is okay. life is hard sometimes. but for today. or maybe the past week or so i starting to process cancer a bit more. maybe something that is impossible to do right in the middle of it all. i do not think you can really. and what i feel in my soul is so hard to articulate. because its bigger than just sadness or anger. its beginning to realize that in many ways i am not who i was before. but also still very much the same. can the two exist? i think so. and i sometimes think i am supposed to come to some conclusion or answer about it all. all that is going on inside my heart and head. but i know i don't. not yet at least. and maybe not ever. it will simply be a new chapter in my life. one that i did not think i would ever need to include. but i do.