My reflections over the past nine days have been planned before I started writing them, albeit loosely. It hasn’t been a hugely structured process, and i haven’t really been editing, but perhaps that’s why it has been somewhat exacting, and I’ve been going to sleep too late.
So for today, I’m switching up my process, and doing a timed burst of writing. If I have ever taught you, or worked with you, you will be familiar with the process. I had my themes figured out earlier. At the end of this paragraph, I’ll set a timer for 20 minutes, and type without pausing except to correct egregious typos. This website is primarily meant to show a bit of what I can do with words (and education) so you can decide to hire me. I don’t know that this series does a great job of that, but if you’re on this ride with me, particularly if you’ve been reading the earlier posts, thank you. It is nourishing to a degree you cannot know.
*timer starts here*
For context, I’m exhausted. For context, it’s a strange time of year. For context I’m not even at home, which, for the moment, is Chennai. I came to Bangalore for what was meant to be a week, which became two. The purpose of my visit was to spend time with a friend who’d moved here. It has become a trip to spend time with two friends, a cousin, a nephew, and reset.
If you’ve seen Howl’s Moving Castle, there’s that scene where Calcifer, the fire demon, has stopped powering the castle, so it’s falling apart, but it’s still moving, like it hasn’t figured out that it can stop, that it needs to stop, that it has actually already stopped. I’m not sure why that’s the image I went with, there were definitely easier ones, more accessible ones. But if you haven’t seen Howl’s Moving Castle, please do. And then please talk to me about it. It’s also a book. But that’s besides the point.
I’ve been running on momentum, and I need to fix several things about how I’m operating, the biggest one being my sleep. This is not exactly a new problem for me. It feels like I’ve had issues with sleep for as long as I can remember. I’m either sleeping too much, or not enough, or not at the right time. I figured out in college that the recommended eight hours is just not enough for me. I suppose the mid to severe depression I was navigating had something to do with that. After college, I was working full time, (over time really) in an elementary school. My work day began at 7:45, and sometimes ended as late as 6:00. I came home wiped. I couldn’t stay up much past 11, even if I tried. I had the whole elaborate series of alarms, beginning from an hour before i had to wake up. I had a different alarm tone for each one, with irregular intervals, which I kept changing.
And then there was cancer. The surgery, and chemo, and recovering from chemo. I had three rounds of chemo. Each round took three weeks. The first week, I was checked into the hospital, and had chemotherapy drugs flowing into my veins for 6 or 7 hours a day. And then I had two weeks at home to recover, somewhat, before going back to the hospital.
I took books and paint and music to the hospital, but I didn’t have the energy to use any of it. I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t move my arm (and then later my neck) because the IV line would get blocked otherwise. It was a miserable time, to say the least, for me, and the people who were caring for me didn’t have it much better.
I couldn’t sleep, so I couldn’t lie down properly, and my whole body was in pain. I had assumed there would be one pillow in the hospital, so I took another one from home. The nurses said we couldn’t use it. Chemotherapy has you immunocompromised so you can’t risk a pillow that hasn’t been sanitized.
Today, I’m grateful for pillows. When I tried to talk her into letting me keep the pillow I’d brought with me, the head nurse said “We have pillows, we’ll give you as many as you want. But not that one.” This was not a tough sell. I was given a throne of pillows - Two or three for my back, depending on the day, one under each arm, and one under my knees. To be clear, the whole thing was miserable, but the pillows were nice. In the most sincere, rich sense of the word, the pillows were nice. I’m still excessive with my use of pillows, and I’m grateful that since cancer, I’ve always shared homes with people who get it, and give me extra pillows. It feels like a part of what my brother calls a ‘soft life.' “That’s all I want for all of us.” he says. I’ve begun listening to my brother’s wisdom a lot these past few years, and quoting him to my friends. I don’t skimp on pillows anymore.
