I got back from Bangalore last night. I got home by 9:00, and I was asleep by 10:00pm. As I write this, it is 10:00 in the morning. That’s a momentous occasion for me. It has been at least three months, if not longer, since I was able to go to sleep and wake up so early. I didn’t even force myself to do this post last night. A big part of why I chose to do this series, the way I did, was in the hopes of kickstarting myself back into discipline. For some time now, while my competence hasn’t come into question, I haven’t been great about doing things on a routine. I get things done, but it’s been grasping at the deadline, (or pushing it) and it has needed to change.
Everything that has happened to my body in relation to cancer has been intimately tied to where I was, geographically. The way my memory, my sense of life and self, have been carved feel so marked in this way. I can’t frame my memories without pinning them to a place, and therefore a time, and episode I was going through.
I was in Minneapolis, being a young professional straight out of college. I had to leave Minneapolis, and go to Ooty, where I was wallowing in failure until I went to Vellore to deal with cancer. I went back to Ooty to heal, and was absorbed into my parents’ household again. I went to Guatemala to start over. I went back to Vellore a year later and had two surgeries that broke me. And then I went to Dhaka to heal. I went back to Guatemala, perhaps too soon, to get my life back, and then the pandemic struck and I had to reconfigure my plans.
I’ve read too much, watched too many movies and shows, and generally have too deep a sense of narrative to not give that weight. My memories of the last few years are so clearly organized around the different pieces of medical trauma and accordingly, where I was for them. I’ve spent a lot of time, this year in particular, aching about how scattered my support system is, and wanting to build one that doesn’t depend entirely on screens. I know I need to invest in people and relationships, but it’s exhausting to even contemplate sometimes, considering how frequently and thoroughly I have had to leave them.
But it’s that time of year again, and I’m slightly overdue for my next round of check-ups. The lasting transformation with cancer, for me, has been that my sense of my body and the world around it, is steeped in a lens of fear. I’m afraid of the terrible things my body will have done to itself since my last check up. I’m afraid of what I’ll have to go through to get it fixed, and all that the people who care for me will have to go through. I’m horrified that all I’ll have to go through to get it fixed won’t be worth it. The worst part is that even if everything is fine, I’ll be back here, a year down the line, dreading everything about the medical industry.
My veins are still damaged, and even having a tiny bit of blood drawn is an emotional and physical ordeal. It takes the technician ages to find a viable vein in my arm, and if they do, it doesn’t give them enough blood. So they have to use this other type of needle, called a butterfly, which they stick into the back of my hand, and it always hurts. I always start there, telling them they’ll need to use a butterfly. And they say they’ll try the regular way, and I get hopeful for a moment, and then I feel silly.
Today I’m grateful to travel. I’m grateful that I have the means to travel, and the mindset, I suppose. I’m grateful that I’ve had places to go to, where I’m an anonymous stranger, and places where I am received with love and familiarity. Perhaps, above all I’m grateful that I’ve been able to leave and start over. In the last four years, I’ve had more opportunities to reinvent myself than many people get in their lifetimes. I don’t know that I’ve been deserving of those opportunities, or that I’ve made the best use of them.
It’s been deeply draining to pack my life into a couple of suitcases, and bags as often as I have. There’s the ache of knowing that I’m never going back, properly, and that I’m going to have to start over wherever I end up with people, and routines, but also little things, like my mugs, and how I can have my earrings set up. Exhausting and heart breaking as it is to go through the process of forming connections and attachments, at the core of my being, I know that I’ll find people, and new mugs, and that’ll have to be enough.
