I was going to school. I was back in a School of Communication, now as a graduate student. I received the grades of my 1st semester. All As. And a couple of days later, I received my diagnosis. A big C. The mother of God, fucking Christ, of Cs.
I still remember that morning. I stopped at the post office and mailed photos from a recent shoot to a client. A normal day. I crossed the street and walked into my doctors' office. Everything stopped, right there & then. At first I thought it would be for a few days. "You have to see an oncologist." Not a normal day, I guess. Ok, I will be out for a few weeks. I won't take classes this summer. I'll take off work for sometime. Oh, dammed innocence!
As treatment started, going to work, or going to school, or holding a camera became abstract concepts, like the days of the week. Do you know those letters on a calendar? It meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. One day at a time, became one second at a time. Breath in. Breath out. I could maybe grasp seasons of the year. It was spring, then. I remember.
Now, little by little, the shock of treatment is easing off. I could easily call it a shock treatment, because in my mind it's all a blur. Chemotherapy. Mastectomy. It could be all one word chemotherapymastectomy. It happened. I'm looking over my shoulder and it's staying behind. In 3 weeks I'm going back to work. Part-time. So, 6 months latter I get some routine back. Kinda. Let's call it: a part-time routine.
Where did spring, summer, fall go? Yeah. I have no idea. But most importantly is where will I go? Because if what I do with my routine doesn't change much, the reasons why I do things will never be the same. So why go back to school? A Master degree will give me some validation, don't you think? One more diploma, that together with the other two degrees, I can wave for attention. Tubes floating up in the air. Look at me as I'm juggling it!
Yeah, I am questioning a lot. I am questioning everything. I am not sure of all those things I was willing to kill for, much less, the ones I was willing to die for. One thing I know. It will be winter soon. And that I won't forget.
Thoughts came after reading one paragraph: { "The most common ego identification have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious and other collective identifications. None of these is you. (...) All of these things you will have to relinquish sooner or later. Perhaps you find it hard to believe, and I am certainly not asking you to believe that your identity cannot be found in any of those things. You will know the truth of it for yourself. You will know it at the latest when you feel death approaching. Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" - and find that there is no death." } - Eckhart Tolle, The power of Now.
