People look at you strange when you call someone friend and they know you’ve never stood in the same building with them, physically that is. How can you be close to someone yet never actually laid eyes on them or touched them? It happens and fortunately I don’t need to explain myself on this blog when I say last Friday morning as I was half asleep waiting for my dog to do his business while scrolling through Plurk I damn near stroked out. Someone. Hurt. My. Friend. I won’t go into all the things that went through my head because that’s not what this particular blog post is about… However.. Mister “You know who you are” You are damn lucky.. lucky I say..
Anywho, “The” Lord Jefferson, best friend of Strawberry Signh sent out a call to “Berry’s friends, fellow bloggers and little chickens” (I am a little chicken by the way. That’s what he calls the folks he likes. It’s what I tell myself when I get an email from him anyways) asking them to rally together to offer support to our beloved Berry in a time of need. He is asking us to share our lowest points, how we recovered and who was there to help. I am going to do my very best to formulate this in a manner that comes across clearly. I cannot make any promises but I will try my best. Also, I may ramble..
My dearest Berryface,
It goes without saying that heartbreak comes in many shapes and sizes. I’ve spent the day trying to come up with the words I would write here. Trying desperately to find a glimmer of brilliance that could be pieced together in a way that would be helpful. When our hearts are broken we always feel as if at that moment it is the worst pain ever. So, when I look over my life and try to pinpoint my “lowest point” or when my heart has been broken the worst I have several things that have hurt and all of them have been awful. I’ve lost two brothers that I loved dearly, relationships, friendships.. but.. my heart is in the mist if a break at the moment and I am quite low myself. So all I can think to share is my current state and how I am dealing with it.
You might remember, I am a few weeks away from being six months in remission from uterine cancer. When you enter into remission people congratulate you. They smile, hug you and begin to celebrate for you. Yay! they say.. You’re better! Well no, not really. Remission doesn’t mean you’re okay. It simply means you’re okay for right now. It’s not a matter of if it will come back it’s a matter of when. I promised myself that day that I’d not live in fear of the what if and I am extremely sad to report that I have broken that promise. It has pretty much consumed me but not in the manner you’d expect.
I am Celtic Pagan and to us our ability to fashion life is one of our greatest gifts from the Goddess. When I was first diagnosed all I cared about was fighting to preserve my gift. I didn’t care what I had to endure. Take my sight, take my right arm.. take anything you want from me just don’t take my ability to create life. It would have been a simple fix, no one in my life understood why I refused to simply have it removed. Instead I ignored them and went through 13 months of painful procedures and hormone therapy. The treatments worked, obviously and here I am a quarter of the way down the road to the ultimate “end goal” which is to have the go ahead to try for a baby. (Not that I even have anyone that I like enough to procreate with mind you. But whatev’s right?)
Problem is this remission situation plagues me. Different types of cancer feed off different things. Hormone therapy worked for me because my cancer “fed” off estrogen. So in essence we starved it by blocking me from producing estrogen and injecting me with insane levels of progesterone. (Side note on low points: You know you’re at one when you’re trying to decide which procedure is more important when you can only afford one right this minute; real life lolas or laser hair removal. effin hormones) So two years of clean scans docs say it’s all gone BAM go forth and procreate! But, wait.. our bodies go into over drive producing estrogen when we’re pregnant. If there’s even a tiny bit left in there that was missed it could kill me…
The basic premise here is that my Goddess has decided that it is time for me to pass into the stage of the Crone and I am fighting it. Well, holding out I’d say. I am still hoping that I am going to wake up one morning and have all the worry gone and simply just “know” that everything is fine. It isn’t going to. Anyone that is close to me knows that I spend a lot of time in my own head and that I am my own worst enemy. My heart is broken. Why has my Goddess taken my gift? I know I haven’t always been the best person or made the best choices but have I really been this awful of a person? Is there no redemption for me? Is there nothing I can do for forgiveness? This will continue to plague me until I finally accept it and just have it removed.
My cancer never breached the uterine wall so if I have it removed I will not have to worry about coming out of remission. But then I’ll never see the smile on my future husbands face when I tell him we’re pregnant. That real smile of happiness, not because he has to or because it’s the right thing to do but because he is genuinely happy that we’ve created life. I’ll never lay in the bed next to him and watch in amazement as a tiny foot or hand moves across my belly. I’ll never get to endure little alien jokes about my belly, because of course my future husband will be sarcastic. He would be married to me he would have to be to survive.
I am having a terrible time coming to terms with many things in my life, the loss of my gift, the loss of love and the loss of the life I had envisioned for myself. Most days I am okay. I can handle one of the issues surfacing, it’s only when they collide that I wig out. Thankfully I have figured out that collisions only happen when my mind is left to it’s own devices.
What has kept me sane through all of this? Work, lots of it, my Second Life kids and a very few good friends. I literally work from the time I wake up till the time I go to sleep most days. If I am working I can’t think about it and if I can’t think about it I won’t cry. Thankfully Monica Outlander and Editorial Clarity came to my rescue and enabled me to fill in a whole lot of sudden free space in my life. Miamai and Love To Decorate keep my First Life downtime very minimal. They didn’t even know that I needed them yet were placed in my path at the perfect time.
My Second Life kids have got to be some of the most patient human beings ever placed on the face of this planet. I have often looked back over the past year of my life and envisioned them speaking to each other saying, “She’s doing it again, it’s your turn.” “No, you.” “No.. YOU!” During my treatments and the height of my “crazy period” (that’s hormone crazy) I suffered the end of a long term relationship that shook me pretty badly. I am certain that it would have effected me if I weren’t jacked full of crazy juice but with my hormones all over the place I was a total basket case. My kids would listen to me cry for hours. They’d talk to me for hours. Distract me in any way they could. Text back and forth with me while I was at first life work just to keep me from crying so I could finish out my day. They even stood by me and watched me make some really awful choices, fall on my bum, pick me up and dust me off.
Those little avatars are the virtual representations of some of the kindest hearts that have ever graced the face of this planet. (minus one kid don’t get jealous okay?) They’ve never judged me, have always been there and have never once made me feel like anything less than the most loved person on the planet. And bless their hearts they still do. In Second Life they are my kids but honestly they have grown to be my closest friends. I am still far from okay with a great many things. My heart is broken for so many reasons it is almost too daunting to try to figure out which section to piece back together first. They are still there, standing beside me along with a very small handful of supportive people I trust with the pieces.
I don’t know Berry. This was supposed to give you hope and help inspire you through some great revelation I have experienced. Unfortunately the only thing I can offer is something I’m fairly certain you’re already aware of. You’re too smart not to be. The little things help. Giggles and games from my Second Life kids, hugs from Monica and Lyrical, the occasional email addressed to a chicken. Very small things create small smiles that break up the tears. I hope that one day while smiling you’ll forget to go back to crying. It’ll happen eventually. It certainly doesn’t feel like it now though, I know.
We’ve never met in the flesh, probably never will but my soul loves yours. You’re a beautiful, smart, talented, witty and funny soul. You have no idea how many times you’ve been that little smile for me. Thank you for being you! Please don’t ever change.
On Shae:
Dress: Junbug – Stellata Peasant iMaternity – Blue
Hair: Exile – Perfect Promise – Blacks
Skin & Appliers: Belleza – Shyla – Mocha
Mesh Hands: Slink – Mesh Hands – Casual
Pose 1: Eternity
Pose 2: Del May
On Myself and my Kids in the family picture:
ALL THE THINGS FROM ALL THE PLACES!
![logo miamai[2]](https://shaesixpence.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/logo-miamai2.jpg){kind=logo}
What's that over there? 