Four Weeks Later: Learning to Know What I Want & Where I Want to Go

Four weeks ago I was slightly nervous and busily nesting. I was cleaning and clearing my house, even before I was leaving for my melanoma surgery I was preparing to return.

I didn’t want to return to a messy house, I wanted to return to a warm enclave.

I wasn’t sure how long I would be away and I wasn’t exactly sure what I would encounter on my journey.

In this present moment my neck still aches a bit and right now, my right cheek, toward the bottom, is being particularly testy. It isn’t as if the pain is enough for pain killers, but it is enough to remind me.

My right cheek feels dense to my touch but there is no feeling at all within my cheek. It is as if my fingers are tracing a corpse that is my own skin.

Last night I was driving and tears stung my eyes as I wondered, “Will I ever feel a lover’s gentle touch on my cheek as he is about to kiss me ever, ever again?” Some of you may think, “Oh my gawd, you are alive. They got all the cancer, shut up and stop your adolescent fantasies.”

This imagined criticism jars me from that thinking.

I am not comfortable exposing my wound in public yet. There is still blackness there, though it is getting smaller each day. I don’t know what I expected, but there was a part of me in deep denial that this would take six months to heal. I thought I was special, somehow, and my healing would be faster.

I suppose all of us do.

We all think “I am different, I am unique, I am stronger than the rest of them,” when in actuality, we woke up in the recovery room same as everyone else, blinking our eyes and feeling slightly surprised it was over before noticing the numbness in our faces.

The birds still sing outside my window.

My son still plays video games in his room.

My daughter is still surly because I didn’t drive her to school this morning.

My eldest daughter is still in Scotland and I still miss her voice.

Nothing else has changed much. My tasks are still, primarily, the same.

I have let myself off the hook with some of my outside commitments, I am on the Theater Disabled List. My volunteer work has slowed.

I want to visit Yosemite.

I want to make more word-love art.

I want to write more stories, listen to more stories, tell more stories.

I want my loved ones to surprise me.

I want to surprise my loved ones.

I want tomorrow to be more exciting, emotionally, to me than today.

I want to be poised.

I want to love, I want to be loved, I want to see, hear, smell, taste and touch the Pacific Ocean at sunrise, the Sequoias at midnight, and visit more authors homes and graves throughout the world. I want to read and be read. I want to sing alone and with others. I want to become intimate with those people and experiences I am just beginning to come to know (including myself.)

I am here to continue. Again. And again. And again.

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© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott

This is my fourteenth  post (of 31!) for the October Ultimate Blog Challenge. Watch here for challenge posts which will include Writing Prompts, Writing Tips and General Life Tips and Essays.

  Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield. She leads Writing Camp with JJS & this Summer will be traveling throughout the US to bring this unique, fun filled creative experience to the people wherever she finds the passion & the interest.

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