Still here, just busy

…and trying to work through nausea, headaches, and no brain. This is the last week of the term, and I have more to do than I will be able to do. But then I’m going to the Ranch for at least a week, and I’ll spend the rest of December and January catching up.

I got a flicker of amazing news, earlier in the week. Someone said to me that when we met, two years ago, I seemed very fragile. (I damn sure was.) He said he doesn’t see that in me now.

I worked for that. Not the feedback from him—which was a wonderful surprise (that surprises no one else). I worked to overcome woundedness, to be less reactive, to become whole. A few close friends, and one particular teacher, know how hard I worked it. Then cancer came, and did the rest.

I don’t ever, ever, ever want to get cancer again. But I am not sorry that I had it. Cancer gave me more than it took.

I was working these things. But I would not be where I am—I would not be who I am—without these past seven months. I would not have the soul that I have now. I would not have this deep strength.

To hear him say that I’ve lost my fragility, and to hear others echo, “well yeah it’s obvious,” makes it real. I’m not saying that my worth is on them. But it means that what I see and feel and know is beyond my own head, and beyond my safest relationships. This is who I am in the world now.

A couple of people told me today, that I looked like I was healing. They know better than to assume that since I look great, I must feel better as well. I told them, “I am. It’s just not physical.”

That is worth a stage II melanoma. It’s worth a surgery that only marked me if you know where you’re looking. It’s worth actively making myself sick for a year. It’s worth even the knowledge that I won’t be considered clear until 2013, and I’ll have to be very careful about my health insurance until we have a system change.

I’m thankful every day that it was only a stage II. Cancer scared me enough, to teach me how to live. And it was not lethal.

But it gave me what I needed.