Dancing with the Dragons

The oth­er was The Fault in Our Stars.

I devoured John Green’s mas­ter­piece the way you hug a friend after a long time apart. It was that feel­ing as if the book had been writ­ten just for me, and I held on page after page, again and again.

It wasn’t writ­ten just for me in the sub­ject mat­ter, and it wasn’t writ­ten for me in the age range.

(I often think I can still blend in with the “young” crowd…until I actu­al­ly spend time with them. Mar­ried. In bed at 9:00. Decid­ed­ly non-angsty. In my 30’s?)

Any­way.

The book is often labeled as a teen dra­ma about two kids with can­cer, and yes, that is the sub­ject matter.

But it’s not the point of the book. At least not to me.

The book is about love, and life, and the true gift that it is to live, and breathe, and walk this beau­ti­ful world for as long as we are able.

John Green’s lan­guage is pure, and hon­est and so very raw. 

These words, my friends, are so very, painful­ly, true.

Pain demands to be felt. You can­not out run it, nor can you pre­tend it’s not there.

You can try, sure, we’ve all tried to ignore moments of pain. But soon­er or lat­er, pain comes bang­ing down your door and over­stays its wel­come, like the most obliv­i­ous house­guest of all time.

A few months ago, my neu­rol­o­gist ordered a whole long litany of neu­ro­log­i­cal and cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing tests. As soon as I fin­ished them, I felt defeat­ed. They had been hard — even hard­er then I imag­ined when my doc­tor ini­tial­ly asked about my mem­o­ry, atten­tion, and processing.

But it’s one thing to know these things in your head. It’s one thing to find your phone in your shoe rack, and open 18 win­dows in your brows­er in 10 min­utes, and for­get the names of peo­ple you have known for years. You think that you are just stressed and tired, and maybe this is just what hap­pens in your 30’s? 

Maybe every­one switch­es the begin­ning of words all the tamn dime?

It’s quite anoth­er to see it on paper.

My neu­rol­o­gist didn’t even want to show me the results. 

My brain may not be in con­tention for a Rhodes Schol­ar­ship any­time soon, but I under­stood enough to know that she wasn’t hid­ing the paper because my results were top-of-the-charts awesome.

At first I thought that maybe I had been like this my entire life, and that I’d been adapt­ing all of this time. I think humans have an incred­i­ble capac­i­ty to adapt to life as they know it, and for a fleet­ing moment I thought that maybe that was true for me. So my pro­cess­ing wasn’t the best…maybe that’s why I’m more right brained anyway!

Instead of smil­ing, and indulging me in some sort of art and music relat­ed delight, my neu­rol­o­gist sat down in the chair beside me.

She took my hand, and gen­tly sighed.

“No hon­ey, with scores like these, you wouldn’t have grad­u­at­ed from college.”

Oh.

I’m sure she said oth­er things too, but my less-than-fan­tas­ti­cal­ly-func­tion­al mind went com­plete­ly blank.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and wager a good guess that my brain func­tion­ing show­ing steady decline is prob­a­bly not some­thing I should use to beef up my resume.

Exten­sive knowl­edge of med­ical test­ing? Yes.

Sig­nif­i­cant decline in cog­ni­tive func­tion? Ixnay.

To be hon­est, my first emo­tion was embar­rass­ment. Truth be told, I was mortified. 

How can I admit this to my friends and fam­i­ly? They are all smart, inven­tive, and dri­ven individuals…how will I fit in? 

How can I tell my dear, sweet hus­band that while our friends are hav­ing babies and climb­ing moun­tains, I recent­ly had to pull a piece of mail out of the recy­cling bin to remem­ber our house number?

It was as if an imag­i­nary force (also known as the mys­te­ri­ous min­ions that reside with­in the con­fines of my body) had tak­en me by the invis­i­ble sus­penders, and thrown me like a shot put away from my fam­i­ly and friends. As if the iso­la­tion that was already there had been dou­bled, in a mat­ter of seconds. 

So I did my best to stuff it down. To push it into the far con­fines of my soul and con­tin­ue on. Just because my dai­ly exis­tence close­ly resem­bled herd­ing a lit­ter of kit­tens, didn’t mean any­thing had to change, right?

Make that herd­ing a lit­ter of kit­tens with a seri­ous­ly intense case of fleas.

Any­way.

This didn’t have to hurt. It shouldn’t hurt.

(I real­ly do think the word “should” needs to be delet­ed from our vocab­u­lar­ies. It gets you nowhere but men­tal angst…just saying.)

But the thing about pain…it demands to be felt.

It won’t take no for an answer. It has all the per­sis­tence of a spi­der build­ing its web, and none of Charlotte’s charm.

So I begrudg­ing­ly felt it. I opened my doors and let it wash over me in strange, emo­tion­al waves. And after awhile, I expect­ed the waves to slow down, and maybe to stop, but like a bad case of poi­son ivy, it just would­n’t go away. 

I felt it, I’m feel­ing it…and no mat­ter how many times I stamp its pass­port, it won’t leave customs.

So I’ve been noodling, as I do, for quite some time.

And today in my yoga class, in the mid­dle of a bal­ance pose (flamin­go, to be exact), my teacher men­tioned some­thing about fear.

I believe it was in ref­er­ence to the fear of falling…but in that moment it hit me like a ton of bricks.

I am not just in pain. I am over­come with pure, hon­est, extra­or­di­nar­i­ly raw fear.

Huh.

Per­haps I should stand in flamin­go pose more often.

My brain is in decline, and I’m terrified.

…

There, I said it. 

It’s out there.

I’m still in one piece.

And to be hon­est? I feel better.

There’s some­thing about giv­ing your fear a voice that is odd­ly cathartic.

I think fear can be help­ful, and reveal­ing, and alto­geth­er healthy for a time…but I also think ulti­mate­ly we get to decide whether we will wear our fear like an exot­ic acces­so­ry, or a soak­ing wet sweatsuit.

And we all know, I pre­fer the bedazzlement.

I am scared, yes.

But I will not let my fear define me, nor will I let it chase me into a rab­bit hole of darkness.

My mind may be going, but my heart and my spir­it are not, and I have a lot more liv­ing and laugh­ing and lov­ing to do on this beau­ti­ful planet.

So guess what, world?

I’m scared.

But stored up fears do not strength­en us, they only break us down, and I have many more adven­tures that lie ahead.

I said it.

It’s out there.

I’m danc­ing with the drag­ons, and I’m going to be okay.