Deep in the Freak

The first time I ever saw the movie "Halloween" I discovered that I could be utterly freaked out.

Michael Myers (or Meyers?) was the protovillian--an entity so completely without feeling, remorse or pity that he effectively was a machine. And that movie played up his almost animal instincts to stand and stare, and yet remain effectively hidden. There are scenes in that movie that still terrify me.

I make a habit, though, of not swimming in the freak pool. I honestly don't find much use to spending my time making myself crazy with what ifs. But today, after my hospital stay, after the embolism was diagnosed, I'm having a hard time not cannonballing over and over in the deep end of freakdom.

I suppose that one problem I have with this is that my mother had a massive pulmonary embolism in the Fifties, before I was born--and the fact that she survived it was considered miraculous, and the fact that she later bore more children was considered stupefyingly ignorant. She was rightly proud of her ability to overcome, and the story of her hospitalization and recovery was something I heard frequently--and like "Halloween" some of it never failed to terrify me.

That's not a lesson for parents in how not to fuck up your kids, by the way--I'm the last person to legitimately offer parenting advice to anyone, considering how any child of mine would emerge. Let's just consider it fortunate that progeny for me will never happen.

I know that a large pulmonary embolism in 2013 is not like one from the 1950's; a lot of things that used to routinely kill us are now quite manageable, given the proper diagnosis and treatment. Heck, the survival rate of most cancers is moving upwards, some types galloping, some types inching, but most are progressing.

However, I can't quite unhook my float from the parade celebrating National Freak Out Day...not quite yet.

I surmise because of this how much I haven't processed of my life in the last 5 months--how much has simply gone by with me marching through the snow of circumstance and facing the howling blizzard of cancer with my head down and gamely moving forward.

I've spent a lot of time doing and not much time thinking--true, occasionally I blow up and yell, and usually at Scott, who is at hand and has to listen to this rant: unfair, incredible, painful, difficult, ridiculous, I don't want to live like this, I don't want to look like this, I don't want to be this thing.

I apologize and get over those things because the truth is I do want to live, I'm not overly concerned with my looks, and I don't think I'm a thing--but I do believe this is unfair and I have never just faced the fact that I believe so, even if there's nothing to be done about it. Yes, it just is.

This embolism? un-fucking-fair. I really have and are continuing to have enough problems. I spit snot out of my mouth because there's nowhere for it go, my skin is burnt where radiation touches me, I wake up 20 times a night, I drool where I never did before, my neck fissures and seeps pus crap at will. People stare at me, gawk, and I can't tell them to put their fucking eyeballs back into their dumb heads.

I never was much of a swimmer, and even though Scorpio is a water sign, I don't really like getting wet. So there has to be other answers for why my breaststroke is so killer in this contained little ocean of freak-me, and maybe I see why I'm here. If recognition is the first step to healing, then hopefully I'll be getting out and drying off soon.