Dear Tomas,
Today it has been two years since we parted ways. It might seem callous and mean, but I celebrated today. I did yoga, hiiked, went out to eat and baked a cheesecake, all to celebrate the delight of your being gone.
Remember the long road we walked together? 8 months we knew you were there that you got to just hang around and grow fatter.
But two years ago today the skillful hands of Dr. Electron K. teased you off of my Carotid body, danced delicately around my facial nerves--nerves that he said you were trying to invade--and cut you out my neck.
I wish I could say that I never looked back, but I've thought about you a lot. It took me a long time to regain my balance after you came knocking at the door. I think part of it was your timing--Could you have been any sleazier--showing up when I was pregnant?! And then because of that you just sat. so. long.
We finally got you out of there and I remember feeling so much better than I expected to part of the time, and really feeling kind of rotten the other part of the time.
Then the post-op infection came. One last hurrah. I still think of how grotesque my neck looked at the peak of the infection. Quasi-modo's hump on my neck rather than my back.
Two years. Andy's gone on deployment and returned again. He made Chief. We bought a house.
I went to Montana and met amazing, amazing women some of whom I now have the priveledge of working with. They helped me learn to tell my story--to tell the story of you without hiding from it or minimizing it.
The girls have grown and I've been here to see them do so. All they really know of you is that Mommy had a 'bump' that had to be taken care of by some doctors far away. I'm clear for all known mutations, so hopefully they'll never have to live under the shadow of something like you.
A disc herniation--a silly, common ailment that lots and lots of people suffer from took me down hard. How does it make you feel that it wasn't you Mr. Rare and Insidious Tumor that knocked me flat, but a stupid disc herniation?
I didn't feel so great about it that's for sure.
Like a lot of women dealing with the dissolving of a relationship, I have some long-term issues to overcome. Between you and that rotten disc I'm pretty angry at my body and I don't feel great about how it looks. I'm working through this and this too, I shall overcome.
But if you gave me anything, Tomas, it was the realization that this life is to be lived because you never know when you're going to hit the under-belly of the lottery odds and get the one in a million malady... Or even be tripped up and laid flat by common afflictions.
So even though I feel stuck sometimes still wading through the muck you left behind, I will live. I WILL LIVE.
I will sled down the slopes of mountains and I will walk to the summit of Goose Rock. I will sing loud in the car and dance in the living room with Lainey. I will take adventures in the mountains even when a lot of the details are unknown. I will cry. I will laugh. I will feel what I feel in the moments that I need to feel them. I will speak and tell my story. I will use my voice. I will write. I will live.
You were a slimy sonofagun, but you're gone now. And you know what? You taught me a lot. You taught me to live. You taught me to tell my story even when I feel choked by it. You taught me that I am a survivor.
Just the same? Stay gone, ok?
Me
