Second Time Through

So it's been almost six weeks since I completed my chemotherapy treatment and was told the cancer is gone. It was June 25th that I was given this great news and on that day I was incredibly happy. But then the days that followed were very different. I found myself feeling down & depressed.

Lately, when people stop me and ask how I'm doing, and I say "I'm ok," some folks are surprised, which is certainly understandable. The most accurate way I've found to describe how is feel is to imagine what it might have been like to have been rescued from the Titanic as it was sinking, delivered safely to shore and told to "Take care" & "Good luck." "Now it's back to business." So I stare at the people in the world as they go through their daily routines, wondering where I begin. Like if someone you love has passed away and you watch people who casually stroll down the street and enjoy their day, and you wonder, "How can they be so happy when I'm in so much pain?" It's not logical, but it's not uncommon either.

So, this second time through I'm not so quick to jump for joy. And in the moments I do feel somewhat confident about my health, I look at what's happened in my life in the last couple of years and I hear, "We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming." That program being the other pains in my life which I couldn't give a whole lot of attention to, because I was too busy trying to escape death for a second time.

It's not like other people don't have it worse than me. There's always someone who has it worse. I see people now and again and think to myself, I'll take what I've got because I sure as hell don't want what they've got. And yet, each person's hardest thing, is our hardest thing.

Music was one of the key pieces that lifted my spirits throughout my treatment and before that, it lifted me through the pain of my wife's sudden departure. But lately, I feel like I'm on a short hiatus from the performance part of music. I think we'll do a show in September up in the Prison City. Perhaps by then I'll feel somewhat myself. And in the mean time I still write what ever songs show up for me. Not exactly the happiest songs in the world. But I did recently write an upbeat song. And it's just about done. It just happens to be a sad upbeat song. Ha-ha! One step at a time I guess. And in the interim, I'm going to wander aimlessly for a while. Everything still seems a bit strange to me.