January 1, 2011
It pulses pain in a box laid up in a closet. I’ve opened it but twice in the past six years. Today it is calling me and today is the day I will pull it out into the light of day and take a good read. A long red leather strap wraps tight around the bound book of once blank pages. A yellow decal affixed to this journal was stuck there those years ago in anticipation of a family trip to Maui; a trip meant to heal or at least deny a few consecutive days the wretched pain that had descended on my family and our lives.
Taking a deep breath, I unwind the strap and stand the book on its spine. Opening it floods my nose with the sour smell of the binding and musty paper. The odor brings me instantly to those days when I pressed pen and shaking anxiety into the pages now laying open before me. Reading the first page, I realize I have forgotten the original purpose for purchasing this journal. I had some crazy idea that I was going to launch this into the public in some way, have total strangers write in it and fill the pages with their happy thoughts. When the book was full, a prepaid envelope affixed to the back jacket would instruct the last writer to put it into that envelope and mail it back to me. I’d receive back a book full of wonderful happy stories from total strangers. I would publish the gems. It was my experiment to document the edges of human bliss. The first page was one on which I carefully wrote out some happy thoughts to launch this project. However, as I turn the page, I immediately find the writing I was expecting; the torrent of words that sends this journal tumbling down a darker path.
The red leather book is about 80% full of my own writing that spans a period just short of one year. There are loose papers shoved in here and there. Other pieces taped in, several pictures, and some birthday and anniversary cards are included. The writing meant to document my own search for bliss, peace, grace, truth, love, and THE answer to the eternal question, “Why am I?” In paging through, I find the oppressing weight of pain and confusion with the nagging idea that only if I could concentrate on the positive, pound the nail of faith deep into my psyche, and avert my eyes to the heavens, all would be okay. I would wake one morning and find the ache in my gut gone and the darkness in my brain replaced with the everlasting brightness of true LIFE. There is none of that. Instead, I find teary-eyed misery.
First entry, November 13, 2003: I am waiting for a bone biopsy to determine the exact nature of the mass on my hipbone and sacrum. All expect it to be the same stuff, breast cancer, a recurrence of disease treated four years previously. In 1999 it had lumped up in my right breast and escaped leaving a trail in my lymph nodes in my right armpit. The results are as predicted, the breast cancer cells have decided to take a whack at my bones. The mantra in these first few pages relates to the destruction of the “mass on my ass”. (Humor is my consistent weapon of choice.)
However, immediately, my writing asks me to pull my thoughts away from the smallness of cancer to the largeness of life. As I read these innocent ideas, my eyes fill with tears knowing that while my current life is full of wonderful things, I have lost track of where I actually fit into the immense glory of real life and authentic living. This journal traces the long haul of my cancer recurrence, treatments and the horrible end to a 32-year marriage. Somewhere between the last entries and now, these ideas of hope and faith have faded out of my current consciousness. I’ve chosen a determined course of living and living and living, strong and hard and straight down the middle. Blinders have so focused my eyes that I’ve ignored the blessed universe that surrounds me. I have lost the innocence, the faith that all will be well in the largeness of existence. I’ve sped by God’s wonderment, clutching the leather reins of my own galloping days. I’ve let hope and faith take the backseat while I spend this new life piling up treasures of things, experiences, and community.
This is where I need to begin, again. I need to find the faith and hope that was the center of my writing when my world fell apart. I need to feel their breezes and let the power of Love push/pull me in my every day living. Perhaps this is where I will fill my new year. To do so I will have to take another read of this red journal; this time, not with the eye of the victim, but with the eye of the victor.
I will begin at the beginning.
