Boo

    Today during chemo I picked up a book and haven’t put it down since (well, until now). It’s an autobiography by Hoda Kotb (yeah, I didn’t really know who she was either), titled Hoda: How I Survived War Zones, Bad Hair, Cancer, and Kathie Lee. The title alone would be enough to hook me, but I read an excerpt that really caught my attention. Hoda went through breast cancer and divorce at the same time, and explains how it’s possible to manage when life deals out all your tragedies at the same time. A snippet from a magazine interview:

“I think you have a finite amount amount of grief to go around. It’s like having two kids instead of one. You can’t worry about the one who’s coloring on the wall with the crayons, because the other one is trying to swallow your Advils.”

   I have no idea how to word this next paragraph, so just stay with me here. I had a great life growing up. Good parents, good family, solid environment, strong spiritual belief, smart head on my shoulders. Somewhere around graduating from college, my life has felt like one huge crisis after another. I failed out of half my senior semester classes, and found out I was suffering from pretty severe depression. I moved back in with my parents to recuperate, and one stupid driving decision landed me in handcuffs. Once back in Boston, I let an overbearing relationship become my life, and the end of that relationship was my first huge heartbreak and darkest, most surprising anxiety and depression. I have a good handle on that now, but more bad decisions have alienated me from my religion and the God that I have relied on so strongly for most of my life. And now I have cancer.

   To recap: Over the last three years, I’ve failed out of schoolwork, been forced to rethink my career goals, suffered through TWO major battles with depression, spent time in jail, had my heart broken, fallen out of line with my faith, and been diagnosed with cancer.

   It might be tough to see the point in going over a brief and awful history. But here is where I am going to quote Hoda again. “If you survive breast cancer or any other illness or any other tragedy, you get the gift of these words: You can’t scare me.”  

   I spoke last night with a dear friend who made this crystal clear. The unknown is almost always the scariest thing I will deal with in my life, but once I realize how strong I am (because we all are), once I realize what I am capable of, the unknown won’t be so scary anymore.

   So I am adopting this mantra. I have no idea what challenges or tragedies lay ahead for me in life or how I will get through them, because honestly I have no idea how I’ve gotten as far as I have. You just do it somehow. From now on no medical crisis or professional rejection or private sorrow will get the best of me for long. I've hurt and questioned and suffered and cried enough. I’ve done too much already, life. You can’t scare me.