Or, rather, I guess, kiss my punctured lumbar...
...no, doesn't have the same ring to it, huh?
That may be the last LIVE! DIRECT FROM HELL! THIS IS SPINAL TAP! of the treatment. Can't be sure, but maybe.
Let's just cut the verbal hooey and get down to it. It has been a rough year. A year I did not know I had the ability--the humanity--to experience, much less survive. A year that has taken me lower than I have ever been: in body, in mind, in psyche, in blood pressure.
A year that I could not emerge from without the love and care of my wife. And my family, my friends, and pretty much all dogs.
I have forgotten more pain in the last eight months than I may have felt up to then. Maybe not, but it's close.
I have railed against the horrors that have already left me, because I am a performer and a human, and I want to be able to tell those tales, and I want proof that I was there.
I know that, somewhere in the future, I will find myself staring in the mirror or looking at a view or speeding or digging or kissing or running--and I may find that I do not have the tied-to-the-mast hold on all this agony that I should. The appreciation hewn into my marrow; the knowledge of how precious every tinkling laugh and dribbling snot really is.
If this pain--this jagged skinny valley with false sunrises and weeping winds--is not a lesson, than what the hell is it for?
What the hell is it for?
I am at a threshold. Today I feel like I got backed over by a garbage truck, but I know where I am headed. Though I need a week or two to recover, my initial chemo ended two days ago. Ended. Now we go on to maintenance.
Maintenance lasts years. Maintenance is hopping from one mossy stone to another, holding flaming shish kebabs of hope and juggling rusty blades of optimism. But it is the next stage. The next waypoint to putting this behind me. Behind us.
And so, there's no clever or original way out of this...
I just have to say
that I am thankful.
And that I have hope.
I am not beaten.
I am broken.
The difference is delicious.
This. Is the face.
Of Victory. Happy New Year.
-Holter
