Acceptance

Acceptance is a word. I was going to say it’s an odd word but really it’s not. I’m not going to Merriam Webster on you but I would say to me it means being in a state of acknowledging your situation or reality is happening. Now my many college travels (for one associate’s degree and one bachelor’s degree) may have you think I’m an educated scholar but I’m not.

What I do know is that I am both stepping more into acceptance and still struggling with it- which is probably not acceptance I guess.

What I mean is last week I read cancer was in my spine- right next to my brain.

I heard that this thing that is trying to kill me is working harder and winning a race against science and medicine.

I heard the fears I had of cancer spreading farther, years down the road, had stepped on the gas now.

I heard that now I moving from Plan C to D, or E- or the last plan.

I heard time shrinking and all the good to come fading faster.

and, for levity, I swear I also heard this in my head:

There’s not an IQ test to have cancer.

I heard a lot of thoughts and are they all true? No but a mind processing bad news is not immune from the spiral of death and mortality. A mind reading medical diagnoses, rushing to the forbidden Dr. Google for insight, is not a mind that believes the future is steady and promised. It is a mind hoping for a miracle or a complete misinterpretation of the “on the fly junior medical degree” it has acquired through navigating MyChart test results the instant the phone lights up.

So how the hell do I accept any of this? How does anyone? And I don’t mean about my news but anyone going through something bad. How do you accept what you don’t want? How do you sit with the thief of your future?

I don’t have the answer for everyone let alone myself. I’m not into toxic positivity and this is me just tipping my overflowing mind out onto this page via ramblings and rhetorical questions. I think though if I have to sit with that thief, time’s killer, I have to sit with death. I have to sit with pain. I have to sit with hurt and grief and overall loss. I have to be honest about loss but also what I have.

This thief can’t be stopped from what it will steal but I can reject what it hasn’t stolen each day- or strive to. I can give it tears, fears and anger some days. Some days I can push it away. I can hold my present time and not reach for a future that is cloudy and unknown to me. It won’t be easy probably ever. Some days I’ll lean on those closest to me to help me evade the thief’s grasp. Other days the thief will hold me back from them, hurting me more by projecting the losses brightly all around me.

It will be a challenge, a fight, a war or whatever other inspirational contest or feat you want to call it. This would imply winning and losing to most. I don’t know that I win this in any sense. Any type of win already has so much loss. Physical, mental, emotional and more has been lost so far. But that doesn’t mean I lose. I’m gaining things still. Some literal tangible things and some are in my mind and body that few know, or no one but me does.

So I’m not losing and I’m not winning. I’m existing and that I can accept for now.

-Joe