Dawn Musings

I'm up early this morning...oh-dark-thirty early. It's been awhile since I lay abed for a half-hour in the dark, and decided I might as well just get up. It's like revisiting an old, forgotten friend.

This time of day always reminds me of the year of post-surgical Pam, who couldn't sleep comfortably for more than four hours. I'd slip upstairs quietly to write on the computer in the pre-dawn stillness, trying to quell my fears, regurgitating my experience, trying to make sense of it all and struggling mightily for calm and grace.

Now, it's hard to remember the raw-emotion-barely-controlled of that time. The veil of blessed amnesia, the simple passage of time, has healed most of the emotional and physical wounds of that lost year. I have passed the year and a half mark. I am well. I actually have days where I don't think about it much, other than the momentary grimace when I catch a glimpse in the mirror after a shower or when I dress, or the underarm tightness I feel at night when I'm tired.

Still, to be honest, I think of myself as a "cancer patient." I am in the limbo of "Cured...But," always monitoring, always on the lookout for something sinister lurking underneath the obvious outward appearance of recovery. I'm having a hard time letting go of the inner invalid, afraid to celebrate too loudly, lest I offend the random gods like a character in a Greek tragedy. You know that character will be punished for her hubris, you just know it.

I worry about my flatline of emotions. Now that my inner calm matches my outward calm for the most part, I find I miss feeling passionate about something, anything. I am adrift, and I recognize that it's a self-protective mechanism, a method of trying to escape notice by Fate, so it will pass me by this time, without throwing another lightning bolt my way. Maybe if I stay really still and quiet, nothing bad will happen again?

I know this is ridiculous. None of us is in control of what happens to us. I am mildly surprised that I've somehow chosen this small-child-under-the-covers approach, rather than fiercely fighting for joy, wringing every last bit of experience out of life, (the "Living Each Day to the Fullest" model), that my past personality would predict. I feel humbled, chastened. Still afraid, I guess.

But then, the sun comes up. It's time to put all that garbage in a box, tie a big, fat red ribbon around it and shove it to the back of the mental storage closet, to be misplaced and forgotten until the next time I decide to clean out old stuff.