...stretching myself...

Prayer for a Normal Day

Normal day,

let me be aware of the treasure you are.

Let me learn from you, love you,

bless you before you depart.

Let me not pass by in quest

of some rare and perfect tomorrow.

Let me hold you while I may,

for it may not always be so.

One day I shall dig my nails into the earth,

or bury my face in the pillow,

or stretch myself taut,

or raise my hands to the sky and want,

more than all the world, your return.

Mary Jean Iron

Like the leaves dropping en masse from the trees in the yard, I feel bits of myself slipping away.  Its like when your skin starts to shed its summer tan and it sloughs off in grayish-brown sheets in the shower like a snake molting its skin.  

But what I am shedding isn't something seen from the outside.  I feel it more than I can show it.  

Each chemo week I have to answer a survey about how treatment with TDM1 affects my life.  I've always been in the "not at all" category when it comes to some of the side effects.  Recently, I became a sometimes.  Or on the flip side, in other categories I am an "always," kind of gal.  And lately, I have to admit I'm a little more "not always" even here.  I finish the questionnaire and see that I am no longer a perfect "zero," and have moved into a whole new category.  They've warned me this will happen.  Long term chemo stores up in your body and the effects begin to linger, longer. 

Fatigue has been nagging me.  My energy never really catches up to all that I want and/or need to get done in a day.  Slowly, I see the cracks deepen into fissures that feel like a bottomless pit. I lie down for a nap, and get up feeling just as tired as when I first lay down.   

I walk blocks instead of miles.

My puppy is too heavy for me to lift anymore, and when he pulls on his leash, pain sears through my back. 

I gave myself a "gitz" pep talk the other day before I even put my feet on the floor. 

And so I wonder... maybe I am meant to slow down?  To spend my energy more thriftily.  To shift my focus, to what I can do, instead of what I can't do?  To empty myself, so that I can fill again.  To shed the tan of summer, so that the healthy and new underneath has a chance to be revealed...  

I wonder...