Road tripping with Cate today was so fun. From home to Badlands to Pierre to Aberdeen…we set our GPS and hit the road. Conversation. Music. Quiet. New things to look at. Laughter. Snacks. Cows. Selfies. Rest stops. Fill ups. There’s just something about a road trip, ya know?! Throw in a gas station with no gas and a closed National Park visitor’s center, and it was turning into a little bit of an adventure.
Bummed since the Badlands didn’t work out (and we’d gone out of our way), we decided to just head to the hotel instead of trying to find the other visitor’s center. I pulled off to the side of the road to take a look at the remainder of the day’s route, but…no service. In the middle of nowhere SD. Where our plans didn’t go as planned. The offline map told me to just keep going straight so we did even though we had no idea where we were headed and no way to google our way to more solid information. Certainly, the other three cars on the road told us that this road led to or came from somewhere but that is about all the confidence we had. . .
The next hour felt like we were driving through a virtual reality. The scenery, out of a video game. The desolation, apocalyptic. The terrain, eerie and unsettling. And then, as if out of thin air, a kiosk. Badlands Visitor Center #2 (not closed for the season). I spoke with the Parks’ lady and told her what had happened. She was nice enough to let us by…it was the only way to get to the interstate…and thankfully we didn’t have to pay to get through. The 5% of the Badlands that we got to see for free, though….breathtaking.
How can this day, a road trip zigzagging through Wyoming, Nebraska and South Dakota, be such a metaphor for life? For me, it holds SO much imagery, symbolism and meaning.
What about for you?
SO Hard :: June 12, 2018
Today was a good day…good day at work, lots of laughter, a reminder that I love the people I work with and the place that I work. Then I came home to a happy family and enjoyed the evening at a volleyball awards get together for Cate’s club volleyball season…yet another reminder that we have wonderful people woven into our stories.
While the volleyball get-together was fun, I was sad watching some of the other parents playing volleyball with the kids…watching Chris and Cate playing and laughing and enjoying the sport that I so love and have so many good memories of. It made me sad because I’m not sure I’ll ever get to play again. I haven’t asked my surgeons if it will be a possibility after a full recovery…. I sure hope so…but a part of me is preparing my heart for a possible opposite harsh reality.
I know I’ll cross that bridge when I get there, but it’s hard to process that very real possibility and acknowledge yet another thing cancer will maybe take away.
SO much that makes me, me has been altered, shifted, changed, removed all together. I know my soul is held close and I accept the incredibly hard but purposeful reality that my identity has been forever changed by this, but man. So hard.
The Days of Battle :: June 12, 2019
I’m grateful to be alive. I am. AND at the same time, I am acknowledging that my daily ‘survivorship’ reality sucks.
Hot flashes every 20 minutes. Then I’m freezing. Random and unpredictable stomach upset. Headaches. Low depressed mood that follows me EVERYWHERE. The brain fog and slow processing is SO annoying. I’m 100%-of-the-time-exhausted. And the arthritic joints and bone pain…unbearable.
I facilitated a training today for work and was on my feet most of the day. Oh man were they stiff and sore throughout the day, in addition to my ankles, knees, hips, back, shoulders and neck. But then I had an hour-drive home and while it was such a relief to be off my feet, when I got home, I could hardly move. I limped up to my bed and as soon as I laid down, my body totally rebelled. I was nauseous, dizzy, sleepy, achy and sad. Cancer doesn’t just cause wreckage during chemo and radiation…cancer wreaks havoc far beyond that.
And the sad truth is that this is my reality. Once a Division 1 volleyball elite athlete to a not-even-40-year-old woman who can hardly take a 2 mile walk. I’m kinda feeling like Mr. Incredible tonight…wanting to relive the Glory Days instead of look this current (really crappy) reality in the face.
I will wake up tomorrow and carry on, no doubt. The nostalgia of the Glory Days will dissipate and I will dig into my resilience and accept my new Glory Days… The Days that I show up and battle.
No post for 6/12/20