Resolutions, Buttercups, Marcel, Degrees of Happiness...

December 30, 2011

The Good:  Good riddance 2011, Hello 2012, it can only be better, right? 

In my 45 years on this planet I’ve never made a New Year’s resolution, until now. 

My new year’s resolution for 2012 is to put the past year behind me, really behind me... I will treat my body like a project and tackle one problem at a time, fix it, then move on to the next.  I will not stop at road blocks; I’ll simply climb over them and continue on.  I will do what makes me happy and walk away from what doesn’t.  I will love harder than I ever have in the past.

The Bad: ‎ My eye won’t stop tearing, it actually burns the outside corner of my eye and leaves a small red mark.  I’m told it could be a number of things, most likely a delayed side effect from chemo, possibly a blocked tear duct and I should see an Optometrist to confirm. 

The Optometrist checks everything BUT what I came for, and when I ask about the tearing, which is why I came in the first place, she shares a story of her mother who complained of the same thing after her cancer treatments... I’m assuming she’ll share something her mother did that helped, but she doesn’t, the conversation ends like that.  I ask about a referral to an ophthalmologist, and she explains how busy they are, and it would take some time for me to get in, and I should probably just wait it out; easy for her to say given she doesn’t have toxic tears streaming down her face...

So the morale of this story is nobody cares about what they consider to be the small stuff, nobody thinks it’s worthwhile to figure out why something happens or what they could do to make it better, she could have just said “Suck it up Buttercup” from the start and saved us both some time.

I leave her office with a yellow buttercup type ring beneath my eye left from the dye she used, I watch her back out of the driveway and make her way to whatever it is she must do, she drives by and I know she’s forgotten about me, and I continue walking but I’m not thinking I should suck it up, I’m thinking I’ll add this to the list of what I need to figure out on my own...

The What the ???: I’m talking to Marcel, random guy who approaches me on the street, he’s 75 and talks about some of his accomplishments.  One accomplishment in particular that he is most proud of, even though it is far from being the impressive one on his list, is some work he did on a downtown street, not really laying the cement but adding some sort of cement necessity???  He showed me what he meant on the cement in front of us... I still don’t know what it is but that doesn’t really matter, it’s about how he felt by creating something purposeful that is still around today.

We chat some more about people, music, and life, and then part ways...  while I enjoy the company of family and friends, there’s something nice about chatting with strangers; they know nothing about me and I can just be that random someone for however long that random moment lasts.   

Lessons Learned: This time last year I was going for chemo treatments, sliding into and out of that squeaky vinyl chair and watching the bag release the drip drip into my arm.  Same time this year I’m struggling with side effects, physically and emotionally from the year gone by and I realize there are varying degrees of happiness, and while I wish I never had to see the face of cancer, I’m in a better place right now than I was one year ago today.