Broken Doll

Finally getting this stuff organized. I am, of course, in the midst of the Elements of Magic class through Chicago Reclaiming. Also working my way through The Spiral Dance by Starhawk, which has been extremely helpful in crystalizing and codifying a lot of stuff that I’ve known instinctually for most of my life, but never had the words to explain.

So I’m attempting to finally develop and organize a Book of Shadows that I can refer back to and use as I go along in my spiritual growth and practice.

With apologies to my significant fanbase (snort), my cyber-stalkers and the voyeurs, most of these are going to be private posts. Sorry guys.

My feelings have been complicated.

On the one hand, my last chemo session ever is in a week and I am elated. I am so anxious to put all of this behind me.

On the other, I have been miserable this week. Recovery from chemo, even to get to a minimal, I-can-get-out-of-bed level, takes so damn long now. It was today, a week, before the burning in my limbs quieted enough to not be annoyingly distracting. Monday morning I woke up at 5am bloated and in so much pain that I thought my gut was going to explode. Three hours and a disgusting cocktail of magnesium salts later, my bowels go to the opposite extreme and I spent most of the morning running back to the toilet.

I haven’t been able to sleep. Night sweats, hot flashes, thanks to chemo making me menopausal two months ago. More frequent now and it takes hours to get to sleep, and every night this week I’ve woken up multiple times because I’m too damn hot and sweating — and this is with a prescription sleeping pill and air conditioning. So I am constantly tired even aside from being run-down from chemo. I lie down at night exhausted and between the acid-ache in my body and the sweats I just can’t get to sleep. I don’t think it’s been earlier than 2am any night this week. Then waking at 4am, and again at 5, and again at 6.

And I wonder about the aftermath. What will it take to get my body back, the whole one, that could run 4 or 5 miles a day, drink occasionally, dance, push myself mentally and physically without completely falling apart. This body is broken and how long are the repairs going to take? The drugs made me gain weight so I’ve got 20 pounds or more to lose (I’ve been afraid to look at the scale). When will the hot flashes stop? When will the aching go away for good? When do I get my hair back? How do I recreate myself to be more like what I used to be? Can I do that?

What happens next?  Where do I go from here?

I’m tired and I want to sleep and I am wide, wide awake.

I’m so tired I feel like I can’t put thoughts together, but I’m still awake.

Last weekend saw the end of any pretending that I’m not going bald. The wig has come out full-time now.

But at the end of the day, I still have to look at myself in the mirror. My hair is so thin. My scalp is clearly visible. I look old… like I’m about 80 years old. Squashed down from being under a wig for 12 hours, it looks patchy. I look sick. I look like shit. I look fucking ugly.

I’m having trouble dealing with the wig. Even just in practical terms. It’s hot and a bit scratchy. I feel like I’m wearing a helmet, all day, every day. It took me two days to figure out that it was the hairnet I was wearing underneath that was giving me the tremendous pressure headache. I still haven’t figured out the happy medium between my-hairline-is-slowly-sliding-backwards and I-have-a-nasty-headache-right-behind-my-ears. The bangs hang in my eyes and won’t stay swept to the sides. The ends get super tangled by the end of the day and I worry, constantly, that it looks ropey and unnatural. The aforementioned sliding hairline means that I’m constantly adjusting, constantly worrying, which I’m sure looks weird and does nothing for my peace of mind. The tangled hair in the back and at the nape of my neck takes 15 minutes or more to comb out every evening. I’m super-careful, super-paranoid, about combing slowly, picking apart bad tangles with my fingers first, slowly combing through them til they’re gone, and still I get a few strands coming away at the end of it all. Less even that what I’d normally lose of my real hair, but I’m still paranoid because I know that this hair won’t be growing back. Is this normal? Or is it going to start looking tatty within weeks and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it?

And then there’s the emotional stuff. I can’t pretend it’s not happening anymore. And I have to deal with this transition of going from pixie-length and wavy to 18 inches and straight literally overnight. So far the only people who’ve seen this happen have been people who already know the story. But I have no idea how to handle others — people who know me incidentally, who know me by sight if not by name, and who have no idea why I cut my hair short in the first place. I’ve been walking around with short hair for almost two months, many people have seen it that way. So what do I say to the wait staff in my favorite restaurant, my neighbors in the apartment below, when they see me again and ask what the hell happened to my hair? For total strangers it wouldn’t matter, they probably will never have any idea that the hair isn’t real so I can say nothing and pretend that it is, but these people will know, and will wonder why, and I can’t think of a way to answer that question without it being completely, utterly awkward.

I won’t lie, but can you imagine how flustered you’d feel if you saw it happen, were shocked enough to ask, and then were told, “Oh, yeah, the chemo was making my hair fall out,” from someone that you really only barely know?

I can’t pretend it’s not happening anymore. I don’t know what to do.

I met a man today who, in the past 15 years, has gone from average college kid, to instant millionaire, to destitute and homeless, and back again. He is smart as hell, savvy, honest, and articulate. There are depths to be plumbed here, some lesson somewhere to be learned, I sense. There is more to know and it is somehow relevant to now — this time, this place in my life. I just don’t know how, yet.

And then there is this (from my single bloggy fan), which also seems relevant, somehow tied in. I read it and my mind instantly connected the two. I have some sense of a cosmic hand setting pieces in place. The domino effect will come later.

I hope I get to talk to him again. There is more to know… something I need to know.

Tired but feeling better about myself. I am glittery and decorated too. Going through chemo my body goes through all these changes; I feel gross and ugly. My hair is short and thin — like a baby’s hair. It is nice to have a moment to remember and feel that my beauty, my sensuality, my sexuality, my worth and my sacredness are still in me, even if difficult for me to find right now.

Jenn is wonderful. Reminds me that I’m beautiful. Much of the time nowadays I don’t feel like I am. It is nice to hear.

Technically it started Thursday morning. You know how you always comb out loose strands of hair in the morning… there were more of them. A wad of hair about three times as big. But I combed and it stopped coming out and I spent four days pretending to myself that it wasn’t real, that it was a fluke, that it would stop.

So this morning I comb and the wad is that big with every stroke. A handful of hair for each swipe of the comb. And I comb and it doesn’t stop. I comb some more and it’s still not stopping. In the shower strands tangle around my hands and come away in clumps. And I comb my hair again and it’s still not stopping.

So I finally just quit combing.

I somehow got it into my head that this would be a relatively neat process. They told me it would fall out pretty much all at once so I imagined locks of hair falling out in patches… strands I could collect, braid together, hang on to.

But it’s a mess. Tangles, clumps, wads. Hair everywhere. I’m afraid to even touch my hair at all for fear it will just shed out completely, a tangled wispy mess trailing from room to room on the floor.

You can’t tell yet. I’ve stopped combing so it stays. My hair’s a mess, it needs a combing, but I don’t want to touch it. I tried to straighten out some clumps to braid together and couldn’t. I don’t want all of it to end up in some tangled messy pile on the floor.

Tomorrow I will call the wig place and have them cut it off. At least that way I can braid and save some of it. I think I will leave it maybe an inch long. I don’t think I can handle going from long hair to nothing in one leap.

I haven’t had hair that short since I was maybe 5 years old. Even in elementary school my hair was at least chin length. I’ve been growing it out for 15 years, hoping that it would get longer than just past the shoulders and realizing after a while that it just won’t grow any longer than it is.

I can’t even imagine what this is going to look like.