Anchor's Away

Have you ever stopped to think about what anchors you to your life?  I've been thinking about the things that keep us grounded and on an even keel.  (I will try not to go overboard with the nautical analogies). 
We all have different life anchors, things, people, events, tasks that we depend on to keep us sane and relatively "normal".  By normal I mean normal for ourselves, not what others would consider as normal.  When an anchor shifts or detaches itself from us we feel lost and uncertain.  Very lost....very uncertain.  
Now imagine losing two life anchors or even three.  Wow,  you feel adrift in a sea of emotion.  Wave after wave of various feelings.  All cast adrift with nothing to hold them down, nothing to give you a secure or safe feeling.  You get depressed and despondent. You feel alone, like no one really cares about you.  The real you.  No one understands your particular pain. 
That is what cancer can do to you.  If we have lost personal or work anchors  and add cancer into the mix, it generates the most powerful concoction of emotions.  
But, but, but!   This downward spiral of emotions and negative feelings can be overcome.  It takes time and effort. Enormous mental effort.  
The solution is to be your own anchor.  That is what really is missing,  we have to first depend on ourselves for our emotional support.  We must become our own best friend.  Then with the help of family and friends we start the healing process.  Very long, arduous task.  Lean on your friends and let them lean on you.  Give and take.  Trust and support.  God helps those who help themselves.  But God also helps us through our loved ones and friends.  
So what a team we develop.  Ourselves, God, family and friends.  We get our anchors back.  We dock in safe harbor again.  We get on with our lives. 
(Oh, by the way.  I lied about the nautical analogies.)

Hope to cope

I have a lot of hopes. I just don’t always know what to do with them. I think most of us have the same problem. Hopes are kind of funny in the way they play tricks on your mind. One moment you can be hoping for something and be real clear on how to attain it and then something happens and it all goes down the drain in a swirling whirlpool of despair. Sometimes you have a hope for something and it comes about but not always in the way you foresee or expect. That can be good or bad. The worst way for a hope to come true, is that it happens but starts another chain of events and then you are so caught up in the consequences and changes made to your life that you have lost track of the original hope and you seem lost again. Ah, but when a hope comes true, that can be a type of bliss we experience none too often. Boy, do we keep striving for that hope, especially when it involves a person we feel close to.

We don’t know what the future brings. But even though our hopes sometimes don’t turn out the way we want or seem to need them to, we keep on hoping and dreaming and thinking. Oh yes, do we think. Even if we have someone next to us, we are all alone when we wake up at night and our hopes are pounding on our mental door demanding attention, and then we either stay awake to think, think, think, or we find some method of turning off the thinking just for a few more hours of blessed sleep. How do you turn off your brain in the middle of the night? Can you?

I have no answers or deep philosophical explanations for the human condition and our need to have hopes and our drive to attain them. Why can’t we just be happy with what we have? Part of being a thinking person is to question the needs and motivations of the people we care for. Do their needs jive with my needs? If not how do we reconcile the difference, can we reconcile the differences? We try, by talking, listening, sharing our hopes and dreams. But sometimes our needs are too different. What a shame. All I know right now is that I do need change. I don’t know whether I can get the changes to coincide with my hopes. But I do know that I will keep hoping, I will keep dreaming of a better day, maybe a deliciously better day. My head is smarting from all this thought. I will do my best to cope with my situation. And most of all I cant help but to think, think, think.

Faith in others

Having faith in no one, carries a special kind of security.  But at what price this security?  Can a person have a life without  closeness, without caring, without love?  Faith in others can be painful and emotional and upsetting,  but that is part of what makes us human.  We all have and ups and downs, a plus and minus, joy and pain.  A yin and yang,  the balance. It is In our nature to seek out people with whom we connect.  Humans are social animals,  to deny ourselves the faith that others can be there for us, is to deny our souls the chance to soar.

Cancer (part one - the diagnosis)

Cancer.  I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in February 2010.  I was seeing a urologist (bad doctor) for....you know....male problems.  I had a biopsy done because my PSA risen very quickly.  He called me and left a message on voice mail on a Friday at 5PM.  Saying the biopsy results are in and to call him Monday afternoon.   Have a nice weekend.  Needless to say I had a terrible weekend.  What an asshole (getting worse Dr).  I tried to talk to him over the weekend to no avail.  He left me hanging and I was so pissed off.  No dr should ever do that to a potential cancer patient.   Aaaargh.  On Monday I called his office and demanded to speak to him,  he finally called me at 11AM.   Told me I had cancer.  He immediately said he should do surgery right away.   We made an appointment for the following Friday for further consultation. After I hung up with him. I flew into such a rage.  I'm at work, and I'm throwing things and kicking my chair and if the walls weren't cinder block I would have put my fist through it.  Mad at the dr, mad at God,  mad at my parents (genetics), mad at myself and mad at cancer.  WHY ME!!!!!!   I told my boss my diagnosis and that I have no idea what to do, but I knew I couldn't concentrate on my job,  so I took the rest of the day off.  Boss was not pleased with me. First of many dissapointments.    Too bad.  

Friday. Going to see the urologist.  Snowing,  long drive.  We left the house early.  I'm about 15 mins away from dr's office.  I call to notify him that I'm running late because of the snow and slow going on the roads.  Receptionist tells me we have to reschedule the appointment because the dr has to leave.  I'm only going to be a few mins late.  FOR CANCER CONSULTATION.  Oh my God, he can't wait for us.  Was he only planning a 15 min consult about the worse thing to ever happen to me???   We get to the office and of course he had left.  We were only 10 mins late.  Utter absolute rage directed at him but we are yelling at his people.  We calm down and ask for all my medical records and appologize to his staff, saying it's not their fault he is such an asshole (the worse dr in the world).

Fathers and sons

Emotion.  My first memory of indoctrination into the male macho mindset was when I was 8.  I had talked back to my father and he hauled off and hit me in my face.  I cried because it hurt (physically....emotionally).  And he said to me "don't be a baby, boys don't cry".  Well, he had a temper, and that was the first of only two times he hit me.  He died when I was 10.  I cried and hurt so much more,  then when he hit me. My sister told me it is ok for boys to cry.   Especially when we loose someone so close to us.  I loved my father unconditionally. He abandoned me.  It still hurts. And I still cry.  And you know what, fuck macho, I'm an emotion all man.  I cry like a girl, I feel like a girl, I have empathy like a girl, and I care like a girl.  This is good, and I feel OK.  Men should not be afraid to be emotional, nurturing and caring.  If we all did this, the world would be a better place.  At least our little part of it. I will find my brothers and sisters who feel the same.....the potential is boundless.   And I still cry for the lost relationship with my dad.