Sweet November

I can't believe it's almost the end of November. I'm still accustomed to that meaning the beginning of a new basketball season, the end of a semester, and the air turning unmistakably colder. It's hard for my brain to register that I'm almost a year and a half removed from college, and there are no upcoming basketball games in which I'll be playing, but it's still getting cold outside.

I would imagine that this is the time of year when days will seem to go by even more slowly than they have over the past few months, if that's even possible. I wish I could wake up to a different reality, but my wishes continue to dissipate without response. My days still seem to drag on without end.

I asked for a time-out yesterday, as if some invisible referee were overseeing my life and could somehow grant me a few weeks' break from this cancer-fighting marathon. I could really use a vacation; I'm not sure where I would go, or if I would even tell anyone or invite anyone to come with me. It would just be nice to escape for a little while. I haven't been able to find an escape from this; I've just been creeping along one day at a time since it started.

I couldn't get out of bed again today. I felt like a wax creature, all disfigured and immobile in my bed, on my back, for hours. What I would give for a pretty girl to just come and be there with me! Then, at least the hours of blanketed obsolescence would bring me some joy!

It doesn't feel so foreign to me to remember what that feels like, having someone close to me like that, and I look forward to it again every day. It makes me romanticize the idea of being in a relationship, even though I know it's never going to be as easy as I would like it to be or think right now that it will be. It's just a sensible idea to me that there's someone out there who is meant to be nice to me, and I'll be nice to her, and we'll enjoy spending time together, and everything will work out, and I'll always have someone to waste the day away with me in bed.

To be honest, over the past few days, I've learned of the human capacity to miss something, or someone, that we've never even really had. Missing and longing, it seems, come from the same place, when we recognize some missing element as an integral component of our completion. It is, of course, the natural inclination of the human body and spirit to want to be complete, though we're so often operating at less than maximum efficiency.

I'd like to believe that I'm making sense, and I definitely believe in what I'm saying. The truth of the matter is that I don't know if I'll ever be lucky enough to touch, or to hold, this thing that I'm missing. Right now, it's really far away, but I can feel it as if it were next to me and I know it's real.

So, for now, the object of my obsession will have to remain just that. But at least I know she feels the same, which is a hell of a lot better than feeling alone. And it's nice to feel alive again, like something I had forgotten even existed has awakened from within me. I needed to express it; I want it to breathe, but I don't want to smother it and I don't want it to break. I have to let it be, and that's fine, for all things grow and develop in their own time, and as we know, it's not our minds at all that decide who makes a difference in our lives.

I really could go on forever, but I fear that wasted words will only spoil that which I am trying to protect. If nothing else, I am admittedly a hopeless romantic, and that is something that neither chemo, nor cancer, nor anything else that comes to mind can change about me. And I do believe that it's a good thing, and that it will all turn out well for me in the end. I hope this new thing remains, though I don't know what it will become, but it's been too long that I've missed missing and being missed, and I don't mind it at all.