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Tuesday, January 31, 2023. It has taken me six months to feel well enough to write this post. And even now, I don't know if my thoughts will translate coherently. At the beginning of September 2022, things got dark. Black. Void of any trace of light. Colorless to an extent I had not experienced ever before. So let me share how that darkness enveloped me, and where I am today.
Approximately one year ago, on the first Tuesday of the first week of February, I found out I had breast cancer. After the initial shock wore off, I searched my closet for my heaviest sweater of Denial, put it on, and got going with the next steps - doctor consults, MRIs, more biopsies, a double mastectomy, tamoxifen (hormone therapy), and finally breast prosthesis.
I walked the walk. I showed up, physically.
My mind, however, stayed far away, in the land of Music and Mysticism. The Music Tarot became my lifeline and it worked well for about seven months, long enough to release and promote a total of 12 singles. A solid start to my dream project, my life's purpose, the reason I was given the gift of sound and rhyme. But then, three months after starting tamoxifen, the floor started to get soggy and began to fall away. While preparing for the 13th release, I slipped though.
I wanted so badly to say, "I got cancer, and look! It pushed me to pursue my dreams. I'm not afraid to be my authentic self anymore! I'm not afraid of criticism and rejection anymore! I'm making my songs no matter what happens - loyal listeners or cynical critics - I'm doing it and putting it out there!"
But that's not what happened, at all.
The fall was slow and sad. I was mentally "there" enough to know things were going in a bad direction. But my tools weren't working. I had seen two different mental health therapists regularly for the entire course of my treatment. But counseling has never been very helpful for me. I went because people told me to go and I wanted to be able to say I was doing all the "right" things. A part of me also hoped counseling would protect me from losing the things that made me me. I thought I could manage cancer treatment and still be a high-functioning, fun-to-be-around wife, dog mom, employee, singer-songwriter, and friend. Now, here I was, looking at myself through a very cracked and very broken mirror, trying desperately to fix my hair and wear my makeup the same old way I used to. But my mind was completely hijacked by cognitive distortions, hopelessness, and anxiety.
Tamoxifen gave me hot flashes, but they weren't troublesome at first. I wasn't waking up at night, dripping with sweat - a common symptom of tamoxifen and something I was afraid of. I already have insomnia and I didn't want something else added to my already disrupted sleep. Instead, I would wake up in the middle of the night and have hot flashes that lasted 30 seconds to 1 minute, over and over, for about 1 to 2 hours straight. So, my sleep was disrupted, but I didn't have to change my sheets because of it. The rest of the time, I was experiencing an opposite effect with my body temperature. I was freezing cold, ALL THE TIME, except during a hot flash. I couldn't tolerate the pool water for my swims. I tried going to a pool that was a slightly warmer temperature, but it was too hard to psyche myself up and deal with the way my body felt while adjusting to the water temperature. I LOVE swimming. It is a part of who I am. I have been a fitness swimmer for over 25 years. Not being able to enjoy my swims anymore was a lonely experience.
It became difficult to have a coherent train of thought. I couldn't prepare dinner because I couldn't follow the recipe. I needed to get something out of the refrigerator, but I would go to the pantry instead. There was some sort of "brain fog" affecting my short-term memory. And then, this terrible worry began to affect my every action. I was now hyper-sensitive to my mortality, and I felt I needed to maximize every precious second, of every day. A swirl of thoughts ran through my head, over and over.
- I have to spend more quality time with Miah and our dogs.
- I have to eat healthier meals so I can live longer.
- I have to figure out how to promote my songs so I can attract listeners.
- I have to finish recording the next song so Brian will have something to work on next.
- I have to finish writing the next song to keep momentum going.
- I have to do better at my job to deliver more value to my team and those I support in my role.
- I have to keep going to the pool, trying to get back to swimming my usual 32 laps.
- And on and on.
And then, worst of all, things stopped having meaning to me.
I remember being in my 20s, trapped in clinical depression, and how nothing mattered. This felt exactly the same, yet somehow worse, because now I also had a cancer diagnosis in my health record. I felt so out of balance and utterly lost. But I was quiet with my misery. Looking through my social media posts during this timeframe, there are tiny hints of distress, but they are softened. I was hesitant to share the real truth because a part of me still believed I could turn it around and my desire and creativity would come back to me. Besides, how would sharing my struggles help me get listeners? That would only detract people from wanting to check out the songs. "Hey.. so I'm really depressed because I had cancer this year and it is really bothering me... but hey, my producer and I released a song if you want to listen."
I started falling back to my old, pre-cancer beliefs. "I'm not good enough. Why did I ever think I had something to share?" The video I made to promote this blog was no longer my truth. Having cancer didn't bring me closer to my dreams - it shattered them into pieces. I thought about taking down this blog altogether. I think only about 30 people read it anyway (based on the analytics I can see on the site backend). I felt dumb for even writing it in the first place. Tons of women get breast cancer. They don't have to post a blog about it and share their story. Why was I so special to think my story would be read by others and offer anything helpful or worth reading? I didn't even have chemo or radiation, only a bilateral mastectomy and a poor outcome with tamoxifen. Why on earth did I ever think this story was worth sharing?
On October 17, I called the breast clinic and told them I needed help. I couldn't stop crying. Nothing brought me joy anymore. I was trying to get through each day following my same routines, but I was having serious difficulty. The nurse told me to stop the tamoxifen immediately. In the months that followed, I had a couple appointments with my primary care provider. We discussed antidepressants, but I didn't want to add more medications to my body. I wanted to see if getting off tamoxifen would help me return to normal.
A week later, Miah and I went to an end-of-life celebration for someone in his family. I couldn't interact with anyone. I just sat at a table, quiet and unable to talk, next to Grandma-J. There was a projector displaying pictures. At one point, the images stopped and two words bounced around the screen, "NO SIGNAL." It was the perfect metaphor for what was happening to me. I knew if I ever got up the courage and energy to write another blog post, that would be the title.
It has now been over 3 months since I stopped tamoxifen and things are improving, but very, very slowly. I am still not back to my happy, joyful, creative ways of experiencing life. I am concentrating better at work, evidenced by the frequent conversations I have with my supervisor and close teammates. I am grateful to work for my employer. It is a supportive, caring environment, and I just celebrated my 12th year working there.
I have decided I am not willing to try any other hormone therapies to prevent cancer recurrence. The body temperature and mood disturbances caused by tamoxifen have been way too devastating.
Life just doesn't feel the same to me anymore. The shimmer is gone.
Nine months ago it felt so clear, so evident, what I was supposed to do - SHARE MY SONGS and SHARE MY STORY. But now, it feels like a burden to keep up the lie. Music doesn't matter to me the same way it did before and I am horrified by these feelings. Brian just finished producing what he thinks is his new favorite/best track of The Music Tarot songs. It is for Pioneer's Highway / The Chariot - a song about blazing your own trail and becoming the driver of your own bus. A year ago I couldn't wait for this song to be produced. Now I'm having difficulty getting my feedback to Brian on final tweaks needed before submitting for release. I used to reply to Brian with feedback within 24 hours. Everything is taking me longer now and I am not used to it. I don't want to accept it being like this and I don't want to get used to it.
I want to love Pioneer's Highway / The Chariot, and I want to shout from the algorithms to my 68 social media followers how much I want them to love it too. But I am still not feeling the same excitement as before. I am wavering between low energy and lack of interest. I am just so saddened by what's happened. I keep having the same thought over and over - about how I came up with the idea for The Music Tarot in 2014, began writing in 2019, and then finally, at last, the pieces started falling into place for me to turn them into professional songs in 2021, only to wind up getting breast cancer before I had even begun promoting the project. Maybe I was delusional all along - even before I wrote the first song - and this thing never had a chance.
I must figure out a way back to the light.
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End of 18 - No Signal