Survival requires tenacity. And so much more.

I am eight and one-quarter years out from my diagnosis with acute lymphocytic leukemia. By medical standards and definitions, I am "cured." As part of my treatment plan those many years ago, I signed up for a clinical trial that included follow-up for a number of years post-treatment. I don't know how many years they follow us for, but I do know that once a year, I get a phone call from some research assistant at the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center wherein she asks whether or not I am "still alive?" The first time I received one of those calls, I was flabbergasted. "That's all you want to know?" I queried. But they didn't care about the extensive long-term side effects I was dealing with, just whether the drugs or the cancer or something else had killed me. Maybe the side effect issue is part of another clinical trial I haven't heard about yet.

I haven't really written about cancer in a few years. I actually don't really even think about it all that much. My medical issues have morphed into separate demons, and cancer has become so peripheral that it is almost part of a past life. That isn't to say I don't think about the medical issues because I do. I think about them all the time. I think about them every time I eat a meal or a snack because my stomach gurgles ominously, warning me that in about 15 minutes I'm going to have to find a bathroom. But anyway, over the past week, I have read a few articles that women have written about their own survivorship. One of them, by Suleika Jaouad, you may have already read. She's a celebrity, basically: a strikingly beautiful, young woman who writes about her cancer experiences for The New York Times. I haven't read any of her articles about her life as a twenty-something with leukemia. I didn't want to. But a friend linked to this specific article on Facebook with the caption, "Yes Yes Yes." So, I clicked through. What I read saddened me, more than anything else. She is much more eloquent and honest with herself than I was when I was a year out of treatment. At that time, I still believed I could charge forward with my life, break down walls, inspire others to push through adversity.

My life slowed to an unexpected and drawn-out pause. I lost everything that I once believed I was: driven; motivated by goals; fearless; powerful; confident. Yes, I had a remarkable appreciation for the beauty of living day-to-day, but I also felt there was a significant part of me that wasn't realized. I am grateful for the time I had living at home, and I appreciate so many things about my years at Starbucks and Hyatt. But I wasn't hungry for anything. I was drifting, and it was brutal. It was even worse when I realized that that piece of me was missing, and I had no idea how to either get it back or create it from scratch.

Suleika is barely in her first year post-treatment. Hopefully she will adjust better than I did; she is already heading down her path of recreation. I am seven years post-treatment, and I feel like I am barely getting a handle on my hunger, on my future. That drive is there; that burning in my chest to just Rule the world I inhabit, is Back. I wrote in a post on here, months ago, that there are no absolutes, no black and white situations. Maybe that isn't quite true: You Absolutely Have to believe in yourself. You Have to Want to live and Want to experience everything that this world has to offer. If you hesitate or forget or are dragged from that living river of excitement and emotion, it is its own struggle to find your way back. But we are resilient. We are tenacious. We are all survivors of something, and we are all fighting to find our ways in the world.

It may have taken me longer than some to dive back into myself and what I want from my life, but I am finally beginning to figure it out, once more. And I am not giving up.

And... I'm back again

On a grey, unsettled, chilly January day in Denver, I have retreated to an eclectic coffeeshop with the students, the self-employed, the unemployed, the musicians, the artists.  And me, falling somewhere in the middle of it all.  I remain undefined while consuming some of the best tomato/spinach soup I have ever had, all creamy and tomato-y and cheesy without having any actual cheese in it.  I am scalding my tongue and the roof of my mouth, thanks to a nice barista who seems to be chronically undercharging me.  Maybe I already look destitute, in my mismatched pink and navy flannel shirt and fleecy purple plaid scarf and jeans ripped clear across the knee.  I'm pretty sure no one ever has paid only $8.35 for soup, a large almond milk chai, and a giant chocolate chip cookie (Giant).  The price is still boggling my mind.  Don't worry, I tipped my newfound best friend.

As of January 10, I am fully and so weirdly unemployed.  In the middle of November, my boyfriend and I took a week-long trip to Virginia to visit family, and I decided I couldn't come back to Denver and continue working at Starbucks.  I was done; it was time.  The Philadelphia Marathon came and went, and it didn't include me.  I spent September and October fighting a sickness I couldn't shake until finally, a week before the Marathon, I crumbled, called in the antibiotics, and called off this marathon I was supposed to have been training for.  Who knows if there's a correlation, but my training started suffering and my health started failing right around the time I started opening at Starbucks consistently.  Opening, for me, meant falling out of bed around 4 a.m. to bike 3 miles to work by 5 a.m., including a few sub-zero mornings.  School, caffeine, fatigue, constant coughing or sniffling or "coming down with something..." I couldn't do it.  My body paid a wicked price, and I wasn't able to join my friend in her very first, amazing marathon.  My boyfriend and I are still dealing with the after-effects of the prednisone the doctors put me on for a second time this year.

So here I am, sitting in a coffee shop, worrying about health care come February 1, sipping chai, not yet doing anything to find employment.  I have skiied a lot and all over since leaving the Bucks - Copper Mountain, Winter Park, Berthoud Pass, A-Basin, Steamboat Springs, an impromtu, ridiculous weekend trip to Jackson Hole this past weekend.  Needless to say, I'm ripped, now.  (Sort of kidding, but no, not really kidding.)  Skiing is a whole lot different from running, especially the slow, long runs I'm used to.  Skiing is short, intense, and quad-thrashing.  Ski in powder, and it becomes all of those things amplified plus the sensation of floating down the mountain in silence.  There were a few runs I found myself alone in trees, snow sparkles drifting all around while the lower sun illuminated my life, and the lactic acid disappeared, and the heavy powder disappeared, and the wrench in my knee disappeared, and it was just me, floating in a forest of crystals and sun beams.

I have learned and believe that nothing lasts and everything changes.  Life, changes, and you can help it change how you'd like it to; you can adapt to the changes; or you can drift along and watch everything shift and grow and die around you and remain encapsulated in whatever bubble you've created of fear and comfort.  I've been doing the latter for over 4 years, although I started tearing down my bubble and finding my footing when I moved to Denver on a whim and a prayer.  Now, it's time to kickstart my life, to jump in and make my own changes.  To finally embrace everything I am and the person I am growing into.  I am so many things, and while I was a barista for a while, I want to be so much more.  2013 sucked pretty badly in my world.  So, okay, time to make a giant change.  Time to ski and run and sip chai and eat delicious, gluten-y cookies and heal.  It is time to Live.  Here we go!