LIFESTYLE: after treatment / BEKA DAVIS
12.26.10
I’m at a Buddhist retreat center. I have been looking forward to this for a while. Hopefully it will give me time to contemplate what has been heavy on my mind. I haven’t written in so long that it’s a bit intimidating. I told Stacy that I’d write a piece for her magazine, and I haven’t really begun. At first I was excited. I thought I had all this wonderful wisdom to share and inspire people; but now, I find that I haven’t really contemplated or even really written anything since I was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2005.
Just recently, I stopped taking Tamoxifen, which felt really great the day I was told I could stop taking it. I was also told I didn’t have to see the oncologist on a regular basis.
As time passes, I feel a bit lost, not sure what to do. Stopping treatment was like a mile marker that I just needed to complete, and maybe thought all would be well when I stopped, like somehow I would no longer be anxious that the cancer could come back. This is not true …
Now, I feel like the Tamoxifen and the visits are what kept me cancer free, and now, it’s a crap shoot, and all up to me.
A few days ago, I went to a Sukhavati (funeral service for Buddhists) for a friend who was in my cancer support group. She had been responding well to treatment, and then was not. Another friend that I have gotten to know because of his cancer diagnosis was recently told that his cancer is back, and he’s got to fight like hell again to get well. I met him through a mutual friend who thought I could help him. He had become almost catatonic after the first round of surgeries and chemo. The things that he had enjoyed no longer meant anything to him. His marriage was suffering from it. He couldn’t work. He wasn’t sure what he was doing anymore. He had about a month of being free from this debilitating state when he got the news— cancer was back.
One of my jobs is working as a case manager with people who are in extreme states of mind. This often means that someone’s thoughts have taken over, and the individual sees and hears things that don’t appear to other people. Another term for this is psychosis.
About a month ago, a client of mine said that he had a conversation with Cancer and she’s tired of being blamed for everything. I asked my client what he meant by this. He left me to answer my own question. He didn’t want to answer everything for me.
I told him, “I know I need to have my own conversation with cancer, I’m just curious about your thoughts.”
Truth is, I thought I had my conversation with cancer. I thought I had a pretty good understanding of why cancer had entered my life. I thought I had made peace and sense of it all. I had logically made the whole thing okay, workable. I even thought that maybe I’m a better person than I was, because I am more processed.
Now, I think that is really a bunch of crap.
12.27.10
I continue with the meditation retreat. I have an aspiration to feel my heart, my tender heart of sadness, and I dedicate my retreat to all who feel they must be guarded, and guard themselves from others, maybe because they were taken advantage of when they were little.
I realized today that it is somewhat rare for me to see someone being really nice. It is the exception rather than the rule. It’s heartbreaking to realize that anytime we want to, we can choose to be kind— and so often I don’t make that choice.
I want to know what I am living for and not just to be good and not just to follow rules. I feel pressure to always take care of myself, and this is something I’d like to take delight in. But, sometimes I want to do the opposite: run around smoking cigarettes, getting drunk, and just hiding away, under some covers. I have to let these “unwholesome” thoughts be okay too.
I went for a walk today. I worked out in the gym. I ate salad, tempeh and cheese. My cold is getting better, I think. I don’t want to be sick. Privacy is needed. Loneliness is needed to contemplate and really learn something without all the distractions.
I feel like to tell my story of cancer, I have to go back to the heartbreak of my brother’s death. To really let that sink in and to really chew on that was a very profound practice.
In Buddhism, I found the tools to keep that kind of profundity close at hand. We are taught the Four Reminders - everything is impermanent, this life is precious, there is a cause and effect to our actions, and that attaching our happiness to something outside of us doesn’t work. To realize that this life is finite and death can come without warning is a powerful teaching.
Although, I have to admit that I’ve spent some time with nihilism and sometimes I get stuck there. This frame of mind leads me to believe that nothing matters, and there is no point to anything. It’s premature to stop there … there’s more to the story. It doesn’t mean there is no point to this life, although sometimes I wonder, and this is what gets me messed up … I think of all the people in my life and them dying— me dying, and it doesn’t have quite the same impact as it once did. Maybe all my tears are dried up. My breast cancer seemed like, okay, now what?
I’m not sure that I haven’t created another kind of way to shield myself from the world with this practice of emptiness.
My cancer diagnosis made sense to me. I hadn’t felt well in years, I had been holding on to grief and my tumor was over my heart. Now it was time to let all of that go and live a new chapter in my life, and I was glad to have this lump removed. I could swear I knew when the cancer was gone. Dealing with cancer seemed like cake …
Although when I think about chemo, I wonder if I could do it again. When I think about the daily visits to the radiologists where I had to strip, expose my breast to strangers and feel very cold and apologetic to the technicians for not being more cheerful. I didn’t really want to be there, but I went because that was what was recommended. I have a scar that is pretty deep on my right upper chest from the port and tattooed dots for the radiologists to tell where they need to aim. I guess I could be grateful to the people who do that work, and thank them for being there and saving people’s lives.
Honestly, I couldn’t get there.
It makes me think of my second job and the homeless people I work for— them being grumpy and some co-workers demanding a “thank you.”
I can see how “thank you” is the polite thing to say and people often don’t do the polite thing, and it’s just basic respect, but I get why people don’t always want to say “thank you.”
12.30.10
This is Thursday of retreat. Moments of awareness and insight are fleeting.
Cancer as path. I never got into the support networks much, and maybe that is because I don’t like sharing or something. Maybe it makes me too vulnerable. But, I did appreciate my Buddhist Women Practioners with Cancer group. Maybe I could have benefited from other groups. Who knows? Some people make complete life changes when they are confronted with cancer. The changes I noticed in myself were that I let people help me more than I did before. Also, there was this letting go of holding back— asking for what I needed, not being embarrassed to do so. I no longer “had” to take care of everything.
Now, I seem to have fallen, at least somewhat in these new realized truths. I don’t always ask for what I need.
I viewed my cancer diagnosis as a wake up call. However, I believe that my practice is actually what woke me up to the fact that I had cancer. I remember not viewing the cancer as for or against me, and yet somehow it needed to be destroyed, because if I didn’t destroy it, it might make me sicker.
I do know that I didn’t take it personally, but I definitely knew there were ways I could pay more attention to my health. Years of grief— stuck in that trauma and grief. I neglected basic ways of attending to my health. I took my good health for granted and was an inactive participant in my physical health. I had to change my habits, my way of being if I wanted to be healthy.
Years ago, I had to ask myself why I wanted to get out of bed in the morning, and what was my motivation? It is a question I still have to ask myself on a regular basis.
Maybe I was born strange. I look around and everyone seems to have purpose and drive and gets the whole “life” thing and that “ life” is important just simply because it is. I can get that, but I can’t hold onto it, and I want to. I want to know in my bones that there is purpose and meaning to all of this. I guess I trust that for the most part. I don’t feel suicidal, but I do wonder if it will affect my ability to thrive when the shit hits the fan, and did I bring this cancer on myself for this way of thinking. Is this just the working of a depressed mind, a mind that just doesn’t have proper serotonin flow?
Could it be as simple as just enjoy life? One of the things my path talks about is precious human birth. Mostly, I am glad to be a human being, and I am not sure what it would be like to be anything but a human being. The idea is to use it well, don’t take things for granted, life as you know it could end at any moment.
We live in a world of distractions that pull us away from what is happening right now, and our lives begin to feel meaningless …
1.9.11
All of this changes daily. I am grateful and not grateful at the same time. I saw this biography on Ram Das today. I’ve always had this idea that he was a wanna- be spiritual teacher, and I’m so glad I saw this video because he is an amazing human being.
There were so many touching parts to the film. A big part of the film was his journey with his stroke and how he related to his stroke and applied it to his path … I heard a program from This American Life about a man who ended his life and his talking about it as a viable option. His own mother had killed herself when he was an infant, and so this became a part of his consciousness — suicide as a way to relate to life …
1.13.11
The preciousness we feel about life cannot be contrived. You never forget the first time you let the whole thing drop, the primordial rug pull out from under you. It is devastating and beautiful simultaneously. It is where we understand paradox.
Experience changes daily. I think I never let myself stop with the cancer thing. I think stopping is a wonderful healer. Letting the whole thing crumble and fall apart. “Don’t ignore the shadow.”
I’ve been medicated on anti-depressants, and this was probably a really good idea while I was going through treatment, but at this point I feel like I can’t feel the way I have in the past. I used to be afraid of the intensity of my feelings, and maybe I still am a little … or a lot.
I just told someone that I think if I let the reality of grief that comes through my door settle in, that I would never stop crying.
I got a reply that “think” is the key word.
The truth is things shift, it’s not stagnant, and sadness also blooms delight, and joy. These things kind of go together. I don’t know when I stopped knowing that to be true. Wanting to fit in to mainstream culture and be cheerful, and yes I want to, but it needs to be genuine. And, I like being cheerful and happy about ordinary things. The details. God is in the details.
Pleasure. Pleasing. Thinking on my life and the ordinary confidences.
There was a woman in my cancer support group who was dying. There was no cure for what she had, and she was so frustrated with our group because she needed to talk about dying and we needed to talk about “surviving” or living, or whatever. She got something that none of us could get, because you don’t really step into those shoes until you have to.
The thing about my cancer is I really didn’t know I was sick. In retrospect, it is obvious, but it sort of became normal. Our lives become this habit, and we adjust to whatever comes our way. I see it all the time, people showing up at my office wondering how they got there— homeless. When they tell their story, it seems somewhat obvious to an outsider, but when things are going along, it just seems like life.
I long for simplicity and yet am drawn into the world … of worldly things. I would think a person like me would do exactly what I know my heart wants me to do, and it just isn’t that way, and I’m not sure why. Maybe I haven’t let it sink in this time, thinking that letting it settle in will kill me, when in fact it may be the very thing that saves my life and brings me joy and lets me be the person I’m born to be and manifest in the world— whatever that is supposed to mean.
1.15.11
I was listening to some conversations from the radio show “On Being” with Krista Tippett. It made me want to step up. If I’m not to relate to difficult times in my life as something to open me, soften me, and deepen my understanding of empathy, than this whole thing doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
On one of the shows, there was an interfaith panel. The relationship to body was asked of all the panelists. The body and how it is treated and related to is path for all of the traditions present. I’m one of those people who has probably lived a short distance from my body most of my life. I have learned to learn more from this body I am in.
I remember a friend of mine once said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” It irritated me at the time because I was young, and it still irritates me, but I get what he was saying. When you’re young, you take your health for granted; you don’t even know that you are healthy, because you’ve never been sick… I’m generalizing, but that’s basically how it is. We learn from contrast, or at least I do.
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Beka Davis is a 38 year old woman, living in Boulder, CO, with her partner, two dogs and two cats. She is very grateful to all the people she has had the privilege to work with on their own paths. She is intrigued by life and aspires to let it open her in a way that allows her to be a compassionate presence.
Hollie Chastain’s artwork accompanies Beka’s writing above. Chastain is a full-time found paper and collage artist in Chattanooga, Tennessee. A creative spirit and early interest in art led to dabbling in watercolor, pottery, glass and earned her a degree in fine arts. Influenced by nature and fairy tales, she lets water stains, scribble and natural aging play into her pieces. The subject of the piece is often influenced by the materials as opposed to building around a sketch or idea. She creates a world of adventure and secrets open for the viewer’s interpretation. You can purchase a print of this featured piece and more via her online store.
