Hey girl,
I just had to write. Sorry I’ve been out of commission lately. Company, work, laundry (and all the dryers are broken, by the way)…anyway, you know the drill.
Yeah, so the colon cleanse wasn’t so moving. I thought I’d be pooping out stuff from the late 90s–I was all excited, a little nervous. I thought I’d see alien-like beings and remnants of tater tot casserole, small villages and parasites. Whatever. We should get the Internet pills, because my kit didn’t cut it. Made Steph a little more hostile every time I let one go, but other than that, and one Oh-my-God-where’s-the-bathroom moment at the Field Museum, I’m not impressed. No flat belly, nothing.
I just had to tell you how hard it is lately. Lately, you ask? Yeah. After ten months of cancer treatment–Steph diagnosed with triple negative infiltrating ductal carcinoma on September fourth of last year, finding out she’s BRCA2 positive, then learning how aggressive the cancer is and how it doesn’t want her to live past 40. Sometimes I let myself listen to the numbers and sometimes I know God’s grace is sufficent for us. And sometimes I think of songs I’d play at her funeral. I can’t help it. Knowing what I’ve learned about breast cancer and its complications from treatment, I’m just worn down. I know if I have faith I can get through it and all that, but every day…and the little moments…that’s what’s hard. I think of how I knew her when I was 18 and she was 21. I’ve had a lot of flashes of our life when all we had to think about was affording gas station sun glasses and would she like a jalapeno Slim Jim. 
It’s stupid, I know. Faith, right? I don’t have enough. She told me the other day that we should stop praying for no return of the cancer, but recognize that He has already written it. We’re done and over with. I’ve got to believe that, but you got a vision of what I’ve been living with. In January–during chemo. I feel like I was such a kid then. After being a chemo caretaker for for four months (and anyone who knows Chicago October through January can testify it’s bitch already), I was a nurse and wife for her bilateral mastectomy: draining bulbs stuck to her armpits of lymphatic fluid and measuring it to give the recording to Hansen. Meeting with a radiologist so I could watch her side turn to raw hamburger with yellow juice oozing out. I know. I sound stupid. I hate that our human selves need validation.
I’ve seen Steph through the moment she found the lump last June, and it gained heat and girth and mass, and I denied that it was growing and changing, and she went to the gyno who sent her on to a surgeon.
I’ve even seen you and me when we were kids. When we bought that bubble bath at Walgreens and it said “for adult use only,” and we strapped on our suits and tentavely stepped in the tub. We were scared of disappearing, like Lily Tomlin, right? You were so brave, or stupid, like I was. And I always made you go first, and you did.
So I guess that’s what we do–sign up for brave and stupid suff. Or don’t sign up for it, it just happens, and then people think you’re brave or call you brave, and it’s like, “Brave? BRAVE? Insane is more like it. Stark raving nuts. Wanna do a shot?” Honestly, though, I didn’t think I had it in me. I still don’t. I know I don’t. I saw a picture of Steph with no hair and no eyebrows and no lashes the other day and I forgot. I forgot that I came home to that every day. That bald head. It hurts to look back on it, like I almost think I didn’t do it. We didn’t do it. Not like Steph has breasts still, because everyday I see that she doesn’t. I don’t know. People stop asking, and I want them to ask, because I want to talk about it.
I guess I’m just having a funk period. Sorry about my pity party. Just sometimes I think I’m crazy and if anyone will give me validation it’s you. I know I’ve placed a heavy load on you in the few months, and you’ve had to listen more than talk. But I do thank you. I don’t want any other outlet than you and Steph, though. And she’s the one going through the shit, so it’s you to help me back to sanity. Sorry about that.
Anyway, I’m gonna go crazy on you when you and B get out here later this month. Please prepare yourself for listening (I know…not again, right?). You are the one who never judges me, always listens, and even when you think I’m nuts, you’ll tell in such a pretty way that I almost love being outta my head.
Better go. Thanks for always being there. Wish you lived on, like, the fourth floor. Or the fifth. Fourth floor reeks.
Love,
Britt
jessica
brittymidge
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