One year, Part I

 In the blink of an eye, it’s the one year anniversary of Jonathan’s cancer diagnosis. It feels like that moment you come home after a long day. When you sit down on the couch and let out a deep exhale, the kind that you take a moment to let your lungs relax before continuing your breathing cycle over again. This passage of time, this moment of being here, still moving, honestly shocks me. There were so many moments where I felt so paralyzed with fear that I couldn’t process a single thing. That feeling was devastating, and often left me feeling inadequate and depleted. Life didn’t stop to let me work through all of that, we just had no other choice but to make plans of how to continue moving forward. 

In a year marred by chaos, I’ve been finding that my clearest memories are strung together by pronounced silence. I remember clearly silence after I finally turned off the news after listening to whatever nonsense that came out of the President’s mouth in his address to the nation in early March. I tried to steady my breath while coming to terms that everything about the routine I had calculated to keep my anxiety at bay would be disrupted. I remember clearly the silence after Jonathan and I discussed our fears on how we would be able to pay rent or bills, since I was the only person with an income at that time. For a few seconds, Jonathan’s words “we’ll figure it out, it will be ok.” hung in the air while we sat side by side at our kitchen island. I wanted to say “we don’t know that.” but I didn’t want the last part of our conversation to feel so hopeless. I remember clearly the silence seconds after Jonathan told me the doctors had diagnosed him with cancer. I remember clearly the silence after our phone calls with the doctors after they laid out all of our options. Oh god, do I remember the silence that weighed our entire existence down when we got home from his chemotherapy sessions. Those were the most painful silences that engulfed us and wouldn’t release until we went to sleep and came back as soon as Jonathan left for chemo again the next morning. 

Early into the pandemic, I perfected the skill of not listening to myself panic. I’ve spent the last 10 years with fear and doubt playing steadily in the background of all of my thoughts. Perpetual notes of cruel words and scenarios that make it hard to concentrate and spoil any goodness that tries to enter. A week before the shutdowns were put into place, my mind became an unbearable place to be. Was this going to bad as experts were saying it would? “No, you stupid piece of shit.” I’d tell myself  “This is getting blown out of proportion and you look stupid for being so afraid.” That all changed when everything shut down, when everyone was desperate for answers and the world came to a hard stop. For most of that time I almost felt a sense of validation. I was afraid for a reason, everyone was. The constant battle of back and forth ended and even though I still felt so anxious that I worried my heart would stop beating, there was this new silence. This one seemed to anesthetize me. With every new piece of information I received, those merciless words I was used to never came back. They weren’t replaced with kind words or any words at all for that matter. It just felt like white noise machine had been placed in my head. Breaking news: New York City is now the epicenter of the pandemic! Silence. Breaking news: No rental relief for anyone! Silence. Breaking news: Your husband has cancer. Your husband has cancer. Your husband has cancer.

More silence.