I blame this entry on my family. Last month, on my final morning at the River, a few of my dad’s cousins asked whether I’d continue writing in my blog. I shrugged and said “I don’t know.” I hadn’t really planned to since the original idea behind the blog was to keep everyone posted while I was going through chemo. Chemo’s done, so I’m moving on to other things.
My family wanted none of that. They showered my writing with praise and flattered me to the point that I really had no choice. So here we go.
Even if I hadn’t had that conversation, I still would have begun this entry by thanking my family for the two weeks I had back home. For months, LA was the light at the end of the tunnel. I gritted my teeth and endured everything cancer could throw at me knowing my reward would be seeing my family and my hometown again.
I’ve learned so much this past year, but one thing that became very apparent while I was in LA was the truth about love. I think most people are fine with accepting love as a very basic emotion with little rhyme or reason to it. For the most part, I can go along with that. When I really think about it, though, it’s not that simple. I believe that you can’t truly love something unless you know its faults. This goes for anything that might be important to you: Your family, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a place, a band, a sports team, anything. When you witness and acknowledge its flaws and love it because of some and in spite of others, then you know that love is true.
If you don’t do this, then what you’re feeling is not true love. It is more like blind devotion. That might get you by for a while, but ultimately it isn’t as fulfilling as true love and will probably lead to problems down the road.
I love my family and I love Los Angeles. Neither is perfect – they fall well short, actually – but I wouldn’t have it any other way. They will always provide all the support I need and, if nothing else, seeing them for exactly what they are makes a lot more sense out of who I am, who I’ve been, and what I will become.
***
Not many things in life end up happening exactly as you hoped they would. Usually there are too many factors along the way for everything to happen perfectly. I was lucky enough to experience something almost perfect on my second night in LA. Earlier I mentioned how LA was the light at the end of my tunnel. It was the thought of one thing in particular that gave me courage to keep going.
Manhattan Beach will always be a special place for me. It started when I was a kid and my dad took me and my brother there for afternoons at the beach. That was the place where he spent many of his teenage beach bum days in the late 70s. It will always mean something different to me because I don’t know the beach or the ocean like he does, but it is special to me because it offers the greatest atmosphere for reflective solitude that I know. I’ve spent so many hours from so many nights there, listening to the waves, trying to absorb the vastness of the ocean, watching birds scamper along the wet sand as the tide rises, and rarely do my thoughts ever come through so clearly. I perceive things in memories and floating ideas that aren’t as apparent to me anywhere else.
For six months all I wanted was to get back there so I could look back on everything I had accomplished, knowing I would be able to see it all from my spot on the beach.
I went there on my second night in LA, long after it had turned dark. I walked along the pier for a while, then went down to sit in the sand. My initial feelings and impressions were so strange. There are so many instances throughout life when you long to go back in time. Perhaps you wish you’d done something differently or have some great memories that you want to relive. I don’t know that I fit into either category – or maybe I fit into both – but for a little while, I got to go back. The last time I went to Manhattan Beach was right before my 24th birthday. Sitting there almost exactly a year later, everything looked and felt the same. That made me wonder: Had I changed at all? Was I exactly the same person I had been a year ago or was I completely different? The space between the two seemed so small, almost imperceptible. I was back in June of 2008, so from there, in a matter of minutes, I went through everything that had happened to me since then.
It all hit me at once. I felt the first tear coming and I fought like hell to hold it back but it was too strong. Once I felt it drop from my cheek, I lost all control. I sobbed and sobbed and the sound of the ocean grew until it nearly drowned out the music on my iPod. At first, I didn’t know why I cried so hard. Then I remembered, it wasn’t just cancer this past year, though that would have been plenty. Life ripped me to shreds. For a few minutes I felt the weight of every loss, every shock, every discovery, every gift, every ounce of pain and joy.
Amidst all of this, through my headphones I heard John Frusciante sing one of my favorite lyrics ever:
“I’ve flown through mirrors,
Almost disappearing.”
I cried because I actually made it back to my spot on Manhattan Beach, and as I finished crying I kept hearing a voice repeat one thing over and over:
I did it.
***
I did it. I made it out of everything, and now I’m pissed.
When I was a kid I figured out that anger is much easier to deal with than sadness, rejection, frustration, or any other negative emotion. Those other ones all make me feel lost. I turn them into anger and I feel right at home.
Once that last tear fell on the beach, everything turned to rage. I thought about all the hours I lost to chemo and everything that was taken from me last year, and I want it back. I want it all back and then some. I want everything I had before I got sick, then I want all the things I was too scared to go for in my first 25 years. I used to wait for things to come to me, but I’m done with that. There’s nothing to do except reach out and take them. I know what I have to lose, and none of it is anything I haven’t lost before.
One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is my inability to motivate myself. I’ve always needed some external factor and I always do better when I’m angry and feel like I have something to prove.
I did great in my last three years of college because I was pissed at myself for screwing up my first year and I wanted to prove to my family that I wasn’t a loser who slept through class and got grades that were far beneath him, like I did in high school.
When I was 23, I started practicing guitar like a man possessed after a run-in I had with the guitarist of a rival band. Though I knew I’d never see the guy again, I knew I was better than him and I had to prove it.
Throughout chemo, all I wanted was to show my family that I was tough, that cancer couldn’t beat me.
Right now I don’t have to look very far for motivation. It is readily available in the memories I have of all the people who fucked me over and turned their backs on me, not to mention the disease that tried to kill me and the treatment which made me a shut-in for six months. Slowly but surely, I’m leaving them all behind, at least in my own mind. For the past few weeks, I’ve been running at least four times per week, and I’m back at the gym at least twice a week. My stamina still is not anywhere near where I’d like it to be, but it is improving faster than even I would have guessed. I may not be able to throw punches for as long as I did before, but you still wouldn’t want to feel my left hook or my right cross.
And the memories of the past year drive me every day. On my daily run, my lungs start to burn as I turn the corner of Armitage and Pulaski. I’ll have none of that, though, because I’ve still got 15 minutes left to go, so I tell myself,
You went through six months of chemo and you can’t run for 15 more minutes? Quit being a bitch and just finish this.
At the gym, my left shoulder gets sore during my second round of shadow boxing. That’s too bad, because I’ve still got four rounds to go on the heavy bag and speed bag. I imagine the pain is cancer’s death rattle, its last attempt to bring me down, so I tell it to fuck off:
You still think you can hold me back, huh? You’re wrong. You had your shot and you couldn’t knock me out. Now don’t come back unless you’re carrying a loaded gun.
People keep telling me to listen to my body. I get why they say that and I appreciate their concern, but they can’t understand where I’m coming from. I had to listen to my body for almost 8 months, while it was being held hostage. That’s over now. I’m ecstatic about having my body back – we’re working together again – but I’m calling the shots. If it could take all that abuse which made it weaker then it should have no problem with the kind that makes it stronger.
I’m happy to work hard all the time now. In fact, I get restless if I’m still for more than an hour. It feels like wasted time, time that could be spent trying to accomplish something. I’m not down for that, because here is something else I’ve learned:
Lasting happiness never comes for free. There are no shortcuts because nothing is perfect. There are no fairy tales.
These facts are not to be lamented but celebrated. This world is exciting because of its flaws. Some we could do without, for sure, but who would really want perfect? Perfect is a straight road. Before long perfect would become predictable. It would be boring. We tell fairy tales to children to preserve their innocence and help give them some sort of moral and ethical base. By the time we’re adults, we know better. We may still enjoy fairy tales, but only as escapist pleasures. Those who still chase fairy tales as adults are always disappointed.
Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean we have to work for anything enduring. If something comes for free or happens over night, chances are it will not last. You can ruin lasting happiness in a matter of seconds, but it takes some substantial time to attain it. It requires patience, discipline, attentiveness, and honesty.
I get that now. All that time I spent waiting for things to come to me or looking for an easy way out was a waste. I was scared and I was not completely honest with myself or many of the people around.
I know what I’m going for in the immediate future. I’m going to find a way back home. It is difficult because we’re living in unprecedented and scary times. This is not the America we were raised to believe in, but that just means I have to work a little harder and exercise a little more patience. My first few ideas for moving back to LA didn’t work so now I’m trying some new ones, and I think I may have found something.
Once that is taken care of, who knows?
Maybe I’ll finish the music and writing projects I started during my time off and see if they get me anywhere. Maybe I’ll go to law school. Maybe I’ll do both.
The fight against cancer is much longer than you might think. Just because you’ve finished chemotherapy does not mean you are done. You merely enter a new phase. Chemo gets cancer off your back and places your foot on its throat. Once it is done, your job is to step down hard and twist. You do that by building your body back up, reclaiming the quality of life you had before, then improving all of that.
I’m proud to be where I’m at right now, but I am not finished. I am still fighting. It is with me every day. Maybe that’s why I can’t sit still.
Would I go back in time if I had the chance? Back before all this happened, to the places and people which now exist only in the stories and songs I write? Six months ago I would have said “Yes,” but now the future looks too good to want to go back. I’ll see hard times again – no doubt – but I’m ready for that. There are far more good things in store for me. There has to be. And I know whatever I get, it will last. I’ve paid too high a price for it to happen otherwise.
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