One Year On.

This week marks the first anniversary since my diagnosis with stage IV cancer.  It’s strange when this all started, there was a very good chance I was facing a terminal diagnosis.  I didn’t really expect to still be here one year on. At the time I can’t honestly say I even cared. I was so tired of being the unstoppable force crashing against the immovable object of expectation.  Seneca the Younger writes: “Show me that the good of life does not depend on life’s length, but upon the use we make of it; also, that it is possible, or rather usual, for a man who has lived long to have lived too little.” 

I haven’t been quick to show myself, even in this space between surviving months of chemo, radiation and whatever comes next; this period of détente, of watching and waiting. I lost 99 lbs, lost some head hair, lost all my body hair, my skin was a boiling, irradiated mess, my throat was raw, my insides in chaos, my heart broken, but in the depth of that solemn province I found my will. My thoughts remained ever on the lessons within.  This is the first self-portrait I’ve taken since before my body began to reclaim itself. I look whole again, even if I don’t quite feel it and tend to fake it most days. For sometimes it is an act of bravery even to live.