[the last day of summer]

Today's the last day of Summer 2012, and it's been a pretty decent summer marked mostly by working but also by hanging out with friends. Amos moved out of Claypole and into the Cellar at John & Brandy's, and thus my life grew a bit more exciting: I actually had someplace to go other than my own home to hang out with my buddies! This, in turn, led to hanging out with John & Brandy much more, and that's been awesome. Andy stopped working at Tazza Mia and started working at Q'doba, and Ams moved down the street to Chris & Sarah's house on Glenway (giving me yet another not-at-home location to see people I love). The brutally hot weather's been replaced with the first tastes of autumn, and people have been breaking out jeans and sweatshirts in preparation for what's coming. It's been a good summer, albeit one marked with anxiety cropping up because of that whole "you may have cancer" thing, and exacerbated by the recent news of one of my friends' dad being diagnosed with lymphoma (he's started chemo and is doing really good, so that's definitely excellent news!). 

I talked to Blake about it a bit this evening, how I've been anxiety-ridden over the last couple weeks, convinced that every little discomfort is a signpost to cancer or something worse. He shook his head, smiled, compassionately told me to stop thinking like that. I've had most of the preliminary tests that doctors order for suspicion of cancer, and I've passed every test with flying colors. If I had any sort of cancer, it would've shown up in the test results somewhere. But as it is, I'm in phenomenal shape (to quote my doctor). But that's how irrational fears work: by ignoring logic, by slighting common sense, they are therefore irrational. We all have irrational fears of some sort, some more toxic than others, and we all need people in our lives who can think clearly outside the fog in our own brains and speak truth to us. I'm thankful that Blake is one of those people in my life. 

I sometimes reflect on the days before I was haphazardly told I might have had cancer. Ever since that moment, those few hours when I was convinced I was dying and the next two months when we were going through the various tests, life's been a bit different. I'm more aware of both my mortality and fragility. There's fear there, but it was never really fear of death itself. It was fear of living an insignificant life, of not making any sort of tangeable impact, of coming and going without leaving the faintest trace. There was the fear of dying and no longer being with my family, and there was the fear of knowing that they'd still laugh and share their lives together without me in it. It's selfish, I know, but I imagined Mom & Dad growing old and me not being there, Amanda getting married and having kids and me not knowing them. I was never too concerned about the experience of death (after all, everyone before me has gone through it and will go through it, and as a shared experience a bit of the fear is taken away), just about the after-effects here after I was gone. Amanda told me that if I died she'd lose it. I can't imagine what it would do to my family. And I don't like thinking these thoughts.

This summer was marked by lots of good moments, but underlying all of it was the constant and nagging fear that something awful was growing inside me, something that would snatch my breath away. I'm hoping this next season won't be marked by these anxieties, that I'll be able to dispel such fears with logic and reason, reminding myself that I've gone through a gauntlet of tests and doctor appointments, and everyone of any knowledge is convinced I'm in great shape. The fears are birthed solely from my own insecurities and issues, and I'm the only one who, at times, is convinced that something's quite amiss. But I'm not a doctor, and it is wise to leave such pronouncements in the hands of those who have the knowledge to make them. And the consensus all around the board is that I'm fine. So here's to autumn 2012, hoping it's filled with its own adventures and excitements and free of the same crippling anxieties that have been overtaking me like a psychological Katrina in the wasteland of my heart.