dressing room

Find an image, try it on.  woman scorned? Running away from the terror at home? New age business woman? Why am I 38 trying on personas?  My husband has cancer.  I can’t explain that so well. I can explain the disease he has.  I can explain the operations he has had; the dangerous fluid build up that followed the second tumor removal- what likely caused it, why they were so afraid, what he had to do to heal.  I can explain several different treatments, what happens post radiation, and what might happen with the poison he has to take to kill the cancer, otherwise known as the chemotherapy.  I can even describe the staples in his head.  I don’t know what it feels like to have staples in your head, though.  And try as I might, I don’t think I could describe what it is to realize that for the foreseeable future, we will have to face his mortality every two months.  And every month, when he takes that poison, too. I can’t explain why, when it hits him hard, I move through mud, can barely wind my own gears. It’s like there is a physical chord that connects us, not just the binds of marriage and love.  The house gets three steps beyond messy, deep into slob land.  Therapists tell me I am dealing with superhuman type issues.  Not living your normal life.  I guess I always knew that wasn’t in the cards for me.  But why does “not your normal life” have to be one of the hardest hands that one can be dealt?