Health Update, 8/4/16, and Four-Day Weekend

by Charity

The biopsy result was negative, per a phone call from our doctor's office two days ago.  "You made my day,"  Allegra told the caller.  Of course we're relieved, but it feels strange after being in crisis mode for a month, from the day that we had the mammogram and sonogram until the day that we got the test results.  Exactly a month.

Going from one state of consciousness to another, one feeling to another, one physical setting to another, has always been difficult for me.  I adjust very slowly.  This is one of the reasons that I have such a history of hanging onto dysfunction rather than choosing healthy steps forward.  Change is unsafe.  Familiar is safe.  Even when familiar is harmful.  The illusion of safety trumps the reality of harm.

I feel insane saying this.  I could rattle off a litany of twelve-step maxims that state why it's important to make healthy choices.  None of those maxims address the underlying feeling of terror that's served as an undercurrent through our entire life.

I don't want to think about the biopsy any more.  I don't want to think about living in a 54-year-old body, or the fact that every second that goes by is one second gone from our life on earth.  I feel guilty about resenting millenials and post-millenials, because they have so much time ahead of them and have little or no concept of how valuable or finite time is.

And I feel insane for seeing life as a 25-year-old in this ever-aging body, although our T points out that a 25-year-old baby boomer, which is essentially how I see myself as an individual, is very different from a 25-year-old millennial.  There's 25, and then there's 25.
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We fell asleep on the couch last night and didn't wake up until 6am, which is the time we set our alarm on days that we get up early.  Usually if we fall asleep on the couch we wake up by 2 or 3am at the latest and then go to bed.  I know it's an unhealthy sleep pattern, but someone in here is terrified of sleep.  I've always believed that it's me, and it often is, but we're sensing that it's also someone else, someone very young, whose experience of terror parallels my own.  This someone isn't stepping forward.

So this morning we woke up feeling like a lead weight, waking at 6am even though we took two vacation days for today and tomorrow.  We're intentionally missing the company picnic, which was today, and we had no desire to work on a Friday after taking off on a Thursday.  We ended up puttering around the house, doing a little cleaning and organizing, because Allegra gets restless when she's doing nothing.  And we did the puzzles in the newspaper, although I'm not very interested in puzzles.  I leave that to Laura, Allegra, and whoever else enjoys it.

We need to eat dinner.  We still don't have energy.  It looks like it's going to be a microwaved entree night.