pre-Op

I finally found it: it's not a fear, it's easy to live with, and it's the worst thing that you could ever do to yourself. It's never having lived your life in the first place. It's worrying about how you should be and never getting to know yourself. It's diverted dreams, thwarted passions, and lost time. It's not for me.

My SuperBall travel began in April, and I thought it would be about conquering all of my fears: snipers, sexual confusion, rejection, social anxiety, heights, dancing, everyday confrontations, automatic cowardice, being ball-less, feeling sorry for myself, etc... Instead, I've come to cherish and respect those fears, how they can bring my surroundings into sudden focus and force me to move against that paralysis of petrified indecision. I'm reminded of this as my third surgery in less than a year is days away.

It's a minor surgery to correct a growing incisional hernia from my February operation, and it's bringing back that same pure fear of being unconscious under the sharp, probing tools of highly-trained strangers.

The first emergency surgery was, well, on the same day that I found out about the tumor, so I had about four hours to mull that over before being put under. Instead of taking the time to process that, I orchestrated a long overdue break up with my girlfriend two days after the surgery. I focused on that and my redesigned anatomy rather than contemplate that powerlessness I felt on December 28^th.

I got to decide whether or not I'd go with the second, more intense surgery, which involved being opened up from my waist to just below my sternum by surgeons who needed to rearrange my organs to cut out my abdominal lymph nodes. I chose that over the uncertainty that would come with cancer surveillance, basically intensive check-ups every couple months over the course of five years. I was proud of that decision and started fantasizing about traveling afterward, but despite all the acceptance of potential side effects, I didn't make my peace with that second round of powerlessness on February 8^th

I'm getting a third opportunity to address that with this next surgery. Another distraction that has come up is this gut feeling that my luck has run out, that this next silly operation will go awry, that I don't get another chance. When I think like that, it immobilizes me, like my other fears before I named and embraced them. This continues until I realize that there is nothing I can do about that; I have to accept that powerlessness and focus on the parts of my life that I can control. And then something strange happens: I feel happy, I feel free, I feel like I can finally LIVE. I've got a book to finish and a marathon to run. I can't wait; I've already started.