Regretful

May 11, 2018

Some days the dying thoughts rule over the living life thoughts. As I move through life, I forget that I’m human. As I get more time in between the, “you could die” moments, I delude myself into thinking that maybe it will miss me. Maybe I’ll escape or I’ll win this game of hide-and-go-seek and this time, death will be it. But that next doctor’s appointment reminds me my mortality is just as real as everyone else’s, but a little more demanding than most.

And now this feeling is back. The feeling of knowing what death is. After three and a half years from that moment in the backyard, that moment asking my dad what would happen, I’m here again. 

I have a tumor. A type of tumor that is colloquially known as a “time bomb.” A tumor that could cause a sudden and fatal spike in blood pressure that would take me out before anyone could even dial 911. The surgery is risky. I might not survive. And I’m scared.

I’m so scared I don’t know how to put my feelings into words. Before, with the brain surgery, I had six days from diagnosis to surgery. It wasn’t until two weeks post-op, when I saw a picture of the back of my head after surgery that I truly realized how close to dying I had been. I didn’t have more than a moment on the porch to think about death before the surgery. But now it’s different. I found out three weeks ago I have this tumor and I still have two more weeks before I get my test results.

I have weeks to think about how my life could end before I even knew it happened. Almost every moment of every single day I feel this tumor choking the life out of me. Suffocating the dreams and draining enthusiasm from my heart. I feel it replacing every ounce of vivacity with dread and sorrow and loneliness and weight.

I feel heavy with the weight of my mortality. Heavy with the words left unsaid, the actions left undone, and the dreams that might never be realized. I’m twenty-three, how on earth do I have regrets? My regrets are not the opportunities I missed while I was living, but the ones I’ll never get to see if my body has its way.

I feel completely incapable of being alive when the possibility of my death hangs so closely. I pray I dodge it but acknowledge that I can’t do a single thing to stop its approach. This won’t be accomplished by my own effort. And I feel powerless.

And I don’t know what to do with this feeling. I don’t know how to operate. Do I sit and wait? Do I go skydiving? I’m not going to go skydiving. What if my decisions don’t seem worth it anymore? The choices I’ve made with the time I thought I had. The relationships I allowed thinking it really didn’t matter as much when my time wasn’t as precious. All that I’ve wasted, all that I’ve taken for granted, it doesn’t matter. I can’t get it back.

And this is my problem. I’ve been through this before. I’ve faced life or death. I’ve seen my mortality time and time again, but I still haven’t learned. We see these movies and tv shows of people facing death and then living to the fullest for the rest of the time they have, whether it’s long or short. But we never see the stories of people facing death and then going back to a slightly modified version of the life they lived before. Of course not, that’s not inspiring. So I feel powerless and uninspiring and mortal and like I’ll never learn my lesson, or that I’ll learn it too late.

But really, it’s kind of ridiculous to expect a tumor is going to turn me into a “living life to the fullest” “YOLO” kind of person when I’m naturally a risk-averse, weigh-the-consequences, creature-of-habit. Chronic and serious illness hasn’t changed me fundamentally as a person. It’s magnified some of my personality traits, exposed others, and overall shone a light on who I am at the core of my being, how I interact with others, what I do when I’m stressed, and how I react when I’m pressed. My diagnoses didn’t plant these things in me, it simply provided the conditions for them to grow. Showing myself and others both the flowers and weeds that combine to make the garden that is me.

It is ridiculous to expect that a diagnosis is going to turn a person into an authentic, genuine, and transformed individual who doesn’t waste a day, an hour, or a minute or let an opportunity pass by or not tell a person their true feelings of love or hate or regret or hope.

It’s ridiculous because this revelation and transformation aren’t instant or perfect. Hearing the words “fatal” or “risky brain surgery” or “tumor” from a doctor doesn’t cue a Freaky Friday moment where instead of swapping bodies with your mom you become the most loving, kind, genuine, and fearless version of yourself. I wish!

Living a daring, bold, fearless, authentic life is a skill that is learned, not an inherent side-effect of a treatment or cure. We can’t just know how to do this. I’m learning that it’s a hard and painful process. And it’s unfair of me to expect myself to automatically be living without anyone’s expectations or making courageous choices or being the most authentic version of myself simply because a tumor has taken up residence in my body. I’m still the same person I was before the diagnosis and for some reason, I’m frustrated with myself. I feel like I’m wasting time, missing opportunities, and that if my life ends on that operating table I won’t be able to say I’m proud of the way I left the world with the life that I lived.

I didn’t do everything I could have. I didn’t say everything I could have. There isn’t one specific thing I wish I had done differently, I don’t have a moment of regret I wish I could change now, but I do have overall themes I wish I had changed. I wish I hadn’t worried so much about what people would think. I wish I hadn’t thought I had to live up to some sort of cultural expectations. I wish I didn’t think my life had to look a certain way. I wish I didn’t feel like I had to apologize for being different. I wish I didn’t hide my quirks and idiosyncrasies. I wish I cared about people more. I wish I thought of myself less. I wish I learned how to show compassion a lot sooner. I wish I had been more sacrificing and less selfish.

I might die soon. I might not have the opportunity or time to make these changes. I might not have the opportunity to be proud of the life I lived or leave the world better than I found it. But I desperately hope and fervently pray that I do.  

A diagnosis, a life-threatening event, these don’t instantly create in us deep changes that cause us to live more freely, more fearlessly, more wholly. They are instead the motivation that leads us to make these changes ourselves, regardless of how grueling and arduous that process truly is.

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