Goodbye 2018: Takeaways from my annus horribilis
2018. Finally, finally, finally you are coming to an end! I can pretty confidently say that this year has been the shittiest one I have had so far. As I told my mom a few days ago, the only way it could have been worse is if I had actually hit the bucket (knock on wood because I still have a day and a half left in 2018…). The year wasn’t all bad though – most importantly, I really did not die! And I felt more love and support than I could ever have imagined. In many ways, this was both the longest and shortest year of my life. On the one hand, I feel like it lasted light years, while, on the other hand, so many things happened in such quick succession that I barely had time to register it. I do like to think that I have become a teeny tiny bit wiser this year. So, as I sit here in my room on the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, listening to the supremely annoying Ariana Grande’s Thank u, next on repeat (the girl always looks like she is politely suffering through a bad joke or someone passing air in an elevator), I came up with my top takeaways from twenty-fucking-eighteen.
1. People will go above and beyond for you
Throughout my life, I have been extraordinarily fortunate with people. I have a close-knit family who love me, and more close friends than the regular person. Even so, I was amazed at how people came out in droves to be there for me. People I had not seen in ages, people I had worked with or been friends with years ago sent me messages, flowers, handwritten cards. Someone was always available to accompany me to doctors’ appointments, 6 AM hospital check-ins and scans. All I had to do is say that I was feeling down and people would reach out to comfort me and take my mind off things. In fact, 99.9% of all people were genuinely nice to me, receptionists, Uber drivers, nurses, sales associates, random strangers. The list goes on and on. This year affirmed my belief that most people are intrinsically good and will go all out to help you.
2. Generosity begets generosity
So many people were generous with me this year in ways and that I could not have expected. Their generosity has made me or, at least, made me want to be a better, more caring, more present friend. This is one of my New Year’s resolutions – to give more and be there more.
3. Get rid of toxic people
Remember how I said that 99.9% of people are awesome human beings? Well, the remaining 0.1% are dickheads. The good thing about cancer is that is spring cleans your life. Worrying about living, dying, and possibly not being able to have babies later on, makes you realize that there is absolutely no reason to waste your time on people who add nothing to your life. They are simply not worth it. There is no point in trying to change or understand them. If someone is not treating you the way you deserve to be treated, whether it’s a friend (I feel like “frenemy” is probably the correct term here), crazy relative, colleague, random Starbucks guy, forget about them and let them go. Surgically remove them, excise them from your existence. I realize that it’s not easy to simply make a person disappear (unless you’re in the Mob), but you can distance yourself from the wrong people. Don’t reach out to them, ignore their antics, don’t look at their social media, forget that they exist. All of our time is limited, we should not waste it on people who don’t matter.
4. Don’t sweat the small stuff
There were time this year that I was completely overwhelmed by how many things were going on at the same time. It was as if my brain were a computer running too much software and was about to freeze. So I had to perform a mental Cltr+Alt+Delete and force quit some of the programs. That meant stopping to obsess over measly issues that in the grand scheme of things could not even properly be classified as ‘problems’. A rule of thumb – anything that you have no control over, or that will have no lasting impact on your life is simply not worth stressing over. Prioritize what you care about, and let go of the small stuff.
5. Give yourself a (regular) break
When I got diagnosed, one of the first not am-I-gonna-live thoughts that came to me was “Shit! I am probably not going to make the minimum billable hours at my firm this year!” (For all you non-lawyers reading, a ‘billable hour’ at a law firm is an hour of work for a paying client. In most firms, if you reach a minimum billable hour goal by the end of the year, you are eligible to receive a bonus, and it looks good on your review. It’s a very large carrot and a very large stick at the same time.) Did I realize that it was absolutely insane to worry about this when I had a rare, aggressive breast cancer that was already taking up more that two thirds of my right breast? Yes, I did. Did I still beat myself up about it? You betcha. This and other questions would preoccupy my mind every so often. I had to learn to calm down that nagging voice at the back of my head. No one can have or be everything all the time. Sometimes you’ve just got to cut your losses. So the next time you are obsessive over something and putting pressure on yourself, have a sanity check. If you can’t give yourself one, talk to a friend who can relate. Ask them if you’re cray. And if they say “Yeah, boo, you cray!”, listen to them and stop beating yourself up.
6. Listen to your body
As a “sick” person, I have discussed abnormal bodily functions and illnesses with more people than I care to count, and you would be surprised how many of them are scared to go to the doctor and prefer to rationalize away their symptoms. This is, by far, the stupidest thing you could ever do. For me, everything started with a weird bump in my breast. It wasn’t a textbook cancerous lump, just a weird bump that appeared on day out of nowhere. I was 31 years old, with zero family history of breast cancer, at the end of my period, and I had recently bumped my boob on something. It should not have been cancer. Every single person I talked to told me not to worry. And to be perfectly frank, I myself did not want to worry, especially since every single circumstance pointed towards the fact that it was just going to be some weird bout of mastitis or an infection. I lost one of my closest friends to a late cancer diagnosis, and I can’t help but wonder whether she would still be with us if she had gotten checked out earlier. I will forever be grateful that I saw my gyno almost straight away. By the time I got diagnosed a little less than a month later (I had to wait two weeks for the mammogram and then another week for the biopsy results), the fucker had spread to two thirds of my breast and the peripheral lymph nodes. Had I brushed it off and listened to the voice of “reason”, I could have ended up with a cancer that had metastasized and my story would have panned out a lot differently. Obviously, none of us wants to be a hypochondriac, but at the end of the day, it’s better to seem a little crazy and overbearing than to find yourself at a dead end.
7. Your body really is a wonderland
One of the most surprising and encouraging things I have learned this year is that, to quote John Mayer, my body is a wonderland. This year, I broke my hip, did five months of chemotherapy, had laparoscopic surgery to remove part of my ovary, had a mastectomy and a month of radiation therapy. I lost all of my hair, had nosebleeds every morning, all but lost my nails, and had to deal with a fifteen centimeter mastectomy scar on my chest. And yet, somehow, I am alright. My hair is growing back, my heart is strong despite all the drugs that I was (and still am being) pumped with – my body is healing pretty much on its own. For me, this is a magical and supremely comforting fact – that the human body is strong and resilient, and that, as long as you take care of it, it will regenerate.
8. You can’t get out of a shit place with your eyes closed
This ties in with takeaway #6 – you cannot begin to address a problem if you refuse to acknowledge that it exists. It’s sort of like if you need to drive from point A to point B but refuse to accept that you are behind the wheel. No one is to hear ‘You’ve got cancer’ at any point in their lives, but once those words have left your doctor’s mouth, there is not much you can do. As horrible as it was to hear those words all those months ago, I never fought them. I immediately accepted the card I was dealt – what else could I have done? – and focused on a game plan to fight this monstrous thing growing inside of me and get better. I researched my therapies, the side effects, and what to expect. I made sure that I was ready for all the shit stuff so I would not be blindsided. And while I did experience both physical and mental pain that I was not ready for, I was alright most of the time because I was ready, and by being ready, I was able to guide myself in the right direction.
9. Fight to win
Just as I immediately accepted the reality of being diagnosed with cancer, I never let myself doubt that I would come out on the other side. My oncologist’s confidence definitely helped, during my first visit he said “Madame, don’t be silly, I will cure you.” I realize that I was in a very privileged position both in terms of my circumstances and the particularities of my cancer. However, I can’t help but think that my mental state helped me to better get through chemo and the mastectomy, and everything else. I liked to think about my cancer fight in terms of hero stories. We, the viewers may have been convinced, but Harry Potter did not know if he would win his battle against Voldemort. Batman did not know if he would beat the Joker. They just fought with all they had, they fought to win. So must we, in real life, fight to win. And, in the words of Winston Churchill, never give in, never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
That sums up my lessons form 2018. May 2019 be a helluva lot better! 2018, I have three parting words for you: Thank u, next. Happy New Year everyone!
Love.
