Dear Avery,

Never Have I Ever

Dear Avery,

You asked me to write about fear. My fear and my relationship with it. I think back to my friend Jack and how he closed with “when I give up control, or trying to control things, interesting things begin to happen.” That is how I am beginning to understand fear. When I find myself lacking control and predictability, my fear increases. And allowing fear to take control, or grow in size, brings me nothing but grief. I am recognizing this is as a process that I am getting better at practicing. I like interesting things and am looking for more of them to happen.

Never have I ever.

Remember the juvenile game where we would challenge our friends to speak the truth by pushing them into sharing something personal simply by asking them to complete the phrase: “Never have I ever…” ? If you never participated in it, perhaps you have heard about it?

Of course, the hope was someone would disclose something personal, so personal that the cost of the weight of voicing it out loud would be big,

so big that the anticipation of its disclosure, or the feeling of being tempted to share something we guarded so closely, would cause butterflies to fly around in our bellies.

Do we dare?  

As a teenager, I remember weighing the decision to speak words that disclosed any personal information with gravity.  For most of us, being a teenager is not a time of building confidence, rather it is one where we hold on to conformity rather than individuality. We question most everything and have huge feelings of insecurity. Never have I ever could result in never, ever having the ability to take back information that one might regret the minute it escaped from one’s mouth.  The consequences were real and paralyzing.

Today it is far easier for me to speak and name my truth, to fill in the blank and share with others. Today it feels more like an action of connecting with others rather than standing apart. There is nothing truly exceptional or different about me than anyone else. My challenges are relatable, and my fears are too.

Never have I ever been challenged in a way that I have since cancer entered my life.

Never have I ever experienced panic attacks until I came to hear the words, “I am sorry. I am sorry to have to tell you (dramatic pause and eyes glued to the image on the computer screen rather than on my eyes directly) all your biopsies came back malignant.  You have breast cancer that has metastasized spreading from your right breast to places all over your body, all over your bones. It means your cancer (my cancer? I have cancer that I must claim as my own?) is treatable but not curable.”

After hearing these words, never have I ever experienced fear of this magnitude in my whole entire life. 

It swallowed and ruled me for years.

It would surface at unexpected times. Fear would cause me to act rashly -yep, sign me up for surgery. Tomorrow, the liver will go! It would cause me to lose sleep visiting deep irrational places of my imagination. Yes, corpses spooned me in bed - their bodies skeletal, black with sharp angles. It would cause me to go from feeling fine to feeling as if immediate escape was necessary. Injection? In my butt? “Okay, can we just stop the banter and get on with it,” I would say pulling my pants down and shoving my naked butt in the the face of the nurse who was kindly swabbing my left buttock and gently inserting the needle.

Fear became a permanent and disabling companion.

Yet, having lived with cancer for over 8 years, I have built confidence in my disease and myself which has helped me tame it. I have had to renegotiate my relationship with it. Fear and I have learned to cohabitate.  Most of the time, it is quite small and easily ignore. I don’t feel the bite of its teeth as I used to. However, I know it still lives just beneath my skin, just behind my heart for as soon as Jessica made mention of the need to schedule my routine, 6-month PET scan, I felt a gentle nudge that began to awaken Fear from its slumber. It almost feels as if my brain was signaling Fear to wake up. My brain urged Fear to stretch and extend the space it inhabits in my body. Time to take center stage again. With the authorization from my insurance, followed by the official date and time picked for my scan (May 16 at 9:30), Fear began rehydrating. 

Never have I ever lived with Fear until I was forced to on January 18, 2016. Now it is my constant companion.

Yet, like any long-term realtionship, I am getting better at understanding it. I am getting better at recognizing when it has entered my space and may need reminding that while its presence is normal, its dominance is not. Over the years, our communication has been constant and well-practiced. I have reflected on learning more about what it is saying, and why it is saying what it says. I have come to understand that I am in charge of its care.  And in taking care of Fear, I am taking care of myself.  Rather than thinking of it as mean-spirited and controlling, I understand its boasting, its bloating to be a mask of crippling anxiety.  When Fear surfaces, it is trying to help me, trying to warn me of potential dangers. 

It is trying to keep me safe. 

Today, when its voice becomes more insistent, and I feel its distant static growing inside of me, I communicate with Fear differently.  I thank it for paying attention to danger and for consistently signaling me that I should to be on high alert. Now, however, rather than feeling like Fear is bullying me, I am learning to recognize it is protecting me. I am learning to read it differently, and I am learning to communicate with Fear far more effectively. I try to calm it with my confidence by letting it know that I got this; I can do this.

I am being mindful of ALL the messages in my body, and not just Fear’s because it happens to be screaming the loudest. I am trusting my instincts whose voice deserves and needs more recognition than I have been conditioned to give it.

Never have I ever …

felt more in control of my fear than I do today.

(Cue butterflies).

And that feels pretty remarkable and so interesting for me to share.