Three days to go. I'm trying to stay strong
Image by Rocco Stoppoloni from Pixabay
Like the song says, the waiting is the hardest part
Tom Petty knows what I’m talking about. This has been coming for a long time. I knew that from the beginning. In the early stages, I could put it out of my mind for long stretches.
As the procedure gets closer, it’s no longer the elephant in the living room. It’s the blue whale wadded up and shoved into every nook and cranny of the house, and no matter how hard I try to steer my attention elsewhere, the whale is impossible to ignore.
I’ve done everything I can to ensure this thing turns out well. I’ve spent hours and hours over months, making phone calls, contacting people who can help, educating myself, and staying up to date on all the latest information.
It gives me a sense of agency. I take comfort in the thought that, no matter how this goes, I’ll have done all I can.
But the final result isn’t up to me. There are so many other people involved, and the hard truth is that they’re not all motivated by what’s in my best interests.
No matter how often I try to point out to them that my best interests and theirs, in the grand scheme of things, coincide. Some of them can hear me on that, but others think they know better.
And some of them don’t want to listen at all. That part is the hardest for me to understand.
Everybody I know is affected in some way
I can feel it in the air. The waiting is the hardest part, and as the day gets closer, it’s getting harder. My husband, my family, my friends, my online tribe: we commiserate, we joke, we try to distract ourselves.
And those of us with enough courage dare to hope. Hope, at a time like this, is a lifeline. But it takes guts to hang onto it.
Especially when we know that, after the procedure, things won’t be the same. Things could be better — way better, in fact.
That’s the hope.
But the results could also be much, much worse. That’s the fear.
That’s the part that makes some of us want to run away, to try to escape the giant whale crowding our space. But we know better. The day is coming and nothing will stop that.
All we can do is choose. Hope or fear. Here’s what I know: everything depends on the choice each of us makes.
Because I’m not undergoing this procedure alone. We all are, on November 5.
The waiting is the hardest part Every day you get one more yard You take it on faith, you take it to the heart The waiting is the hardest part Yeah, the waiting is the hardest part
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