There was something not only passive but downright suicidal about my response to the early signs of my cancer. A kind of resignation possessed me, as if I were an estranged voyeur noting my body from a great distance. Somnolent is the word that keeps coming to me. Half awake, half asleep, knowing but refusing to know. Somnolence: A self-produced narcotic state triggered by extreme danger, a kind of splintering of self, a partial leaving of one world with one foot or semiconsciousness in another. Somnolence: paralysis that comes when strung between two extreme moral choices—loyalty or shame, change or die. Many of my early years were lived in this semi-sleep. There I did not have to confront the twisted agony of betraying my mother each time my father found me in bed in the middle of the night. I did not have to try to unravel the madness of what it meant that the person I loved the most in the world was exploiting me, raping me, abusing me. I did not have to experience any conflict because none of it was really happening. We do this. Think climate change. All the early warning signs are here: heat waves, sea levels rising, flooding, glaciers melting, earlier springs, coral reefs bleeding, diseases spreading. All of it happening right in front of us. Just like the blood that first came from my vagina five years after I had stopped bleeding, my strange swollen belly, the terrible indigestion and the slightly sick feeling in my stomach. Then the blood in my poop and my wanting it to be hemorrhoids although I knew it wasn’t hemorrhoids. Staring for minutes at the red swirl in the toilet, a clear marker that my end was near. I knew it of course. We all know everything. I said it to my close friends. Something was wrong. I knew when the size and shape of my poop suddenly changed and became skinny, something was wrong. It felt as if there was something blocking my insides. I knew it, but where did I go? Why didn’t I fight for my body? Because in order to fight I would have had to face what was wrong. Because this couldn’t be happening to me. Because secretly I didn’t think my fighting would make a difference and I was going to die and I might as well die now. Because I was sick of suffering and pain and I wanted to die. Because I was madly attached to life and I simply could not bear the depth of my attachment. The signs accumulated. But I did not respond. I would not wake up. We will not wake up. This terrifying sleep of denial. Is it an underlying belief that we as a human species are not worth it? Do we secretly feel we have lost our right to be here in all our selfishness and stupidity, our cruelty and greed?
All I know is that I waited too long. The tumor moved like an irrepressible army, like CO2 through the atmosphere. It touched and destroyed and eroded and suddenly it was too late. I had not been a good steward to my body. I was afraid to ruffle feathers, afraid to make noise in the dark. Afraid to say what was happening. Then it would be real, then all fantasies would die. Then I would have to take responsibility. You are touching me where you should not be touching me. This is wrong. This is incest. Then I would be calling my father out. I would lose my father and the future and the love and safety and life itself. Then I would be outside the circle—alone. My old boyfriend used to say you have to choose between family and dignity. But I think the choice is deeper. I think it’s a choice between being awake or half asleep. Being alert, not surrendering to the drowsiness, the delicious and comforting somnolence that will in the end be the death of us all.