Today is not a good day. My mom called from Switzerland with not so great news: The big C word. My initial reaction was an overwhelming feeling of panic. It’s weird how everything just goes blank for that split second that feels like an absolute eternity; I remember hearing the raucous palpitations of my heart, not to mention how it felt like it might explode out of my chest. Then I remember my mom asking me if I was still there. Yep. “I’m here,” I say, although that’s a bare truth indeed, given the way my mind is reeling (freaking out really). As I write this, my mind is spinning with all the unsolicited information which, because of my state of being at the time, comes back to me in mere fragments right now: Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, T-cell, aggressive, caught early—‘They’ think—small red mark on the bridge of her nose—that was what sent her to the doctor in the first place. This feels so surreal. It’s not really happening. Is it? Is this what shock feels like? I am sitting with this news now, pen in hand, thinking I must do something. What can I do? My mind is grasping for straws, desperate for a solution to this problem that is an ocean away. I feel small and pitiful and useless and sad and…So many tears falling onto these now wet pages…
This has got to stop. My stomach has been churning since I got my mom’s call. I feel so anxious and agitated. I figured I’d get a massage or something to make me feel better and ended up receiving ‘polarity massage’. I don’t really know what that means, and the woman talked me into taking her yoga class—which was insane! Who knew yoga could be this…I can’t really describe it but wow! I feel… Alive.
I’ve been here for almost three weeks now, helping Mom through her first chemo treatment. I gave up two part-time jobs to get the time off to fly home, so now I have just the one at the American Red Cross which I’m hoping will turn into something more. I nearly had a heart attack when I got off the plane in Geneva to see her waiting for me on the other side of the glass windows, nothing but skin and bone. The fortnight it took for her diagnosis to come back (positive) was when she lost all the weight, she says, from the worrying. I am beginning to realize how much I have taken my super-small world for granted. On top of that, it’s gone topsy-turvy, a complete mishmash of contradictory thoughts and random beliefs that have no foundation in reality whatsoever—even I can see that. As of now, I feel untethered from the center of my own universe and am no longer here to serve just me; there’s so much more at stake than I could have fathomed. I am so aware and freaked out by just how ephemeral life really is. And there is something going on with my health, I’m sure of it. I keep dreaming I have all these different types of cancer. Last night it was skin cancer; before that, breast cancer. At this point, I’ve diagnosed myself with pretty much every type of cancer I’ve ever heard of and know, at the deepest level of my being, that this torment doesn’t lead anywhere worthwhile. Dad and I are up together in the wee hours of the morning, watching old movies on TV in nocturnal companionship (we watched a pirated and very poor-quality video of Top Gun last night and Chariots of Fire the night before), neither of us able to find sleep, scared of where our thoughts will take us. I don’t know how my mother manages. The treatment sucks. I’m afraid of her dying and it’s the first time I’m saying this ‘out loud’. I know my Dad is scared stiff of the possibility of her dying too. I think it is that we find solace in our mutual fear. My unenthused imagination and mind games are driving me insane. I have to do something about this because the not-doing anything is of no help to me at all.
I feel it is some curious unfolding of the universe that has guided me straight into the rigorous yet comforting arms of Ashtanga Yoga. I’m not sure about the teacher though. She’s making us memorize the sequence of the whole first series of postures, which is a solid 90-minute practice and complete anguish from start to finish; but I do love the way it wrings me out. I feel like I’ve come back to myself. It is so completely intense and textured with quasi-militaristic undertones, something to do with the count. For the most part, we don’t sustain the poses for long periods of time and I like that! It offers me temporary respite from the nauseating rollercoaster ride of all these emotions I’m feeling and this mental trainwreck of mine. It’s disciplined, and that’s what I need right now. My practice is unceremonious at best, but all those years of ballet have given me a leg up in some respects. The downward-facing dog pose is killing me. My heels feel miles away from the floor, although thankfully I don’t feel it too much in the backs of my legs. I’m practicing it every day in our downstairs gym now. My yoga mat is fast becoming my happy place.
I’m discovering a whole language in yoga that is really helping me frame and understand the stuff I’m experiencing; at the very least, I don’t feel like my heart aches quite so much, and I don’t have to deal with all the chatter in my head when I’m doing yoga. And besides, I’m killin’ it! (This seems like an un-yogic sort of thing to say, but I’m quite accomplished at the yoga poses). All that German I had to study in high school is a real asset to learning the Sanskrit names of the postures—a lot of compound words and such, very cool. A tentative thought crossed my mind today, but I caught whiff of it so maybe it is meaningful: Maybe I could be a yoga teacher someday. I dunno, maybe not; I don’t have enough experience, and the idea of it is giving me a panic attack already!