Normalcy

Working in web marketing, I should know more than anyone that what you fancy on the Internet - all the accounts you follow, all the posts you linger on but don't even click, and all those links you do end up clicking on - all that juicy information is recorded and noted and filed away so that the Internet, the MAN, comes to intimately know what you're into these days. 

So it should come as so surprise to me that all the bait I've clicked  ("can't help it!" my finger whines) the last few months, all the articles of horror and cancer woe, have led to certain solicitations, to certain suggested accounts. E.g. when Instagram whispers on my feed, "Hey! You like Somber Cancer Shit, how about you follow, "@CancerSUXXJourney!" and "@heyletsprofitoffyourfears!

Point is there are days like today, and the last few days, where I'm untethered from the cancermindedness workshop (party of 1). Every waking thought and worry is not dedicated to the condition, and every image and story and article sought out on the interwebs is not leading down the rabbit hole to a cancer article, or a sad tale of a mother who leaves her 18 children behind, or the Humans of New York Sloan Kettering pediatric cancer series. (It was very poignant and well done, but by God, the timing of that! Just get me a noose. (Kidding, kidding.)

And lately when I have been feeling better, truly, when I'm distracted by real life and talking about typical everyday topics, the day flies by and I think to myself, wow. I feel good. I feel sane. I feel like myself. I swipe through Instagram and one of those accounts will pop up and I look back on those horror-seeking episodes and feel very, very weird about myself. 

And feeling weird about myself like that is good. So good. Because to put it another way, the last few days I've been feeling NORMAL. I've had off of work to recover from surgery, which has been going wonderfully, I've had free time to write and to sleep and to read, and to take stock of our new house, and play with my dog and go on walks with friends nearby, and have coffee and not think, for very long stretches at a time, of what I just had cut out of me (clean margins and all!) and about what I really hope isn't laying dormant in other parts of me, along with all the treatment that's still to come.

Normalcy. It's so utterly wonderful, and I don't say that with any hyperbole. It's just so breathtaking. And all you Normals, all you people don't think twice about your normal day, days when errant cells are not on the brain and instead problems like running out of gas, or a hole in your shirt, or a traffic jam flood your lucky, normal-ass mind and soul. AH! How good it is to  be one of you. Even if it's for a few hours.