Just Breathe

This image is called: “Gone Crazy. Riding.  out of the bed again”
Every second of my life has become about surviving. I feel not just the life racing thru my being, I feel my death in competition riding neck in neck in a race against each other; both equally determined. I  ride the middle ground thrown about in the current of near defeat to rising up and over-powering my own inevitable death. I hiss, I claw, I scratch and dig my way out of the steel framed box of depression and fatigue I am constantly having to accept will sooner or later pin me down, fell me in my tracks and confine me to an unbearable darkness that sweats and smells of defeat. This endurance contest changed drastically once my cancer began to grow. For an entire year or more my encapsulated liver tumor did not grow. That was sweet. I was stuck with nothing more than the same old liver fatigue I had when I only had Hep C. There was far more space there to believe, to hope, there was happiness there that I did not have to dig so deeply inside myself to find. I still belonged to the world a year ago. That was hard enough but things just wouldn’t stop there. A wild fire rushed in to feed my tumor and things began to spin out of control. Rising up against the fatigue and depression of cancer is often out of my reach and I am dragged drowing beneath the surface of my little life I so love. But I have nothing else now but this fight, there is nothing else left of my life except this fight. My puppy needs me, my 38 year old daughter, my 40 year old son need me. I need them. I do not want to leave them so I lie still and suck up the pain of my enertia. Its fortunately still mixed up with an over-powering desire to live. My work is getting that desire to over-ride the fatigue of liver cancer. Its daunting to say the least to begin the work of “how to get out of bed,” I go to sleep at night wondering if there will be life flowing thru my veins the next day. My life has become rest, fuel, ride, be kind in your thoughts to yourself girl, you must get out of life all on your own just like all before you and all who will follow you. So ride, ride for your life, ride to find joy, ride so others can ride well just as those who went before showed you how to. Sometimes our last act is our most significant contribution. Be thankful not angry, remember all those unable to be born, those who had such a small taste of life, all who went too young and yes its true, there is no age when I will be ready to quit fighting to live. These thoughts are the mantras I cycle to..its right now to mount that bike and ride some sweet island trade winds. Aloha