I just want it to be over — magically over. Not some haunted, never-leaving-for-good over, but over like I don’t have to do this anymore. Plain and simple. No more appointments, no more counting pills like prayer beads, no more scheduling my life around naps and pukes. Is that too fucking much to ask?
I know the truth: you have to go through the damn thing to get past it. You can’t short-circuit the mess. You have to slog. So here I am — slogging. Hazy brain days that feel like I’m moving through molasses. Brainless moments where I stand in front of the fridge like it’s a conspiracy. Rest when my bones beg for it; heal when my body remembers how; poison because science says so; repeat because the calendar is a cruel comedian.
Between the bleak and the boring, what I really want is the tiny, ridiculous stuff: to write in peace and light without the guilt that I should be “doing something productive” while I wait for the next appointment. To sit at the kitchen table with my laptop and not have the cloud of “what if” hovering over every line. To drink coffee that’s still hot. To walk outside and not count steps like they’re a report card. To have a normal week that does not begin and end with an IV drip and a list of side effects.
Also? I want to shoot a fire arrow into this cancer and blow it the fuck up. There. I said it. There’s the part of me that wants to be dramatic and violent and victorious all at once. I want a literal and metaphorical kaboom — lights, confetti, the whole over-the-top ending to this chapter. Tell me that’s unreasonable and I’ll roll my eyes and bring the fireworks anyway.
And listen: I’m conflicted. I can want peace and quiet and also want to scream and torch the thing that put me here. I can be grateful for the hands that hold me and furious at the time it steals. I can laugh at myself for crying over a lost sock and then sob over the way the chemo makes my bones feel like someone took a jackhammer to them. Cancer doesn’t come with an instruction manual that says “how to be graceful.” It comes with a lot of improvisation, a poor soundtrack, and the occasional emergency snack saved by a patient husband I nicknamed my own Luke Skywalker.
So I keep going. I show up for the naps and the meds and the ridiculous moments because there’s still light to find. There are small mercies — a friend who drops off a pie, a dog that insists on dragging me outside, a good TV show that distracts for forty blessed minutes. There are stories I didn’t think I could finish that surprise me by being halfway decent. There are mornings when my head clears and I can see color again, and those mornings are holy.
Mostly I keep going because I refuse to let this story end with me never coming back over it. I want the ending where I walk out the other side — bruised, scarred, wiser, still snarking — not looping back into the same damn place. That’s the stubborn part of me speaking: I want life after this. I want the pages after the battle. I want to play, to laugh, to be boring and ordinary and loud and alive.
So yeah — I’ll keep slogging. Hazy brain, brainless days, rest and heal, poison and repeat. I will draw in the light where I can. I will fire the arrow in my imagination and shout when I need to. And I will keep looking for the little lights that make the whole thing bearable until one day—God willing—the arrow does its job and this is over for real.
Third Act With Pattie 