A Fierce Belief in Tomorrow

I was speaking with a friend yesterday. She asked me how I can be so positive living with a cancer diagnosis.

Is there another choice?

If I were to allow myself to go to that dark place, I would be digging a hole so deep that I might never climb out.

If I fed the “black dog” growling inside, there would be nothing left of me but the broken fangs of a snarling old dog.

Since my heart attack in 2007, I have lived with depression. Depression is not sadness, so let’s get that out of the way. I imagine that everyone’s experience with depression is different, just as everyone’s experience with love or sex is different.

I call it the God Shaped Hole. I say that, not because I am religious, but as a way to describe how vast the hole can be. Depression is an emptiness that cannot be filled. This emptiness fills with a hunger for even greater emptiness. It is a sinkhole that can swallow cars, clowns and children. More animals than Noah. More tears than the St.Lawrence River. A God Shaped Hole can transform the forever blue sky into its dark mirror.

A work friend of mine travelled back home to China this week to take care of his sister, who is caring for his Mother. They have been confined to their apartment for many, many months. The sister quit sleeping. She refuses to take the sleeping pill or the half of an anti-depressant prescribed by her Doctor. She is so far down the hole, that her brother must fly across the world. He needs to physically step in, grab her hand and try to pull her back. He must avoid the gnawing desire to consume him, to make him one with the hole. So he travels across the globe to help her find her way out of the hole her mind has dug for her. That is love.

I am surrounded by love. And angels. They are everywhere. All of my beautiful friends who call me, who go for walks with me, who say to me that they will pray for me. Those hugs that greet me when I walk into our home.

I feel bad that I am getting so much attention, when at the same time, so many other people out there are desperately trying to climb out of their depressions. These black dogs, once awakened, do not go quietly away.

For some, depression is an actual killer. So many of my friends crawled into themselves during the isolation of the pandemic. Their Black Dogs are now a Hungry Pack consuming them. But I am positive. Partially because if I open the door even a crack, the stupid black dogs will butt their head in, sit at my feet, look imploringly into my grey blue eyes, and wait.

Dogs, both the real dogs and the metaphors for depression, can wait a long time. Maisy once stared at our fence in the backyard for hours, never moving. She knew that there was a rat hiding in the tree above the fence. Suddenly the rat made his move to escape. Maisy lunged, but did not get anything that time. Another time she waited on our apartment deck, looking at the bird feeder on the deck of the apartment below us.

My daughter awoke to find something soft and not moving on her bed spread. Maisy had brought her a gift of the bird she had patiently waited to kill.

My daughter was horrified.

Many friends were horrified this past week with the news of the death of a very talented composer, a partner to a dear friend of mine. She was killed by her own mind, where the psychosis that she struggled with for some time, unfortunately won. In that final moment, the calm, genius of her talents were not strong enough.

My challenges seem minuscule in comparison. I have confidence, on most days, that I will see my way through these challenges. The path back to better health is being revealed.

My throat cancer is very treatable, as far as I can tell or have been told. I have appointments lined up for the next few weeks at the BC Cancer Agency, where I have been referred by my physician and the ENT specialist. My PET scan has been upgraded to April, which apparently happens once the Cancer Agency is involved.

Here is my advice. Get off the social media. Call your friends. Go for walks with them. Hold them closer. Listen to them. Keep them in your thoughts and prayers. We must develop a fierce belief in tomorrow.

Together, we are stronger.