Lydia Slaby - 19 Mar

PREFACE

THE CITY OF CHICAGO is tearing up my street, fifteen feet below my window, with massive pieces of machinery, jackhammers, and a dump truck. Even with my windows closed, the sound of crashing concrete is overwhelming, and I have work to do. Before I got sick and spent the better part of two years in and out of the hospital, I would have walked out to the men jackhammering away and politely asked them when they would be finished with the noise. Well, I wouldve been somewhat polite. Actually, even somewhat is a bit of a stretch. Because when life is not going completely as planned, a control freaks reaction is to change life, not the plan.

And Im definitely a control freak by nature.

The idea that humans can control their lives is an illusion that, prior to cancer, I chose to embrace. For much of my life, this idea helped me avoid most of the tough why questions: Why am I working so hard? Why do I feel guilty all the time? Why am I the only person I know who gets bronchitis every October?

Control freaks assume they have all the answers, and if they dont, they fake it until they make it. If I dont work hard, I wont be partner/CEO/in power by the time Im forty! I have no idea why I feel guilty all the time, so Ill just ignore it! It doesnt matter why Im sick! Ill just take some antibiotics, a pile of vitamin C, and do some strength training. If Im stronger, then my body will be able to handle the bugs.

I spent the first thirty-three years of my life inhabiting this control, and it gave me two professional degrees, a husband on the verge of leaving me, and a life-threatening disease.

Changing my perspective on control did not require a dramatic change in my circumstances. I did not move to a horse farm, take off on a months-long trek, or become a yoga/surf instructor in Mexico. Dont get me wrong, I love travel memoirs Eat, Pray, Love and Wild are two of my favorites. But I closed each book and wondered what happened when they got home and had to buy toilet paper after being stuck in traffic all day. Did they stay all zen, or did they lose it?

What did life look like after the transformation?

I believe the ability to change in place cannot be underestimated. To begin with, it was hard, even impossible, to travel extensively when I was sick, much less contemplate moving to a different city or country. But more importantly, even though traveling to different cultures always provides a learning experience, moving for the sake of movingwithout taking the time and doing the work to solve the discomfort around the process of changing my perspectivewould have been a waste of my time. So I stayed in my house and my city and slogged through the work of acceptance on familiar turf.

And in my case, the work was survivingand surpassing cancer.

This is a cancer memoir that is about more than a diagnosis and a recovery. Cancer is humbling. Its uncontrollableeven the medicines used to battle it are uncontrollable. It rarely provides clear answers to all the problems it reveals. As a result, it fundamentally changes the patient, with or without that persons permission. Cancer opens a door to transformation and makes it virtually impossible to stand still and refuse to accept the change that is happening.

Nonetheless, walking through that door is a choice. I chose at first to stand still, holding on to the door jamb like an earthquake victim. Then, after a while (heres the dramatic part), I didnt.

This is a love story. My husband and I have battled each other and ourselves for more than twenty-two years. Much of our conflict has involved accepting the reality of life with each othersometimes this has meant recognizing life for what it is and is not, and sometimes this has meant accepting changes that each of us has undergone. Yet somehow, we love and respect each other more now than we ever did.

This is a story of integration. I learned how fundamental it is to my health that I understand my body, my mind, and my spirit as three distinct pieces of what make me a complete human being. Each piece has a role to play and a voice to be heard, and they must work in synchronicity for me to be healthy. This is a hard lesson to learn and to remember. Im still learning it.

This is also a story of acceptance. I had to learn that surrender is not always a bad word. In life, there are momentsmany, many more moments than we recovering control freaks care to acknowledgewhen the best route forward is simply to submit to lifes circumstances and see what happens.

Finally, this is my story of learning to give myself permission to be in perpetual renewal. This doesnt mean that who I am at my core changes with the wind. I am, and remain, the person who has developed over nearly forty years of life. The skills Ive acquired and the history Ive lived do not change. However, over the course of my life, I created stories about that collection of facts about myself, putting them into categories such as strength and weakness, and then I built a personality around those stories. The power of the human mind is such that I started believing these stories with such fervor that, in many ways, I believed they were incontrovertible facts

With the onslaught of all my health challenges, I had the opportunity to shift my perspective. My stories lost their ossification, and my sense of myself began to stretch. Some of my weaknesses changed to strengths. Some of my proudest moments became regrets. These changes in how I constructed my own stories allowed me to start reevaluating my past, forgiving myself for some of my decisions, and giving myself permission to change.

This is my story about changing my whole life, but that change is not complete. It wont be until Im dead and gone. My life is now a work in progressa work about finding grace, stillness, and calm inside myself, no matter the circumstances.