To be or not to be.

Finding it really hard to sleep, these days. Also finding it very hard not to cry. I can't seem to shake the grief of losing my father, and I can't help but wonder how much easier that would be to do if I had some sort of focus in my life.

I've been thinking a lot about mortality. Because I lost my father and because I have several lumps in my breast. I find it very hard to connect with the idea I might actually have breast cancer and the meaning in that. I just can't. Which is a good thing, I suppose. I think if I actually thought about what it means to have breast cancer, it might crush me. But while I suspect it has much to do with the irritability I'm battling and the constant urge to breakdown and cry, there's just no room for it in my reality. I reject it outright. I have never believed cancer can kill me. All it can really do is make things harder. Because if there's one thing I've learned from my life, it's that there are no easy ways out, and any chance Life gets to fuck you up further, it will take. So really, I view cancer as more of an inconvenient little "screw you" to my bank balance and my personal life than I do a disease that could actually cause death.

But I like to keep the bases covered, so I have actually considered what might occur if I do, in fact, have cancer, and it does manage, despite all personal experience and evidence to the contrary, to cause the terminal part of my life to come so sharply into focus that the light at the end of the tunnel does turn out to be the proverbial train. And at the moment, at least - what with it being all theoretical and shit - I find myself not particularly bothered. Which is a rather odd feeling. More than anything, I just don't want to leave my dogs. That thought fills me with a deep and unbearable sadness. I don't want to leave them. People are fine. People you can say goodbye to. But dogs, dogs don't get it. Dogs are like, "Where did she go? Why did she abandon us? When is she coming back?" And that really, profoundly, disturbs me. So for them, I would really prefer the lumps in my breast be nothing more than cysts or benign tumors. And frankly, since I'd really prefer no one take a scalpel to my person, cysts would really be best. The kind you can aspirate with a needle - which, by the way, sounds only marginally less unpleasant than the aforementioned scalpel. Then also, there's the problem of Pete, and what to do with him. Pete, as you know, is very important to me, and he really needs to go to a good home, with someone who will understand the magic and importance of Pete, that he is a very real creature, who needs to be loved and held and treasured, and not stuck in a box somewhere and forgotten. I need to know that Pete will always be treasured and loved, for the rest of time. Which is probably a HUGE issue some psychiatrist somewhere could build an entire book around, but that's how I feel about Pete.

So there you go. These are the things I am somewhat ambivalently concerned with at present. Cheery, no?

No.