Marbles of Emotion
on complicated feelings....
Lately I’ve been thinking about the complexity of emotions. Like how dualities exist in every day, normal scenarios, and how I tend to overlook their entanglement and walk around feeling confused, wondering why everything feels so heavy. I think about how one person can love me the most unconditionally and also hurt me more than everyone else combined. I think about a photo of me from a few months ago where I can see the peace in my face, the love that I’m wearing, the coziness of the space I was in, but also the tragedy waiting to occur a few hours later; the pain it caused me taints the happy memory to be a fuzzy kind of blue. I think about hope. And how it keeps me going every day. But I also realize that the amount of hope I require to stay afloat and in a state of thriving is a lot to carry. Oftentimes, it feels really heavy to hold and I worry my arms will give out and all of my hope will spill out of my overly packed basket, onto the floor, and all of my liveliness will be gone with it.
I asked my friend the other day, “how do I hold all of these feelings and also the life that I want to live?” It feels impossible sometimes to do both. If I sit and process how it feels to think about doing radiation in two weeks, I can spend all afternoon crying and laughing while I trace back every miracle and sign that led me to this decision, but also sorting through all of the fears I found along the way. My friend told me to stand up and wiggle my toes into the ground. To move my body as a reminder that even if I feel emotionally stuck, my body is beautiful and so blessed because it can still move and carry me where I need to go. As I do this, I feel a shift towards gratitude. I feel planted, my roots buried deep into the ground. I am a tree. Maybe the newest addition to the Redwoods in Northern California, I think. How tall will I grow?
It’s complex to think about healing. I’ve spent almost seven months recovering from two big surgeries and yet no one thought to tell me that after the physical recovery, the emotional recovery comes next. This is news to me, and slightly devastating; as I am itching to feel whole again. I long to be running around creating colorful worlds to immerse people in but I have to pace myself because I still get physically dizzy when I move too fast. I still get the emotional wind knocked out of me when I realize that having cancer is now a part of my identity. And it always will be. So momentum comes and goes like a wrecking ball, with force and lasting impact, tearing down creative blocks but also leaving behind a wreckage of emotions needing to be dealt with. How is anyone supposed to work like this? How is anyone supposed to live like this? Bills still show up every month, taxes demand to be paid and everything costs money; even “resting” (but that’s a conversation for another day).
I lose my mind a little every time someone tells me I “need to rest”. In my head I respond, “what the hell do y’all think I’ve been doing for seven months”. But apparently “recovering is not the same thing as resting”. This is also news to me, but I welcome this insight with a breath of fresh air. As I continue piling all these complex thoughts and heavy feelings into my hope basket, I start to realize that perhaps, we’re just not meant to carry things alone.
Abundance is an energy available to all of us. Friends and mentors show up in unexpected places. Guidance is everywhere I look and support fizzles in like real life magic. When random books about alchemizing ideas into reality and the universe supporting your dreams and passions get delivered to your house with no return address, when friends you haven’t been close with in a while cannon ball into your life with so much energy and passion for helping you, when the sky is dropping miracles and opportunities that are so specific to your hopes and needs, you just have to open your arms and receive.
I’ve never been very good at asking for help and receiving. I love to give my time and energy to people and I have often done this without considering myself or how I may be affected by all my giving. The result is feeling burnt out and drained. You can’t fill other people’s cups when yours is empty. So I’ve been navigating the past few months trying to refill my cup, trying to recover from my surgeries and their complications, trying to process the curveballs life has thrown at me, and trying to fulfill the calling I have been given to be an artist. I feel certain that being gentle is the only way through this. I feel certain that I need to be an artist; that I need to create art and share it. But I’ve come to realize that in order to fulfill this calling, I must take care of myself first.
I have to care for the body that physically carries me. And that involves listening to her when she talks to me. Like lately, she’s been heavy, unbalanced, and tired. These are all physical reflections of what’s happening in my body as my entire system of cells and organs work together to damage control and repair the loss of my thyroid. So I’m listening. And that means taking time to not create but rather just collect the ideas. When ideas show up in my brain and insist on being created, I simply receive them. When people show up to offer support, I simply receive it.
My body is tired from running around, avoiding thinking about radiation. The months I’ve had between surgery and this upcoming radiation treatment, I admit, have been mostly me filling my schedule with activities and errands in attempts to distract myself from facing reality. Out of sight, out of mind. Except you can only run from things for so long until they catch up to you. And they always eventually do. So here we are: heavy with hope, heavy with fear, heavy with anticipation; heavy from medications that aren’t working quite right yet, heavy from carrying all these emotions and miracles and ideas I’ve collected and not really sure what to do with this assortment of items I find in my now, even more, overly packed basket.
I barely know how to string these words together so I’m blindly counting on all my faith to see me through. I am scared out of my mind to experience my body being radioactive. They are sending the radiation into my body to kill any bad cells that were left behind. So I try to wrap my mind around having a killing agent in my body while I am so focused on trying to thrive. These feel like conflicting concepts and yet I revel in the miracles I believe will come from this.
In my research about radiation, I learned that scientists have historically used Sunflowers to clean up radioactive waste in affected environments. When I read this, I remember feeling peace wash over me like sunshine on a perfect day and it made me feel supported as I prepared for this chapter. I could sit here and post every piece of evidence that supports my belief that this was an absolute sign sent from the Heavens above. But in the spirit of sparing you all a novel, I’d just like to say that sunflowers have always been my absolute most favorite flower. I feel drawn to them the way I feel drawn to making art. Meant for me.
I also want to share that I spent most of 2017 and 2018 navigating a very intense cancer journey with one of my dearest friends. I called her my Sunflower, mostly because she glowed with a golden aura and was walking sunshine in human form. Maya’s favorite flower was also the Sunflower and when she passed away in 2019, Sunflowers became even more important to me— a symbol of my sweet angel, whose presence I still feel watching over me daily. I didn’t know at the time, that I also had a tumor growing slowly inside of me, wreaking havoc across my body and waiting silently to disrupt my whole life just two years later.
I find so much comfort and hope in knowing that this whole time, a sweet flower that I spent so much of my life admiring, was just waiting for me to need her. It’s more than just a metaphor. I feel this pull, this need, this calling to surround myself with them. I even have this visual that came to me the other day: it’s me the day I come home from the hospital, after taking my radioactive pill, sitting in sacred isolation amongst a field of sunflowers; but the field is in my room. They are everywhere. They cover the floors and every dresser, table, and windowsill. And they are all real.
I don’t understand why this feels so important, but I’m trying not to question this idea and simply receive. I don't know how I’m going to pull this off, but I’m publishing this as a formal request to the universe: please help me make this happen.
I start the radiation process on June 6, and the whole thing lasts about 10 days. The first week, I’ll have to go to the hospital every day for a series of injections, tests, scans, and eventually to take the radioactive pill. Its purpose is to find any bad cells left behind and destroy them. After I take the pill, I’ll have to be isolated for about 7 days, because I’ll be radioactive (cue the memes and funny jokes. No, seriously, PLEASE send memes and funny jokes) and can actually contaminate others with radiation if we are in close contact. So I’ll be spending the second week in my room. Trying to rest, trying to heal. The last day of my isolation culminates in a very important full body scan where I am PRAYING (emphasis on the all caps) for a good scan; a scan that says, “one round of radiation is enough, NO EVIDENCE OF DISEASE”. I can’t pray this prayer enough. I’m grateful for the lessons, but I desperately would like to move on.
I come to this substack, to bare my soul and write about my most honest feelings. I feel so thankful to be here. To have even just one person read the very dramatic accounts of what goes on in my heart. It all feels very swirly, all these emotions: grateful, afraid; excited, filled with grief; hopeful, exhausted; etc. etc. Little marbles of emotion that keep me preoccupied, staring into the galaxy of colors they create. I feel all of it. I cherish all of it, even the bad.
As always, I wish you all so much love and magic,
PS: Lovingly asking for grace on this platform as I continue on this journey of healing. But also, I want to say that we are all deserving of grace. You don't need to be actively recovering from an illness or a tragedy to qualify asking for patience and grace. Being human is hard enough. Let’s lead with gentle hearts towards ourselves and others, not just during this Mental Health Awareness month, but always.