Is this real?  Did I remember that wrong? Is it me? Did I misunderstand? Am I too sensitive?  Oblivious? Possibly annoying? Did I misinterpret that eye roll?  Did they sigh with frustration, or with relief?  Am I not faceted enough to understand their perspective? Maybe I don’t know how to be human. Maybe I am just angry and it is fogging my judgement.  I want to go back to when I was excited for my future.

My mom used to say that I was an onion, neverendingly peeling back layer upon layer. I’m a walking juxtaposition; Knowing and intuitive, but also innocent and trusting. 

People altering their persona to match their environment has always confused me. I am me-myself-and-I in everything that I do, everywhere I go. I’m quirky, sure, but I embrace it. I think of myself as dynamic and complex, but maybe I’m not. I seek meaning and truth, because lying is boring.  Dishonesty is a defense mechanism with something to hide.  There is no value in lying. I don’t mind a little “fluff” though; a harsh truth wrapped in positivity.  Let me know when I have something in my teeth while telling me I look pretty. 

I used to always sing, “When you are strange, no one remembers your name.”  Am I just my name?  No, no, I am a Sagittarius, too.  That’s something. Jupiter, the luckiest planet, the planet of truth and expansion – that’s my planet. Blunt, curious, and adventurous, I like things put plainly and boldly, clear and not pretentious. But, I am also sensitive (Cancer rising), a talker (Gemini moon), and peppered with charm, mystery, and intensity (Scorpio Venus)! 

I wish I didn’t have such high expectations of others.  Maybe I wouldn’t be so disappointed that in a week, this week, I’ve been deceived, abused, and attacked.  Not physically.  Unless you consider my freshest broken toe.  I think it was the door that hit my second toe and it’s purple and painful now.  My third broken toe since I have been diagnosed, my second diagnosis in 4 years.  One toe is freshly broken, one healed, and one that needs to be rebroken to heal.  And it just dawned on me that that is exactly the point!  I’m being broken to be built back up.  

When my aunt Franny died from her metastatic breast cancer, she came back to me in my dreams.  She was my best friend and as we hugged, she said, “the whole point of life is to learn.  So, I am going back.”  She was excited and frantic, “I have so much more to learn.”  I forgot about that dream until just now.  When she first came to me, I was thrilled to know that secret; we’re all here to learn!  But then, I lost myself.  I abandoned myself.  I sought love instead of knowledge.  And now I am just heartbroken.

A year ago, July, a person who I didn’t think that fondly of in the first place, though I always made sure my interactions were kind and professional, aggressively yelled at me as others watched. That is horizontal violence.  A bystander is still a participant. Honestly, I can’t count how many times in my life that I’ve been in the middle of a situation where I am so shocked by the audacity of what is happening that it almost feels like an out of body experience. This time, what the person exactly had said I can’t remember, just that I thought, is this really happening?  I was more disappointed than sad, but I wanted to cry. I didn’t though.

I would go back to it, that day, often in the middle of the night, and ruminate about what transpired; Did I do the right thing? Did they? Recently, someone said that they would never want the super power of reading minds, but that’s what I want more than anything – I just want to know what do you mean exactly and are you leading with good intent?

Around that time was when these lung nodules (found on the CT Scan that I insisted on) that I had been gaslit into thinking were just “scars” from an infection had doubled in size and quantity. I didn’t feel sick.  I still don’t.  I never would’ve known that my cancer had spread if it wasn’t for me nudging to get a cat scan.  They kept an eye on the nodules for a few months and when they hadn’t grown, they said I could come back in a year.  That was this year, February.  

But this week, I found out that someone tried to ruin my life.  They looked in every crevice and corner trying to find something to take me down professionally.  I take pride in my ethics, honesty, and professionalism, so with all of their time and effort that they cruelly invested, they found a small mistake on a document that I didn’t even write and reported it to our national organization.  The organization contacted me and just shook their head, “this is someone with too much time on their hands and too much hate in their heart.”  It was dismissed immediately. This is what we call the “crab mentality:” imagine a bucket of crabs waiting to be cooked and one crab is climbing to the top, then another crab pulls them right back down to the rest of them.  The theory is, “you can’t succeed if I don’t.”  And I do not subscribe to that.  

I’ve always tried to live intentionally, but sometimes I’ve been misunderstood. Sometimes I’ve misspoke without having all of the details. I’ve made mistakes. I have really high expectations of myself and of others and we all fall short at one time or another. I understand that part about being human. But I want to live in a perfect world where we all lift each other up. We understand what we mean and we all want the best for each other.  I still have so much to learn.  I have so much to see and feel and experience.  And even though I am starving for love, I am being broken to rebuild me.  Maybe I always truly understood, but I just didn’t want to.  Maybe I was never oblivious or annoying, I was simply shrinking myself into someone else’s expectations.  And I am not going to anymore. I am Gilda.

Remember, this is my new era.  I’ve learned how to lean into my hot flashes and be thankful for a refresh of coolness when they’re over.  My dreams are still wildly disturbing, but I’m starting to understand that they’re place holders for things that I need to acknowledge and wholeheartedly process. I feel raw and angry without hormones, but I recognize my position and I approach interactions with curiosity and kindness despite it.

I am learning in this era that it is okay to make mistakes as long as you acknowledge and fix them.  I think it is perfectly normal and ok to discuss and ask questions. It’s always okay to make things right. Don’t let a hurt ego break another’s heart. I’m also thankful.  Thankful for my neighbors and friends.  And my dad who calls me almost every night.  In this era, I, Gilda, am being rebuilt and I am learning! I am excited for the future me.

I am thankful for strangers, too. We all have our own perspectives shaped by our own experiences. Maybe I am multifaceted, but I just don’t have that one particular frame of reference. It doesn’t mean that I am not complex. I’m just learning. Someone reached out and said, ‘don’t let yourself spiral into making sense of it all and don’t let the doctors who don’t let you call them by their first names swallow you up into fear. A prognosis is a prognosis and it’s already been past that 4 months. Perhaps it’d be exciting to make a mission of transcending your mindset into attaining the unattainable. And maybe a future doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be earthly.’

Yesterday, my dear friend laid to rest his beloved sister, who had had cancer. It was a deeply sad day, but beautiful, too. I could tell that she lived fiercely, but not in a wickedly warrior way, she just lived lovingly, boldly, and with humor. And as I listened to my friend speak so eloquently about his sister and her wit as he told a hilarious story, the candle by her casket flickered as though she was laughing alongside us. It caught my eye right away, I am not sure if anyone else noticed, but I did. And it gave me an extraordinary feeling of comfort. “Future” is ambiguous. Future is in a few minutes, tomorrow, next week, or perhaps everlasting.