It’s easy to write when your sad, angry and full of hope, but harder for me to write when I am happy. My high school teacher Marie Tollstrup used to say that if you look at most poetry and literature, it has traces of negative emotion with a happy ending merely to showcase the writer’s whimsy, yet today I feel obligated to note the love surrounding her and I, amongst our dear friends, family from abroad and in general. Each day in the past week has been full of positive emotion, brimming with future possibility, and the reality that our time has finally come. This December will make it 5 years when I fell in love so deeply and truly with someone who I had known all my life that it still feels unreal that I am with someone so beautiful inside and out. But I digress. These past few days have made me realize how truly blessed and lucky I am to have the people I do in my life. Looking at my past posts, I have spent an inordinate amount of time whining about the ones that truly do not matter, ignoring the ones that come around me at a drop of a hat, and I cannot help be thankful for being just good enough to have them in my life. I do not know what I did to deserve them but dammit, I am going to make damn sure I keep them!
Thank you, thank you, and thank you. I wish I was more eloquent but I cannot stop smiling, while soaking in these beautiful days and events with amazing friends and family. THANK YOU!
For the first time since I started on my UCLA extension classes, I am wondering what made me think I could actually write. This is the first time also I took only one class, and yet it feels as if my entire certificate for creative non fiction depends on it. The class is for personal essays, how to write one and get published. We have only written 5 essays but it feels as if I have written 50. The worse part: my writing absolutely, without any doubt in my mind, sucks. I mean it’s awful. Instead of showing, I am telling. Instead of describing people, I am using stock characters. And grammar? Forget about it, it looks like I stopped around 8th grade.
At first, it was easy to blame the class (teacher sucks, essays too general, no lectures, etc) and then I realized that the issue really was me. My first topic was about my grandfather, the second about my mom and sisters opening up Ziba, the third about my difficult writing, and the fourth and fifth about cancer. Each topic emotionally loaded for me, but more importantly not really dealt with at the time so as I began writing, I lose myself into that time period so the writing resembles that of a child.
Writing about Ziba and my dad;s drinking is just plain hard mainly because I have such mixed emotions about it. When Ziba started, I was at UCLA and then Law school and I was 13 when my dad drank and it has had a powerful effect on me. The main reason its hard because Ziba is in my lifeblood and I love my dad so much now, more so because he is one of the few people I know in my life who did a 180 turn in life to save his family. I have so much respect, pride and love for him that it’s hard to look at a time when I felt nothing for him. As for Ziba, it;s just hard to write about it because I have the guilt that I could have done so much more and that perhaps I didn’t have much to do with it for it to be successful. In a way, maybe I am riding it coattails, but then I see my family and they just don’t see it like that and won’t let me either.
Finally, my love and cancer. This part’s the hardest just because it was so recent but more importantly it involved someone I love so completely that it’s hard to imagine being without her. So here I am, in a personal essay class where all the essays are so personal that they don’t mean much to others because I havent dealt with my own issues, and thus the writings are full of meandering thoughts and emotions that frankly aren’t very fun to read if I was totally honest with myself. Let’s hope I figure it out soon before I truly feel like a failure. I am open to suggestions 🙂
The mural next to these words marks a strong contrast to the real world facing me outside: grey, dreary, drizzling enough so even the dog doesn’t want to go around and sniff aimlessly. Just paid all the bills and miraculously have exactly 11 cents to my name, well to our names to be precise, so I have plenty to frown about, but I am not. In fact, seems nothing can get me down.
The heart is light, can’t stop smiling, and looking forward to the week ahead. It’s funny how certain things don’t matter as much when so much has happened. Friends who you cared about deeply barely a bleep, strangers who you ignored now dear acquaintances, but you know over all, that you matter a lot to many out there, and that’s enough. Each one in our lives contributed the way they could, or better yet the way they were meant to. This was our battle, and they were just the small break shops that give you water and food so you have the strength to keep going. Blaming those for not running with you was not only realistic but completely unfair. True, the damage is done but I know my friends, they will bounce back since those who know me well know that I hold no ill will. More like, it was a cry for help but I managed to push some away and for that I will always be sorry. The choice to continue is really up to them because although I am sorry, I am not going to be a slave to regret for the rest of my life.
I finished my first short story in years, and while I am tempted to share it here, I know it still needs to be tightened up more. Who knew in the whirling days of chemo and radiation, an idea would be born. On this dreary day, my heart shines, smiling at the thought of her being almost done. Nothing else matters really. All the old accusations, decisions, bad thoughts, put away to stand clear for the finish line. Who knew that in a matter of weeks, we will put this saga behind us and while the results are not 100%, they are good enough for me. Can/t worry about what’s not there or has not happened. Actually, that’s not true. It is 1005 over in a week, and what will come next, I cannot worry about. For now, I have her to love fully, full-time, and always. Also my dear friends and family who are always there. We are almost there, thank you for coming along this bumpy ride. Hope I didn’t scar you too much. 🙂
The mural next to these words marks a strong contrast to the real world facing me outside: grey, dreary, drizzling enough so even the dog doesn’t want to go around and sniff aimlessly. Just paid all the bills and miraculously have exactly 11 cents to my name, well to our names to be precise, so I have plenty to frown about, but I am not. In fact, seems nothing can get me down.
The heart is light, can’t stop smiling, and looking forward to the week ahead. It’s funny how certain things don’t matter as much when so much has happened. Friends who you cared about deeply barely a bleep, strangers who you ignored now dear acquaintances, but you know over all, that you matter a lot to many out there, and that’s enough. Each one in our lives contributed the way they could, or better yet the way they were meant to. This was our battle, and they were just the small break shops that give you water and food so you have the strength to keep going. Blaming those for not running with you was not only realistic but completely unfair. True, the damage is done but I know my friends, they will bounce back since those who know me well know that I hold no ill will. More like, it was a cry for help but I managed to push some away and for that I will always be sorry. The choice to continue is really up to them because although I am sorry, I am not going to be a slave to regret for the rest of my life.
I finished my first short story in years, and while I am tempted to share it here, I know it still needs to be tightened up more. Who knew in the whirling days of chemo and radiation, an idea would be born. On this dreary day, my heart shines, smiling at the thought of her being almost done. Nothing else matters really. All the old accusations, decisions, bad thoughts, put away to stand clear for the finish line. Who knew that in a matter of weeks, we will put this saga behind us and while the results are not 100%, they are good enough for me. Can/t worry about what’s not there or has not happened. Actually, that’s not true. It is 1005 over in a week, and what will come next, I cannot worry about. For now, I have her to love fully, full-time, and always. Also my dear friends and family who are always there. We are almost there, thank you for coming along this bumpy ride. Hope I didn’t scar you too much. 🙂
Cue “Run This Town” by Jay Z from his Hits Collection Vol 1, put it on repeat, flash to another waiting room, another place where nurses don’t look at you or can’t remember her name, surrounded by some smiling, others crying, some just blank and others just there. Time ticks. The music goes on and the heart expands, and in those 4 minutes, you look around the dreary room and say “we gonna run this town tonight.” Flash to the car, hitting 100 miles an hour, feeling like 200, and you keep the song on repeat, nothing else will do, this song, this Anthem, gotta break the rules, I don’t care, I am gonna run this town tonight. I pledge the allegiance to her, this is almost over, a small bump, blip in the radar of life, we got this baby. Almost there.
Time becomes meaningless, only the music remains, the thoughts only her, willing her to hear your heart, almost there babu, the finish line is coming up. All your love, all your work, everything you got, give it to him now (quoting Rocky 4, Duke’s speech to Rocky in the last round versus Drago), and then another line hits me (He’s cut, you see, he’s a man, he’s not a machine. He’s hurting. No pain, no pain!) and suddenly Cancer is our Drago, you ain’t so bad. We are coming to the final around soon, and your are cut, and guess what: we run this town. No pain. All our love, all our happiness, all our dreams, all our hopes, desires, just around the corner. We have just begun, we didn’t pick the fight but we are going to end it with a knockout. The only way to live baby because we run this town.
A beautiful morning, sun bathing the room so much so that I wonder if I have ever seen it like this before. Then it hits that the sun is lighting up what’s inside me, and I smile. And I smile some more because the external radiation and chemo are done. Gone is the not knowing, the fear, the constant ache of “will she be ok?” Don’t get me wrong, I am not looking past the fact that she has internal coming up, but Cancer cannot make us ignorant or scared anymore. The big bad wolf has turned out to be a mere shadow that we magnified in our mind.
I cannot help but soak in the sun, letting it breath into me more strength for her. The burden has gotten lighter, we are beginning to see the end of this trial, and for once can actually discuss the future rather than future appointments, can actually look forward to the weekends as a real break rather just something to give her some breathing room, can plan to run a household rather than worry if the house is poisoning her somehow.
Still, I cannot get rid of some of my hurts, while looking forward to the new joys. I miss some greatly while others with a tinge of regret wondering where it all went wrong, and others just not ready to be there for us, and that’s fine. I love them all, but I am also cautious, I know now that some were unfairly put on high pedestals and some pushed off too swiftly. So I sit here and learn while the sun continues to fuel me, make appreciate what I have and love, and I know of only one certainty and that is today. What is it that I can do today that represents, us, and our family. What is it that I can do in the next moments to just make it a little easier or fun for us. So I sit here, smile and feed hungrily off the sun waiting for inspiration, oh wait, the better word would be knowledge or perhaps just accept that it was meant to be that my car came back the same day the major part of the treatment ended.
All that time worrying just really wasted because what was meant to happen, did, and what wasn’t just resided in the endless loop of thoughts in my head. So I breathe out slowly, the worries, the fears, the not knowing, and revel in the moment, just enjoying the day, the moment, the realization that we will get through this, that we already have, that what I needed was always there, I just didn’t want to see it that way.
However, (is there always one) I know that there is much to be done, much for us to do, to travel, perhaps finally get on a plane together, but more than that for me to get back to work. That’s really the strange part, I miss it, and finally know what I am meant do there. I never thought I would say that, but looking at myself through my family’s eyes made me realize that I can be general counsel, and the fears and doubts (particularly the lact of confidence) were my own creations. I was my own hurdle. I had convinced myself that I would never learn but worse that I couldn’t learn, but the previous months of reading and writing made me realize how much I miss the law, and why I fell in love in the first place I also know what kind of lawyer I cant stand, and there are many attorneys who exploit California law to just make money for themselves while claiming to be consumer attorneys. I no longer will let my ignorance be the reason, my business suffers. No more. It’s time to discard the uniform of “I don’t know” and don on “I will get back to you on this.”
Funny, what a few months of cancer can do to you. Instead of sapping us of our energy and will, it has renewed it. So thank you cancer, for making me realize what is truly important. I owe you one but I wont ever like you, and one more thing: fuck you. Sorry, but your just really not forgivable. Besides, it’s you who gets my negative emotions or others, and I choose you. You are my big bad wolf, my enemy, my bad versus good. So deal with it. I will be celebrating when you die, and I will dance on your grave. You maybe “the emperor of all maladies” but you have no clothes.
Sanjay Sabarwal's Blog 