AnnieModify

Today has felt like a deep, deep exhalation, an enormous, slow, long sigh of relief and releasing. Fitting, perhaps, that it is winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. I don’t have any rituals to mark it except for this one, what I’m doing right now: sitting on the couch with a cat curled by my legs, sipping whiskey, tapping these small words into a space that isn’t real (digital? website? internet? can’t possibly be real) but will somehow, perhaps, be read by actual real people in actual real places. Hello, friends. How are you? 

How are you, what are you, where are you, why are you, what’s happening with you, what are you thinking about, what’s humming in the back corners of your brain, what does your heart know right now, what makes your breath come faster or slower, how do you feel about this moment, what do you hope for, what do you fear, what would you ask for, what wishes do you hold tender and close, what desires do you lean away from, what rooms are laid bare, which doors are closed and which ones opened, what candles are you lighting and watching on this the longest night?

I have a few candles lit. I know what I would ask for and what I do ask for. Tonight is the time to look at the space between those points. To consider. To sigh a deep sigh of releasing. What could be different if we did not drag the past with us into the future?  

Let us lay aside every weight that hinders us 

and the errors that so easily entangle us

so we can move forward (with patience — gently, child, gently) 

on the road we walk, the reality of this moment 

which is all that we ever have 

I find this sort of thing fascinating. I looked for detailed info before my own surgery because I like to know what I’m getting into. If you’re grossed out by surgical/medical descriptions or photos, skip this one. 

So I had this spot — like a pimple or small wart — appear under my right eye years ago. 2017, 2018? Sometime in there. It was very small, directly under/partially on the lash line near the inside corner of my right eye. Not really noticeable, didn’t hurt or itch or grow or change so I didn’t worry about it¹.

Anyway over the last year it got a bit bigger, so I had it checked out. My dermatologist did a biopsy. Result: basal cell carcinoma. So I needed to have the spot removed. Due to its location, it was likely the lid margin² would be affected. So after the removal, I’d need eyelid reconstruction surgery by an ophthalmic surgeon. 

Here’s how they do it: They schedule the Mohs surgeries³ in the morning. They schedule the reconstruction surgeries the same afternoon. 

They do this because Mohs surgeries can take… hours. They don’t know till they’re doing it. The surgeon takes off the cancerous area and a layer of the skin around it, then examines it under a microscope. If they still see carcinoma cells⁴, they take off another layer. Inspect the removed layer. Repeat until there are no carcinoma cells visible in the removed layer. 

The removal is quick. The inspection takes longer. So each “layer” (removal + inspection) can be over an hour. 

Once that’s done, they either sew you up there or send you off for reconstruction surgery. 

I was at the hospital from 7am to 5pm. Most of that time was spent waiting. The Mohs surgery required two layers removed. I was done there around 9:30. They bandaged my eye and sent me off for reconstruction which was scheduled for…. 2:30pm. So, yeah, lots of waiting. 

Mohs surgery

• Local anesthetic (needle in the cheek below the right eyelid).

• They lean you back in a chair and tuck surgical drapes around the area. 

• Assisting docs hold the head still and hold the eyelid open or closed or whatever it needs to be. 

• It’s pretty surreal to see a scalpel coming directly toward your eyeball.

• But the most surreal part was hearing the snip-snip-snip of scissors knowing it’s my skin that’s being snipped off my face. 

• Pain: none. They gave me another shot of anesthetic right before they patched me up which was nice. 

Waiting

• Hungry (no eating allowed before the reconstruction surgery). 

• Did some Christmas shopping. 

• Pirate impressions.

• Thought about food. 

• Went to the bathroom a couple of times to peek under the bandage and make sure my eye was still there. Then the anesthetic wore off so I didn’t need to do that anymore. 

• Contemplated the hierarchy of snacks. 

• Assured 4 different nurses that there is zero possibility of pregnancy, no really, I promise, I do not have a uterus.

• Speaking of the beast (not) in me: Watched a couple of episodes of The Beast In Me.

• Looked at the entire Internet. 

• Thought about food some more. 

• Napped a little. 

Eyelid reconstruction 

• Sedation (via IV) plus local anesthetic. I was very relaxed and full of warm happy thoughts. 

• This part was fascinating: The removal took about half the width of my eyelid rim above the area of removed tissue. They took skin from my left eyelid and grafted it on. To do that, they cut right along the crease of my left eyelid, removed some skin, and sutured the eyelid back together. Then they sewed those two strips of skin (I think it was two, I was a little drowsy) below my right eye, creating a new portion of eyelid rim and filling the hole. Amazing that we can do this stuff. 

• The surgery itself took about an hour. 

• Recovery was quick. I was home eating a giant Chipotle bowl very soon after. It was delicious. 

Recovery

•  Pain: minimal. Took Tylenol that first night and following day, then didn’t need it again. 

• Antiobiotic ointment applied 3x a day. This is annoying as fuck because I have to make sure I get a lot of ointment on that lid margin (very important to keep it moisturized) which means some ointment always gets in my eye so vision is blurred for an hour+ every time I apply. 

• Swelling: yes. 

• Bruising: some. Not as much as I anticipated. 

• Itchy and irritated: YES. OMG.

• I get the dressing & sutures off tomorrow morning and I CANNOT WAIT. 

Here’s how it looks today (six days post-op):

Oh, what’s that? You were hoping for an EYELID SURGERY RECOVERY MONTAGE of POOR QUALITY PHOTOS documenting the healing process from DAY 1 TO DAY 6 POST-OP? I’ve got that right here for you. 

1. Also I did not have health insurance at the time so even if I had been worried about it I probably wouldn’t have done anything. Say you're in the U.S. without saying you’re in the U.S. 

2. The eyelid margin is the “edge” of the eyelid. Also known as the mucocutaneous margin. Eyelashes grow from the margin & there are glands that produce oil to help keep the eye moisturized.

3. Detailed explanation of Mohs Micrographic Surgery.

4. Molecular imaging of different skin cancer cells vs normal skin cells. 

To tell the story of your life would take another life of equal length. 

There is no such thing as a true story because every story, to be told, must leave out something. And every something left out matters. It’s all the somethings that lead us to one point and then another; it’s all the somethings that merge into reality; it’s all the somethings, subconscious and conscious, that make up our experience. 

I can tell you a story, I can tell you my stories, I can tell you many versions of many moments of many stories of my life, and still:

No one will ever know the life I live. 

And no one will ever know the life you live. 

This is true. 

I am a child. Alive in a loving family. Growing up in a small Mississippi town, 1980s edition. I am: Unsure, voracious, timid, curious, wild. I keep my wildness locked up in a small box, shelved in my heart’s interior room. I memorize courtesies. I swallow down rules. I want to be good. I want to be good. I want to be good. I ask questions using polite words and careful tones. I learn that some questions cannot be asked even this way. I am loved, I am safe, and I am trying very hard to push the shape of myself into the slots around me. None of them fit. I try harder. I find ways to trim off those awkward bits of self, to unwind and tuck down those sideways curling threads of self, to starve thin into skeletal compliance those juicy curves of self. 

I am a child and I learn to read early and I eat books like snacks. When all the feelings choke off my air, books help me breathe. I move swiftly, with determination, like I have a purpose, through the children’s section of our small town library. 

The picture books. The rhyming books. The early chapter books. Gulp them down. 

I cruise onward to the teen section. It’s small. I dive headlong into the adult section. My mother, so careful in all other ways, so conscious of what might hurt me or bring me to some truth I should not face, never thinks that books hold danger. I read without limits, without reservation, without pause. 

And I discover: lives I had not dreamed of, and cannot know, fully, ever. Here, in stories tucked away on a shelf, is enough to teach a girl in the southern United States a small but essential truth of what it is to be a thousand other things, to live a thousand other lives. I step into the larger world. I am a queen, I am a prostitute, I am shipwrecked, I am starving,  I am fighting a war, I am tending a field, I am an ecstatic nun, I am a murderer, I am I am I am I am I am I am until the last page turns and I wake up in my own room, disoriented. Myself, but more than myself. Myself, but larger, a little louder, unfurling, fattening up.

None of these stories are complete. Most are not even factual. 

And yet: They are true. 

I am an adult. I have within me a picture of what this means and I try to live up to it. 

It is an odd thing to be. I have responsibilities. I make decisions, so many decisions. I am still unsure, voracious, curious, wild. 

Less timid, now. 

I do not knock on doors and wait, polite. I push them open. I walk in. I look around and decide if it is a space I want to be in. Then I stay or I go. 

I still want to be good, but I have learned I get to define it for myself.

I am unlearning domestication. 

I am telling myself stories. 

They are true because I make them true. 

Whatever it is, let me start it with gratitude.

Gratitude is fertile ground. Put in the seeds of your dreams and desires. Keep the ground watered and pull the weeds. Soon the seeds will grow.

(Conversely, worry is fertile ground for all your fears. Stay worried and you will harvest an abundance of fears.)

Gratitude has nothing to do with what you have, how good or easy you’ve got it, whether you get what you want or don’t. Gratitude is not concerned with such petty measurements of value, such judgements of experience. Gratitude embraces it ALL, looks at the big scope and opens wide with a YES, with brave willingness to receive every gift, no matter how unexpected.

Gratitude is not just training yourself to notice good instead of bad, to see positive and ignore negative. Gratitude is the skill of finding the good in the bad, highlighting the positive in the negative.

Gratitude removes the need for illusions. You don’t have to act as if you like everything, or pretend that everything is ok, no problem, we’re all fine here. Gratitude frees you from the need for a polished-up societal veneer of happiness.

Gratitude teaches you how to be okay with unhappiness, how to be okay when things are not okay. This is powerful, because then you don’t have to pretend to be happy all the time. You’re able to look at what hurts, voice the pain, start dealing with obstacles and opening up more options.

You can use gratitude to reduce the power that bad situations have over you. Mostly, what we fear is pain. Bad situations are bad because they cause us pain, in one way or another. Gratitude is not a state of ignorance, where you need to pretend that pain is not real. No. Pain is real. Gratitude is the ability to acknowledge the pain, to receive it (instead of resisting it), and to pull the gift from it.

Gratitude knows that there is always a gift.

Gratitude is necessary for acceptance. When you accept without gratitude, you’re submitting to something you don’t value. You’re being passive, surrendering out of fear or frustration. Giving up. That kind of passive surrender either deadens you or pushes you to an opposite reaction, an extreme. Gratitude is an alternative route. It is a balance of acceptance and intention. It is both hands open. Gratitude helps you to accept what others can give, without giving up on what you really want to receive.

Gratitude lets you say, “It’s all okay, even when it’s not,” and actually mean it.

Gratitude helps you relax in the moment, even in the most painful or difficult or uncertain moments. You can only relax in two situations: when you feel fully in control, or when you’re okay with not being in control. The former is always an illusion. Gratitude enables the latter.

The more you practice gratitude, the easier it gets. You get better at finding the good, embracing the whole experience, receiving the gift.

Gratitude is a gentle way to face your fears. No aggression or intense conflict needed. Gratitude doesn’t demand a victory; it just diffuses the power so there’s no longer a threat. That’s a good place to be: free from threat, out of danger.

Gratitude helps you face that deepest fear of scarcity: the fear of not being enough. Gratitude shows you, graciously, over time, how much you are. You send thankfulness outward: for others, for things, for experiences. But gratitude cannot be aimed like an arrow. It is not a weapon loosed but a perspective gained. It’s the way you begin to see what’s already there. It’s a different kind of seeing-is-believing. It’s a reframing, it’s a language that opens up new concepts, enables new and better definition. Of the world, of others, and of yourself. 

Gratitude helps you assign your own meaning to anything that happens. It provides a larger context. It removes the need to pretend or defend: With gratitude, the pain is not an illusion, but it’s also not the whole story. One chapter is not the whole book. Things have happened to you, but you also get to happen to things. Gratitude puts the pen in your hand. Gives you the space to think your own thoughts. Says, “Here. It’s your turn now. What do you want to say?” 

If your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can.

— Marcus Aurelius

What we learn as children programs us in certain ways. These programs run subconsciously. They determine our default emotional responses to everything and the meaning we derive from those responses and the behaviors we enact based on the meanings we derive.

Some of these programs served me well in childhood but don’t work for helping me be the person I want to be as an adult.

There are healthy ways to deal with difficult things. Sometimes those are the routes I take. Sometimes I am not taking any routes, I am just sitting in my chair being a glazed donut of a human.

It feels good to remember that’s okay. I don’t have to feel bad about everything.

Being perfect is never a precondition for peace.  Self-acceptance doesn’t come when I do enough but when I realize I am enough.

There are small cycles and big cycles. I know myself well enough to know what I come back to, most of the time. I’m okay with my equilibrium. It tilts this way and that, but it never tilts all the way over. The center can hold.

Or maybe it can’t. Maybe things fall apart, and the center cannot hold, and it’s tumultuous but not apocalyptic.

There’s this option I like to call forming a new center.

It does create vast periods of feeling lost, unmoored, ungrounded. Big feelings, behavior shifting. Generally, lots of swinging and flailing. When you’re in the middle it seems chaotic, and mostly it is, but there’s something else going on too. A planting of feet on new ground. 

Disorientation is just the feeling you have before you get oriented.

Any future perfectly known, said Alan Watts, is already the past.

But life is not in the past. Life is now, life is here, life is this moment.

The only way to live it is to be as truthful as you can be. With others, of course. But mostly with yourself.

Doing anything else is not living or being in the moment. Anything less than truthfulness is an attempt to distort the past or control the future. 

When you’re busy trying to distort or cover or rearrange the past, you’re not in the present. 

When you’re focused on managing and controlling the future, you’re not in the present.

You are in a time that does not exist: past or future.

When you focus on the past or the future, you opt out of existing in the present. As long as you choose to stay there, in the not-now, you don’t exist in the now.

Since now is all that exists, we might say you opt out of existing at all. Until you return to what does exist, the only thing that exists (if anything does): the present, this moment, now.