These past 6 weeks have been wild.

It doesn't feel real to me that it was 6 weeks ago that I was nervously pacing the night away,
waiting for morning so I that I could wake up
and finally go have surgery.

I'd been waiting for that moment for what felt like
an eternity.
Over 5 months since the last one got cancelled.
Over a year since I'd started in the program at the hospital.

It felt as though
I was reading the last chapter of "before",
about to flip the page and start "after".

I'd dreamed about what it would look
once I didn't have to live the way I'd been living.
Once I wasn't in chronic pain anymore.
I told myself stories about the things I'd do.

I'd become obsessed with"once"s and "then"s.
Once I get over my breakup,
then I'll feel at peace in my heart.
Once I stop thinking about that friendship I held so dearly that disappointed me so deeply,
then I will have clarity.
Once I finally figure out my career,
then I won't feel like a failure.
Once my brain doesn't feel the crushing weight of depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, and fear,
then I'll be able to unlock my full potential.
Once my body isn't in a constant state of malaise,
of internal panic, of pain,
then I'll be invincible.

My body hurts in a new way now,
and I still have days where I feel
that my brain is against me.

But, for the first time in my life,
I feel hopeful that I have a happy future ahead of me.
I believe that things will work out.
I trust myself.
I understand that there is no waiting around for life to happen to you,
because life is now.

I've been forced to slow down,
to look and listen very closely
to the world around me.

I've realize that the opportunity to recover
from something hard
is the very best gift one could ever receive.

And let me tell you,
once you realize that,
then you'll never see things the same.

I am so unbelievably lucky.

I can't wait to keep living.

Maybe someday
I will write happy poems.

Unfinished
are the things I’ve got to get done,
my growing to-do list
that never shrinks,
despite my best attempts.

Unfinished
is the task that was asked of me
at the job I am shocked I still have,
the one that should have taken minutes,
but actually took me an hour.

Unfinished
is the conversation I meant to have
with a person I thought would be here,
but isn’t anymore.

Unfinished
is the email sitting in the draft folder of my inbox,
the application for that grant I am now certain
I wouldn’t be able to use
even if they gave it to me.

Unfinished
is a degree,
a certificate,
a specialization,
a collection of dusty dreams unrealized.

Unfinished
is the business I have
with my own refusal to give up
on moving forwards,
slowly,
onwards.

The work is always
unfinished.

“This will be my second last dose before my surgery,”
I tell the pharmacist, Yasamin,
as she flicks the syringe with her middle finger,
coaxing the medicine to mix in its vial.

The second last dose, or so I hope.

There is still so much doubt in me,
put there by selfish exes,
generational habits,
medical trauma,
and a system that has
beaten me into submission
more times that I can count,
taught me that I shouldn’t trust
my own body.

I’m allergic to latex,
allergic to everything
that is supposed to help me,
it seems.

It doesn’t stop them from
branding me each time
with their evil plastic strips
that leave marks on my skin for weeks.

Please apply pressure.

What if it happens again?
What if they leave me out to dry?
What if this time, I can’t get back up?

I’ll try to apply pressure.

Highway 97,
Mt. Lemoray.

I’m not hurt but
I can’t feel my toes.

She tells me we flipped,
but I don’t
remember.

I recited the speech again tonight
for the first time in a while.

A friend I hadn’t seen in over a year,
missing big pieces of the puzzle of my life,
of who I’ve become.

“Estrogen plays an important function in your overall health,
outside of the reproductive cycle,
blah blah fucking blah.”

This is why I have to get jabbed.
This is why I’m on so many meds.
This is why everything hurts,
all day, every day, all of the time.

It wasn’t so bad this time,
I realized.
Maybe I’m getting better at this,
better at not giving a shit,
calling it what it is.

It’s still hard to talk about, though.
I can’t decide whether I hate it or appreciate it
when people say nothing,
have no reaction,
when I mention I’m not working,
when I tell them I’m sick.

Don’t they want to know about me?
Aren’t they curious what I do with my time?
Don’t they want to know what’s wrong?

I want to share the frustration,
to commiserate.
I want to feel seen,
to feel understood.

Please don’t make me do this alone.

1:14 in the morning, Friday.
Sitting on a bed
that doesn’t have Mark in it,
the bed meant for a guest.

I feel like there is a guest in my body,
though I never invited her in.

I grip my children’s crafting scissors in my left hand,
consider what they’re capable of doing.

Feel that thought enter my mind,
then leave just as quickly as it arrived.
This is what I’ve been trying to tell the doctors about.

I need to go to sleep.

The city is alive with visitors.
The sidewalks are unusually busy for the first week of December.

I have to fight my way across Georgia,
swerving swinging briefcases
and followed by the clicking heels
of very pointy boots.

A group of teenagers walks past me,
wearing fabulous outfits
and covered in glitter.

I try to remember how I felt when I was 16.
Not quite so sparkly.

People look happy.
Another strange scene in dreary, wintery Vancouver.

I usually hate the downtown hustle and bustle.
There is so much I hate recently.
But today I’m not as panicked.

Eventually, I make it to my safe spot,
to the rocks by the water where I post up
to think.

I watch a mother and three young kids,
two wearing eras tour hoodies,
take a selfie by the gently rolling shore of the ocean.

I wonder if they notice me.
I wonder if they think I’m high.
I wonder if they know this is my home.

It is funny for a place to become familiar,
to feel so safe and predictable amidst the chaos of change.

I hope they love it here
as much as I do.

Hearing the words
float off your lips
was some of the best medicine
I’ve ever been given.

“I never hated you.”
Words I didn’t know
how badly I needed to hear.

You said you loved me last night.
Only through comparison to hummus,
of course,
your classic deflection tactic.

Play it cool, cool girl.
I still see you.
You’ve done that before,
and I know it was real then.

I hope it’s still as real
as it feels now.

There is sand all over my shit
and I don’t care anymore.

I love this.
I would usually care.

I’m looking at everything
backwards,
but I don’t panic.

The urban forest spills all over,
baring her teeth and
exposing herself
to me.

This time, I look on
with stillness in my system,
with curiosity.

I feel safe.
Nothing is going to hurt me
anymore.

I made you with anxious hands,
hands that knew they had no business
trying to exercise fine motor skills
while shaking that way.

I made you with sober hands,
hands attached to arms and shoulders
and a neck and a head
determined to push onwards.

I made you with tired hands,
hands aching from hours of repetetive motion,
but unwilling to succumb to
another night of bad dreams just yet.

I made you with accepting hands,
hands that held your flaws gently,
in a way that I hope to hold myself
one day.

I made you with my hands,
hands of a partner, a daughter, a friend,
a person trying her best
to stay afloat.

I made you with hopeful hands,
hands that needed a reminder
of why any of it matters
in the first place.

I’m still looking for that reminder,
one stitch at a time.

I come from a line of
strong women
who have lived lifetimes of
serving others.

I want to be one of the ones
whose sharp parts
haven’t punctured the exterior.

Pouring into my own cup now,
because you couldn’t be bothered to
anymore.

Hard not to take it personally
when someone who said they wanted you in their life
foverer
chooses that they no longer do.

Insult to injury when it gets done
over the phone.

I didn’t get to see if your tears
were real.

In a turn of events,
in which the only one surprised is me,
it turns out that I won’t put up with it
forever.

You’ve hurt me so much
for so long
that I feel nothing now.

Or maybe
I stopped letting myself feel anything by your hand
a long time ago.

I forgot that this is a pattern with you,
that you’re always the one being hurt,
couldn’t possibly do the hurting.

The difference this time is that
I am no longer fourteen,
but you still act as though you are.

It feels impossibly hard to
let this all go,
but I know better than to stick around someone
who feels that it is a sacrifice
to love me.

You’ve had a grip on me for far too long,
and I’ve finally realized it’s time for me
to let go.

The past doesn’t look so mysterious anymore,
now that I see this for what it is,
what it has always been.

I got a surprise piece of news today.

Thinking of you makes me feel 14
in a way that nothing else does.

I have so much misplaced love
for you,
for us,
for me, little me.

I don’t have a container for this feeling,
it is such a strange shape.

I don’t know how it will feel to see you again,
to know you’ll be walking the same streets as me
once more.

You are so stupid
and I will probably put up with that
forever.

You are a small piece of my childhood heart
that I want to hold onto so gently,
also forever.

It is all such a mystery to me,
this love.

I dip my hand into the icy cold December Pacific
in an attempt to feel something,
to come back to this body I’ve felt so estranged from
for as long as the atmospheric rivers have flooded this city.

Instantly, I can feel all the bones in my right hand,
and I hear my grandmother’s voice in the back of my mind,
scolding me for the promise of self-induced arthritis.

I push my hand deeper into the sand, and it feels soft,
like the side of your neck,
softer than I would have imagined it to feel.

The cold begins to burn my skin,
but I know that it will subside.
It always does.
I will myself just one second more of torture,
for I know that the feeling won’t be forever.

The crashing waves are calming.
I take the first deep breath I’ve taken all day.
I want them to wash me away, like in that Vance Joy song.
No matter where you’ve been, you jump into that water and
you’ll come out clean.