MAKE THE CALL | LIVESTRONG Action
February 4th, 2010 -- Posted in Diary | No Comments »{{desc}}
My mind is filled with thoughts these days, as I’m anticipating another transition in life – remission. Â Maybe this is something that I’m not so used to. Â To get back to an ordered and routined life from chaos, uncertainties and freedom to choose to devote my limited energy to things I believe in. Â I have trouble to adjusting to the pace of healing and my own expectations. Â I’m a little bit sick of being sick, too. I got a mild fever this week, feeling extremely fatigued. My left shoulder is in pain, and is hard to lift. I feel like crying many times, because inside, I know there are so many things I want to do. I just beat the cancer in me, now I expect that I could do much more…But I feel trapped inside my broken body…It feels like asking a F1 race car driver to ride a donkey down the field. Â I thought I would learn to just accept and not to be so hard on myself by now…It’s a hard, but I’m working on it.
How do I get back to a normal life after remission? Â What I can or cannot do? Will it ever be the same again? Â Now that I’m so used to always having someone around me. Â My mom is leaving next month. Â I subconsciously feel anxious about it. Â How can I get used to living by myself again? I know I’m never alone and there are so many great friends caring for me. But with family being thousands of miles away, when big life crisis like this happens, it can get really scary. I don’t want to experience that scare again…I wish my parents could be closer that I could drop by on a weekend for dinner from time to time. But that’s just a luxury for now.
I had some nightmares over the past weekend. I woke up in the middle of the night, breathing really hard…and didn’t want to fall back to sleep to the dark dreams…I’m not a Freudian, but I believe that dreams are manifestations of the subconsciousness in the narrative form. My dreams are very visual, as if playing a movie. I can recall the vivid colors and imageries long after I wake up. I do remember images really well, and they cause a lot of emotional response in me. Â That’s why I don’t watch horror movies since I lived on my own.
M.dS, my BFF from college visited me over the weekend. On the bus going home from J-town, he asked me if I feel San Francisco has become home for me. I responded: “I don’t know. I don’t feel I have a home now.”
Now that reflecting back on his question and my answer, it’s not that I don’t find SF home. Maybe I was rethinking about the definition of home itself. I haven’t been back to Wuhan since summer of 2007. Home has become an idea for me now.
Home…is what I carry around with me everyday, is on the pages of sketchbook I take out,  in the poems I jolt down in the middle of the night and the drawings I doodle in a cafe, is the person I look into the eyes and kiss tenderly, is in the voice of my best friend “I’ve got your back”, is in the delicious homemade meals prepared with love, is in the beauty I see in that fleeting existence of the rainbow that make me cry…
I’m home when I feel very connected to others and my surrounding. I don’t need to travel thousands of miles away to feel home.  Because being a nomad for seven years has taught me how to create those connections and build my make-believe sanctuary in my mind. You can say, it’s self-deceiving or blind faith. I am consciously choosing to be a romantic fool. It helps me to better deal with challenges in life, and stay true to my own nature. Thus, it’s important for me to find the interconnected feelings among my daily lives, and meaning in what I am doing. I love music and visual art in a way that they can express the inexpressible and connect people through things larger than themselves. I feel viscerally compelled to express and to reflect. I’m not just into making beautiful things and crafts. It is a necessity for me to feel alive, like water for the soul.
I know I will be fine.
Music that expresses some of what I’m feeling:
In an Expression of the Inexpressible by Blond Redhead
I Can’t Feel My Hand Any More, It’s Alright, Sleep Still (5:40) by Mum
Help, I’m Alive (4:46) by Metric
Here’s the lyric for the song
I tremble, they’re gonna eat me alive
If I stumble they’re gonna eat me alive
Can you hear my heart beating like a hammer?
Beating like a hammer
Help, I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer
Hard to be soft, tough to be tender
Come take my pulse, the pace is on a runaway train
Help, I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer
Beating like a hammer, beating like a hammer
Beating like a hammer
If you’re still alive my regrets are few
If my life is mine what shouldn’t I do?
I get wherever I’m going, I get whatever I need
While my blood’s still flowing and my heart’s still
Beating like a hammer, beating like a hammer
Help, I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer
Hard to be soft, tough to be tender
Come take my pulse, the pace is on a runaway train
Help, I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer
Beating like a hammer, beating like a hammer
Beating like a hammer
If you’re still alive my regrets are few
If my life is mine what shouldn’t I do?
I get wherever I’m going, I get whatever I need
While my blood’s still flowing and my heart’s still beating like a hammer
Beating like a hammer, beating like a hammer
Beating like a hammer
I tremble, they’re gonna eat me alive
If I stumble they’re gonna eat me alive
Can you hear my heart beating like a hammer?
Beating like a hammer, beating like a hammer
Beating like a hammer
Help, I’m alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer