The St Francis and Promises Anniversaries, & Maybe No More Anniversaries

Here is the anniversary post that comes every year: 11 years of davideverettfisher dot com and nine years of my cancer diagnosis. I reflect on my past more than my birthday or AA anniversary. How come me?

Next month I will be forty fucking seven years old. I will also visit an oncologist to see if I am still clear of cancer. Only my survivor friends know the kind of anxiety these visits mean. Thinking about it, I have started to have a permanent lump in my throat, and the odds that I will be cancer-free are pretty high. If I’m clear, then I can say I am in remission.

Then I can stop talking about it, right? Wrong. I will still have to get periodic check-ups to make sure it doesn’t come back, and the odds that I will have cancer again are now very high. It will ultimately kill me if nothing else does. I will try and stay healthy enough to die of cancer and not something lame like heart disease or a bullet.

I had a routine check-up for the rest of my issues. They ran tests to see if some of my symptoms were from something other than post-chemo. Most of the doctors I have spoken to have just dismissed my symptoms as long-term chemo after effects, but since moving to Rhode Island, the providers here have taken an interest in these issues and have sent me to different specialists to see if it is something else. Last year, I went to a rheumatologist to see if it was some kind of arthritis, and now I had some tests to see if it was some other issues like MS or head injuries. The excellent news showed nothing terrible; the bad news was that nothing came up, so my pain and other symptoms remained a mystery. The lack of evidence could point to head injury, but I am trying not to just focus on that.

I am now the proud patient of two therapists. I am continuing regular talk therapy but starting Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. Everyone I have talked to has had great results from this therapy. While the talk therapy has helped a lot, I started feeling stagnant and backsliding. 

I still have a massive gap between my brain and body. My mind can be numb at best, and my body jumps in fear or repelling touch. It has caused a lot of pain in my marriage, and is suffering because of it.

My spouse and I are talking about separating. We have hit a spot when we speak; we get into fights. Everything we have learned from years of couple’s therapy, at least on my side of the street, has been forgotten. I have not been the best partner, which has caused distance between her and me. We aren’t discussing the big D yet, but separating will be complex with a house in our names. 

This has been an enormous blow to my self-esteem and pride and has shaken the foundation of my ideals of what I want to be. I have moved across the country and live in a strange land as a stranger. I have taken a lot of care to try and form a community here, and it has only been recently, with some mistakes, that I have felt a connection to people here. Now, I must revisit things like living alone, moving back to Oregon, what I want from life, and whether I can be fulfilled.

I had my orientation with the EMDR therapist, and I heard myself say that despite all the chaos around me right now, I have never been more okay with who I am than right now. I have spent my entire life not feeling okay with myself and looking to be understood by others to fill that void. Most people don’t understand themselves, so how can they even begin to understand me? Through all the pain and suffering, joy and happiness, I have found an understanding of who I am and who I want to be, but it requires a lot more work. I hope there is enough time.

What am I, as a man, who can’t stay married? So much pressure is put on relationships, lasting forever. If a relationship ends or morphs into something non-traditional, it is considered a failure. I can’t help but feel like a failure. Is it just pride? Is it wrong to walk away knowing that it was a great relationship, it lasted the time it was supposed to last, and hopefully learn from it for whatever happens next? 

It’s also scary because I am a balding, out-of-shape man with no kids but a dad bod, about to turn forty-seven-year-old man. I am not the creme of the crop for people wanting to find a date. Will I be okay alone? Yes, I will be because I have found that I am most comfortable alone or with one or two people. My days of trying to impress rooms full of people are over. I do feel lonely, though. The idea of going on a date with someone is terrifying. 

I’m unsure if my marriage is over or if we are just going through a hiccup, but I know that no matter what happens, I need to do a lot of work on myself because I’m worth it and deserve some peace. I love her very much and hope to never know a world without her, but I might need to see a world with a different relationship with her in it. 

I have been doing this blog for eleven years. Lately, I have found my voice with the tarot cards and the sober horoscopes, but the stats say no one wants to read those things. My thumb blog had hundreds of readers, but my last tarot and sober horoscope blog never broke twenty views. People want to read when I lose a part of me, like my thumb or my testicle, but not the creative endeavors, which seems kind of fucked up if you think about it.

I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing and hope to get that tarot book published and start other creative projects. Every year, I wonder why I pay for davideverettfisher.com, but it does help me be accountable for something. Maybe I’ll find the magic project that people would want to read.

Here is to one more year of davideverettfisher dot com.