February 20, 2021
Today I bought a new notebook. It’s a 9.5″ x 7.25″ hard back cover business notebook, with a poly front cover, high-quality paper for smoother writing, and easy-to-tear micro-perforated pages. There is a swanky silver loop on the lower front corner. The pages feel sleek, smooth. This will be the cancer notebook. All the questions will be written here, each day. All the answers we receive, all the research we do, will fill all these pages.
One of the things you learn when someone you love is ill is that without writing things down, you have nothing to hold on to. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, your mind wants to drag you into scary places and you have to have proof that it is just being ridiculous. That is the beauty of a notebook, of the information it tenderly holds. See? you can say to your poor frightened mind. See what the doctor said about________? And the words will be right there, bold and solid, maybe a promise, maybe just an explanation. They hold the meaning so that you can let go, maybe get a few hours sleep.
But also, a notebook is for discovery. The novelist E.M. Forster is credited with saying, How do I know what I think until I see what I say? Always, the act of writing has the potential to make things come clear.
Except, I am slow to make connections between observations, feelings, thoughts, facts;
I’m unhappy being vulnerable in my not knowing. The gift of the notebook is that it doesn’t care if I know or I don’t. It just goes on being a notebook. As long as I keep at it, each word I write will be one more stitch between the private world of my mind and the physical world outside.
I imagine sometimes what I write will make no sense at all– that’s just how things roll. Opening my thinking for others to see is one of the most daring things I’ve ever done. But writing is the only way I know how to move through something like this, and reading it is a brave and authentic way I think people can journey with me. If you are so moved, write to me here. And, thank you.
Image by toodlingstudio from Pixabay