Sad

September 10, 2019

For some reason, I’m sad. I’m sitting here, sipping my hot chocolate at a farm-to-table restaurant in Washington, DC. It’s 7:16am and Haley will join me any minute now. The restaurant is the place to be for a weekend brunch, but on a Tuesday morning, it’s empty. I think I even beat the host here, considering a server sat me.

Haley walks in, gives me a hug, sits on the booth side of our hybrid one-side-booth-one-side-chair table. I always prefer the chair, Haley always asks to make sure I don’t mind that she takes the booth, I always insist and affirm that I prefer the chair. It’s the little things.

She reaches in her bag and hands me a card. Her handwriting is something I generally refrain from teasing her about because we both know it’s worse than my five-year-old nephews’ so no one needs to say anything. Well, okay, I do tease her some usually. But not today. I open the envelope and pull out a white card printed with only a brain on it. I laugh and cry and look at one of the people in the world who knows me best.

It’s the five-year anniversary of my brain surgery, and we’re celebrating. Celebrating with breakfast. We order our entrees and both place orders for sides of bacon. They bring her tea and I reach for my hot chocolate. We settle into our breakfast and she asks me about that day. I cannot help the tears that slowly trace their way down my cheeks as I walk with her through my memories.

When we’ve meandered through that time, I dab at my eyes as I think through my previous anniversaries. The anniversary of my brain surgery is a big deal for me. Ever since September 10, 2014, I’ve thought of my life in two parts, before brain surgery and after brain surgery. I even think of myself in two parts, who I was pre-brain surgery and who I am post-brain-surgery. A quote from poet Reynolds Price was included in a book I read a couple of years post-surgery, and it put to words what I had been feeling, what I relay to Haley now. Price shared, “When we undergo huge traumas in middle life everybody is in league with us to deny that the old life is ended. Everybody is trying to patch us up and get back to who we were, when in fact what we need to be told is, ‘You’re dead. Who are you going to be tomorrow?’”

I recount all of my previous anniversaries with Haley, and I cannot help but realize this is my first brain surgery anniversary where I am not facing an immediate health crisis. I wonder if that’s why it’s hitting me so hard. I cannot put into words what I feel as I sit here in this restaurant and think back to the waiting room I was sitting in this very moment five years ago, surrounded by family and friends and people who came to wait with my parents, to now, 800 miles from anyone that was there, wearing a blazer and Keds, gearing up for a day in my job as the Director of Operations at a national nonprofit where I’d cap off work on our audit, complete logistics to receive a six-figure donation, and run a catered, bartended event on our office roof overlooking the U.S Capitol for leaders of organizations across the district.

I would have thought I’d feel proud. Proud to be where I am, to have gotten as far as I have in this short amount of time, to have my brain surgery, and the experience that it was, be far from me now, to the point of a hazy memory. But I’m not. And it isn’t.  

I thought I’d be proud but I’m sad. And I wish I’d have let myself sit in that sadness a little longer instead of rushing myself through it. I left breakfast, I went to work, and now I’m home from our event too sad to go to bed. I wish I would have shared that with another person instead of trying to keep that from her. I told her I was sad but before she could affirm my feelings or sit in them with me for just a moment, I made a joke about waterproof mascara and skipped along. 

I wish I had let myself be sad in that moment. I wish I had let myself do what I’m doing now - sobbing.

I wish I had let myself remember in that moment. I’m sad for myself. Because I went through an unimaginable trauma at an age where I was too young to comprehend but too old to be unaware. I’m sad because of the pain I’ve endured. Because I’ve known the pain of which experiencing should have killed me but I never wished it did. Yet the moment of that agony is in step with my present reality to where I cannot untangle them easily. I’m sad because I had to be that strong. Because I didn’t have the option to be weak. I’m sad because my mom, my dad, my brother, and my sister had to watch helplessly as doctors fought and tried for my life, as I fought and tried for my life, and I’m sorry they carried my fear and worry while I carried my pain.  I’m sad that when they heard I came through the surgery alive, they next had to wait for hours until they could assess that I could move my arms and legs, and even longer to determine that I could speak and that I came through the surgery as fully capable as possible. I’m sad because it isn’t a life I wished for myself, regardless of what beauty it may have now. I’m sorry this happened, it isn’t your fault, you handled it really well, and honestly, I’m just plain sorry. I am sad for myself.

And yet, at the same time,

I’m okay.

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