Just a fair warning, this post is a bit chaotic and a bit of me brainstorming in real time as I sit in my kitchen writing this post on February 7th, 2023.
When I originally set out to write our story and experiences with brain cancer I wasn’t entirely sure what it would look like or how to present it. At first, I felt like a chronological telling would be most direct and make the most sense. I like knowing the path and the ending. Over the past couple of months, I’ve really struggled with writing. I don’t promote my blog. I’m not a professional writer. I just want our story to be out there for others who are also experiencing something awful. Perhaps as a guide for others in a similar situation or just some validation that life is fucked up. But I have felt a strong desire over the past couple of months to not be perfectly linear. It’s been a source of writers block in a sense. I just have so much to share and my ADHD brain has a hard time making it perfect when in reality, it’s not meant to be perfect.
I’m a very purposeful and precise person. I like planning, organization, and structure. I don’t like to deviate from well thought out plans or to break the rules. However, I am a weird, chaotic and spicy person at my core. I make my own rules and march to my own drum. I always have been that way. It just doesn’t feel right to be perfectly linear. Being a little more chaotic in telling our story just feels so much more genuine and authentic to who I am as a person.
As you know, our story started on July 11th, 2018. The retelling of our story is based on my private journal entries, Dustin’s caring bridge site, medical records, memories, emails, text messages, etc. I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on those events and sometimes I feel differently today than I did right in the moment of it occurring which isn’t bad. It has been therapeutic for me to revisit these events and reflect. It also gives you a chance to see how time and distance impacts how I view things years later. But life is still occurring and I want to also share about what I am going through now. It feels really important to share things in real time.
In many ways it would have been helpful for me to write this blog while it was occurring in real time, but let’s face it I did not have the capacity to do so. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 but you can’t change the past. So you’re going to read a mostly linear story with other chapters being totally out of sequence from a timeline perspective. There are some things occurring in my life right now that I really want to share in real time. Perhaps I’m feeling nostalgic and wanting to share a story about us from before the diagnosis. It’s still our beautiful yet tragic love story, just a bit more reflective of me and our love.Hopefully, it will still be interesting and beneficial to read.
I’ll do my best to categorize posts by the year they are about so you can jump around if you’re more of a linear person.
Beside you in time 