Death and Dying: The Stuff Nobody Wants to Talk About

I wake to a throbbing pain behind my left eye. It feels like something is pushing on my eyeball from behind and I roll out of bed, my body speaking a language only I can understand as I do so. I grab my Pendleton robe off the hook in the bathroom and wrap it around my cold, hairless body and head to my desk to find my glasses. Cold has taken on a new meaning over the last few weeks in a way I didn’t quite understand before I started treatment. Due to the side effects of the toxic drugs being pumped in my body I no longer have any body hair which added a protective layer I never really appreciated until now.

The irony that to kill the invisible cancer cells that are trying to take over my body and destroy me from the inside out, I must pump my body full of toxins that too are destroying me from the inside out is not lost on me.

Rubbing the sleep away from my eyes, I find my way to my desk in my main living room and open the top drawer. I pull out the Warby Parker case and pray that I remembered to put my glasses back there the last time I wore them whenever that was. Maybe if I wear these the throbbing will go away I think but I’d be lying if a part of me didn’t worry that maybe the throbbing was an indication of something more. I don’t often speak of the deeper fears like this one much out of the fear of being labeled dramatic or a hypochondriac so, like so many times before, I just push that thought down deep to rest with the other ones. I don’t want to think about all the maybes that cancer brings to the surface today.

There is always a more plausible excuse I remind myself. I’ve been numbing out watching a lot of TV lately without wearing my glasses. I’m literally going through chemotherapy right now which has a long list of side effects. Don’t jump to conclusions Amanda. This is a hard thing to do though because history has shown me that my body betrays me often and I’m not invisible to the cancers that take up home in my body.

I also know that sometimes bodies just ache and throb. Signs of aging. Reminders and indications that time is moving forward, not back, and I must adjust to the changes that are inevitable. We can do all the things to prevent visible signs of growing older but we all know this truth to be certain; our bodies are aging with each tick of the clock.

Tick tick tick.

One more grey hair. A new ache in my knee. A tiredness deep in my bones. A blurriness to my vision that wasn’t there yesterday. I smile at the naivety I had for year thinking that I was different and aging would not affect me.

In a few short months I’ll be turning forty-three and my thoughts rush to my bald head and how long it had taken me to grow my hair out since I had to cut it short the last time I went through cancer treatment. About ten months after I finished radiation the effects hit my body like a steam roller. The stress on my body and my spirit had created new lines on my face and my hair started breaking and falling out at a rapid rate. The events from the year before had taken a serious toll on my hormones and was triggered even more so from the sudden and traumatic death of my beloved dog Rocky.

I smile at the memory of Rocky as wiggle my toes to scratch the belly of the Baker, the pup I got two months after Rocky passes. I rub a hand over the light stubble that has already grown back since I shaved my head a few weeks ago. I figure by my birthday I’ll have a head full of it and a look that screams GI Jane. In about four years time, just maybe my hair will be long again.

I slide my glasses on my face and swear the dull ache behind my eye eased up just a bit when I do so. I find my way to the kitchen and start the hot water for my coffee. As it boils I feed Baker and grab my blue Carhart beanie and slide it on my head. This has become a daily staple, wearing some kind of beanie 24/7. I look forward to warmer weather where I can wonder about in all my bald glory or at least throw on a baseball cap instead.

One of the few pleasures and joys in my life I am 100% certain I will never, ever, ever give up is coffee. It’s the main motivating factor that gets me out of bed most mornings and especially on these colder ones, as I anticipate the vibrant life-force waking me up after eight hours of rest. When the water finishes boiling I pour it over the powdery substance at the bottom of my handmade tumbler a friend made. A medicinal mushroom coffee blend that claims certain health benefits too. I mean, I might as well try. I have nothing to lose at this point.

I stir the dairy-free creamer into my coffee and walk back towards my bedroom, crawling back in bed. I pull the covers around tightly knowing well that in a few moments I’ll be ripping them off in a sweaty fit due to one of the many hot flashes I get daily. I’m still not sure if these are related to chemotherapy or the fact that I had to go off my hormone therapy due to my type of cancer.

I glance at the clock on the bedside table which I got with the hopes of not sleeping with my phone in my room and it reads 4:25 AM which is a new normal for me since I can barely stay up past 8 PM these days. A 4 AM wake time isn’t so strange I guess. It is eight hours affterall.

I take the first sip of my coffee, another joy in life that is hard to describe but known well by a particular club of people. I allow the coffee to dance on my tongue singling to my body it’s time to wake up. I settle in on the other feeling that has been consuming me the last few days. A thick layer of meloncoly probably brought on more so by the cold and dreary weather but also the question that has been lingering just below the surface for a few weeks now.

I think about my conversation with my oncologist from the day before and the courage it took to ask the question no one wants to think about.

What if this doesn’t work?

My biggest model on this journey, my mom, has had cancer four times and is still here so naturally I just assume my story will mimic hers. I’m also not naive to the reality that it could be written entirely different. That my final chapter could end sooner than hers.

As much as nobody wants to think or speak about death and dying, it’s been on my mind lately. What if this doesn’t work? The small aches and pains that have returned to my pelvis are a near daily reminder that chemotherapy is powerful but so is cancer. I like to think that the pains and aches are the cells dying but can’t help but wonder if it’s an indication that I may not be one of the lucky ones. What if at the end of these six cycles I’m scanned and they see a new mass? What if I finish chemotherapy and the scans indicate no evidence of disease but a few months later I wake on a random summer day and feel that familiar pressure and pain once more?

What if my hair has grown back and life has returned to “normal” and my bones start to ache and the fatigue hits me harder and my bloodwork indicates skewed markers?

Nobody wants to speak of death and dying but death and dying are not a what if. Death and dying are an inevitable and the reality is, I’m young, but I’m not invincible.

I’m not too young or too talented or too full of life for death to evade me. I don’t have too much stuff left to do or so much love left to share with the world. Death and dying doesn’t care about any of that. When it’s your time, it’s your time. I think the hardest part of that reality is not ever knowing when that time may be or how.

But nobody wants to talk about death and dying even though it’s as natural of a part of life as being born is.

I think it’s human nature to want to stay in the fluffier parts of life. To only think about tomorrow and the next day but I’ve never really been afraid of talking about the darker stuff that comes with being human. There has always been a part of me that has known that it’s just that, a part of life.

Maybe it took watching my step dad die last year but it really solidified something for me. Death is ugly but it also has a certain beauty to it. A sanctity.

But let’s not talk about it though. It’s too scary. Our finality is scary. It can feel overwhelming. The idea of not being here anymore is something that so many can’t even bring themselves to think of.

It reminds me of a time I was out to dinner with some friends while I was back in Seattle visiting I still lived in Encinitas and had finished radiation but I can’t remember what season it was. Someone had asked me a question that somehow led to the topic of death. Leave it to me to find the way to the uncomfortable topic.

“I’m not afraid of dying.” I said. “Once I’m gone, I’m gone.” The others huffed and puffed, one saying “I can’t even go there!” while another said “I can’t even begin to think about it.” The others following suit. I couldn’t tell if I was envious of their privilege or annoyed with it. There were two ways of looking at it. Lucky are those who have never been faced with their mortality. Or, lucky are those that have. I still wasn’t certain how I felt about it.

But it’s true. I’ve never been scared of dying. I’ve been more scared of not figuring out how the hell to live fully and deeply. I’ve always thought that once you are dead you are, well, dead. You’re gone. Where you go I’m not certain. I’m not a religious person so I’m not sure if I believe in a Heaven but I’d like to think that wherever we do go we are reunited with our loved ones that have gone before us. Our beloved pets too. Lord knows if that is true, I’ve got a lot of cats, a few dogs and one furry rodent I named MC Hamster waiting for me over the rainbow bridge. Don’t get me started on all the Goldfish I named Fred, assuming that their trip down the porcelain thrown landed them where I’ll one day be going.

And that thought brings a smile to my face. It softens the fear a bit. Imaging that at some point I’ll be running through a field of wildflowers with my boy Rocky and Oliver and Lucy and Sammy and Rusty and Boots and Blueberry. Yes, we had a cat named Blueberry.

Thinking about your own death doesn’t mean it will happen any sooner. It doesn’t mean you are being negative or dark or morbid. It means that you have accepted one of the truest parts of being human. That one day you too will die.

I think that getting curious about your own mortality is actually a catalyst to getting us to live more deeply because when you really think about what it means, you realize that one day it will all be over. Life. It will no longer exist.

So how does that make you feel? What does that make you want to do and say? How do you want to walk in the living so that you may make peace with your one day death?

May I suggest that you give a little thought to it before you end up on a doctors table asking, "what if it doesn’t work?”

Depression, Menopause and gasp, anti-depressants

I don’t think the healing process ever ends. I just think there comes a time when you decide that your wounds aren’t going to stop you from becoming the person you want to be. Self-love is a lifelong journey and sometimes it’s harder than others. You just have to commit.

- Unknown

I’m not sure why my writing is the first to go when I get busy but it’s as if something turns off inside of me. The free-flowing spout of words turns to a light trickle until the last drop drips from me and the well runs dry. By the time I realize I am parched for meaning and context again six months have gone by.

I’ve also been pretty depressed. Not your run-of-the-mill ever so often blues. More of the “it’s hard to get out of bed and find joy about much of anything these days” version.

It’s no secret that I’ve struggled with depression since I can remember. Sometimes I like to  joke that I was just born sad. It’s confusing though because through the waves of sadness, I have a lot of memories of being a really joyful and enthusiastic kid too. I was always just wanting to make people laugh and be in the spotlight.

Over the years I’ve experienced a rollercoaster of very high ups and very low downs which, through a lot of therapy have come to deduce as the result of traumatic life experiences (ie: cancer, cancer, divorce, and then more cancer), a very volatile home growing up, and more than likely some off chemistry in my brain that I never wanted to admit to myself because then I’d also have to admit that I was not perfect. 

I developed a pretty significant eating disorder at the age of fifteen that I thought was just normal because it seemed like every other girl I went to school with had some variation too. We were all fighting our inner demons and the pressures of thinness equating to being loved and accepted or whatever our reasons were. The last time I purged my food was at age twenty-six but it really just turned into me being somewhat obsessive about eating gluten and dairy-free or vegan when I was one, or making sure I got my work out for the sake of “staying healthy.” It would be years later when I would realize it was never really about the weight or the food or the workouts and that the struggle would always be living just below the surface waiting to say hello again.

I think one of the harder parts of dealing with mental health, besides just everyday life, is the shame that comes with it. Like, get over yourself, Amanda. Snap out of it already. You are missing it. Life. It’s passing by so quickly and you are too busy being depressed. What do you really have to be depressed about anyway? I’ve always wondered, why can’t I just “fix“ myself as the wellness world touts so easily can be done?

With the yoga and meditation and breathing exercises coupled with the raw, vegan green potions and inner child work I’ve done, you’d think I’d be walking around levitating right there with Jesus with a rainbow-colored aura. But alas, I still can not walk on water.

Over the last year, I found myself thinking, “I’m done with this spiritual stuff. It doesn’t work. I’m still just as broken.” But healing isn’t linear and maybe there is something bigger at play here.

It wasn’t until the last few months when even the things that brought me back to life in the past, like my art, were not doing their job any longer that I started to get worried.

No sugar coating it. No skating around it. No fluffy filler words to lighten the hard edges of a not-so-pleasant part of being human. This was more than just passing sadness and it has been going on a lot longer than the last six months.

And I have felt and still feel terribly guilty that I feel this way because I have a really good life. Despite the hardships I’ve experienced, I have so many things to feel happy and grateful about. I know this. However, the thing about depression is, it’s confusing.  Sometimes it makes no sense to your logical mind.

If you struggle too then you understand this well. Most of the time you don’t get why you feel the way you do and because mental health is only now becoming a more mainstream topic of conversation, for a very long time you probably suffered in silence just like me and so many others. There is a whole lot of fear of being judged, fear of losing people, losing jobs, losing status, credibility, being labeled attention-seeking or dramatic. You name it, I’m scared of it.

I can’t help but think of all the lives that could have been spared had mental health been as natural to discuss as your physical health. Like, “Hey, I’m heading to the gym to do Zumba then I’m going to my therapist to talk about my trauma and attachment issues. I’ll be home by 8!” Followed by a response that sounds like, “Okay honey! Hope you get to the bottom of it and have a major breakthrough!”

What I’m currently experiencing is actually a mix of grief and depression and the extreme mental backlash of menopause. Maybe you’ve heard people joke about women going through menopause feeling like they are going crazy and I’m here to tell you it’s true. But nobody who's actually gone through menopause tells you this. Mainly because they can’t remember it because what comes with menopause is a whole lot of brain fog and forgetfulness. And dry eyes. God the dry eyes are horrible too.

My brain feels both flat and overstimulated and fuzzy all at the same time. This is never a good combination because what follows is a lot of confusion, a kind of out-of-body experience, and a loss for words. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in mid-conversation over the last six months and I can’t remember what I was talking about.

So yeah, I guess you could say I’ve been a bit depressed and trying to adjust to a body that doesn’t even feel like mine any longer and I haven’t really known what to write about because I’ve been in this very confusing metamorphosis of some kind. I am no longer the person I was but not sure who is left standing in her place. And I can’t help but wonder: Is this depression, menopause, or is this what so many refer to as a mid-life crisis?

Or worse, what if it’s actually all three?!

The last six months have looked like a whole lot of denial and trying to convince myself that this will just pass. I’ve doubled down on therapy and well, hoping all the “tools” I’ve acquired over the years will help.

Some days I wonder if I’m not really depressed and I’m  just bored because I’ve been practicing not buying into and contributing to drama and my mind and body haven’t quite adjusted yet. Once I realized how addicted I was to it I realized that I had to change it.

Sometimes I’ll call up my good friend Rachael and say in my super melodramatic voice, “Raaaaaaaaaaach, I’m itching. I’m itching for a fix and drama is my drug!” and I always draw out the draaaammmma part to give it, ya know, drama and she’ll laugh. Oh I love her loud laugh which makes me remember that I am actually kind of funny, and then well, we laugh together because she has the same addiction that I do and we remind ourselves that we are done with the drama. Drama = bad. We are better than drama. And we are in drama recovery.

So, I stopped writing because I’ve been dealing with the reality that this has been going on for oh, about thirty years now and maybe it’s time to really confront my depression. Maybe I really am a depressed person. I mean, really.

I stopped my podcast. I stopped sharing from my heart because how do you really write about this stuff anyway? Plus my art started taking off and I got scared that if I was really transparent, people would think I was crazy and stop buying my art. I found myself folding into the space of safety.

Until about a month ago when I started hearing that ever so quiet voice coming from deep within. No, not those voices. This one is just the voice of my intuition. It whispers, “Let me out. You have to share me Amanda because I am part of you and people will get it because a lot of people are experiencing this too.”

So here it is:

Hi, I’m Amanda and well, I have depression. Real, bonafide, not just the blues depression.

And I think it got a lot worse when the dust settled from having my hysterectomy and menopause hit me like a mac truck going at full speed. 

Things have been tough and alongside the handfuls of hair that’s been falling out the heavy layer of grief has felt heavier than anything before and for the first time ever, I decided it is time to go on antidepressants and that both excites me and scares the shit out of me.

After six months of zoom therapy, two weeks ago I sat in my therapist’s office face-to-face because we had both been vaccinated and I stared at the business card scribbled with the name of a Psychiatrist to call about getting on medication and the truth is, all I could think was: “Am I really this person?”

The next morning I woke up with a thick cloud of unexplainable heaviness and the dread of starting my day and thought, “Yes Amanda, you really are.”

So I called. All my friends who I knew were on antidepressants and I asked about their experience with them just to affirm to myself that I am not alone on this antidepressant journey. Then after about the fifth call from my mom who would casually, not so casually ask if I’d called the Psychiatrist yet, I realized that I think I really need to do this.

I called. And turns out they don’t actually take my insurance which inevitably had me putting it off for another few weeks until I realized that if I don’t do this I’ll never know if there really is a light at the end of an often very dark tunnel and I thought, “Amanda, what if this IS the thing that will help? Don’t you owe it to yourself to experience a little peace?”

So I sat with my doctor and explained it all to her with brutal honesty. The darkest thoughts I’ve ever had were no longer a secret.

And I felt a tad bit freer.

I don’t really want to go on antidepressants. I just want the broken bits inside to fix themselves. I really wanted green juice and reiki and the crystals I have lined around my room to transmute the sadness. I wanted to find the hole that makes me feel this way and stuff it full of whatever I can so that I don’t have to take a pill to make me feel better. I want to be able to fix this myself. I didn’t want to be an actual “depressed” person.

The truth is, for a very long time I quietly judged others for going on them. And I hate nothing more than a) that I did that and b) being a hypocrite.

So now I’m a judgmental hypocrite and a bonafide depressed person. 

Great.

Or, I’m human. I don’t know yet. All I know is that I’m definitely not a green juice drinking, levitating Jesus type with a rainbow-colored aura.

(Yet.)

So, here I go.

Saying it out loud feels both freeing and terrifying and I’ve been telling those close to me as if it were some dirty secret as I nervously say, “Hey, I need to tell you something….”

Turns out it’s not really so dirty of a secret because I can’t tell you how many people I know who respond by saying, “Oh, I’m on them. They really help,” Just as matter of fact.

And like so many other things in my life I’ve made this bigger than it needs to be. There is nothing wrong with going on antidepressants.

So this morning I twist the cap and shake out the first pill into the palm of my hand and stare at it and I can’t help but wonder, were you the answer all along?

Bottoms up I think as I swallow it with a little bit of water along with my estradiol for hormone replacement two hours after my taking thyroid medication and laugh at the irony that this organic, green juice drinking, yoga-practicing, reiki getting, inner child soothing, gluten-free ex-vegan now has a shelf lined with prescription drugs.

And I head out to my shop to get some work done and realize that hope is resting just below the surface for the first time in a very long time.