My Antebellum Cerebellum

The bulk of the human brain--the cerebrum--is divided into two hemispheres and four lobes, putting it somewhere between "tiny house" and "50s ranch."  My brain, though, is more stately, like a McMansion with a dozen and a half rooms and growing.

I'm not bragging.  I'm simply stating a fact.  

In the past year and a half, I've become quite handy with dry wall and putty knife, slapping together new brain rooms with ease, if not with an eye for detail.  The more dire the circumstances, the more walls I put up.  Sick friend?  Wall.  Another sick friend?  Another wall.  Dying step father, heart palpitations, hospice?  Wall, wall, wall!

But I don't discriminate.  I've also constructed rooms for good things--for work, for home, for family, for the out-of-doors (walling in nature--really!?).

From afar, all that slap-dash construction probably seems a bit unhealthy.  Yet, I would argue that those walls and rooms have kept me from losing myself this past year.  Indeed, they have grounded me when the ground beneath me has felt like it was slipping away.  Build a room for joy, after all, and I have. . . a room filled with joy. Which is why, despite all the loss of last school year, I also ended that year with a deep well of happiness.

So I started a new room last month, just after dinner on August 16.  By far the most expensive room I've ever built, and the one with the least-interesting name,  this has been a challenging room for me.  The experts call this room "invasive ductal carcinoma."  Better known by the name "breast cancer," the room--like a museum--is filled with priceless furnishings, not one of which is comfortable to sit on.

Here, in this room, I have been x-rayed and scanned, probed and prodded.  I haven't been in the room alone, though.  Here, too, are experts clothed in competence and compassion, loving friends who have known similar rooms, many good folks sitting on the bench, cheering me on.   On Sept. 9, I had surgery in this room.  And on Sept. 13, I got a call while I was resting in this place.  The call was a good one.  Very good, in fact.  The experts would tell you that my lymph nodes and my margins are clear.  I'd tell you that my journey from this point on is about prevention, and nothing more.

Turns out, I might be building my first window in this brain house of mine, a view to some place that is not here.  In fact, as I was driving to school this morning, awash in tears and gratitude, I started to re-think my brain house and all of its hodge-podgy rooms.  Maybe it's time to change things up.  Time to tear down the walls that have kept me safe and sane this past year, and let life--warts and all--come rushing in again.

This tiny house that is my life, it turns out, is as full and beautiful and as messy and mine as I could ever want it to be.  Walls be damned, I plan on living it.