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So we still don’t know all we’d like to about our GC’s wife’s health but the CAT scans show what appears to be stage 4 liver cancer – ie: huge masses throughout the organ. We still need to learn if it’s a primary or secondary tumor, if it’s spread elsewhere (lymphatic system, brain) and if there are medications that could give her a few more months. From everything we’ve read, she’s not a candidate for a transplant so this is likely terminal.

For what it’s worth (squat), we got the news at 11:20am. The transfer was originally scheduled for 1pm. I kind of hate that we made the right call to cancel everything.

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An old friend yesterday made a very wise observation. I had just spent the past couple of hours over lunch, telling her how things had fallen apart over the past 4 months. (note to self: if it takes you a couple of hours to cover everything… yikes.)

Anyway, she commented that I seemed awfully… hard on myself in the telling of the tale. Well, yeah, I admitted. I sort of have a black belt in beating up on myself. I feel extremely guilty about all this. She asked for clarification since of course, what I was saying didn’t appear to be a terribly rational take on things. So I listed my mistakes:

• I should never have even considered surrogacy and read more about others’ experiences before embarking on this. I may have realized it could be too difficult financially and emotionally for us.
• Instead of surrogacy, I should’ve put my time/money/efforts on taking better care of myself so that I don't require medication and could just carry the embryo myself.
• I shouldn’t have allowed a friend to volunteer to be our surrogate. I should’ve said, thank you for the amazing offer but we’re going to go with a stranger who we're less emotionally intertwined with.
• To that end: I did not adequately investigate what burdens she already had in her life, namely the state of her wife’s health. I did not want to pry & assumed the fertility clinic was adequately vetting this.
• I should’ve listened to my gut when it told me that my friend was overwhelmed by the commitments she already had and stopped in February.
• I should’ve been nosier when her wife received the initial cancer diagnosis. If we had known more, we would’ve immediately learned more about the prognosis & treatment for this type of cancer helped them find a specialist who may have caught the metastasis in time.
• I should’ve told her not to hide bad news from us – that more information helps us make better decisions.
• And there’s probably about 12 other things I blame myself for too.

And then my old friend reminded me that the universe is vast. And that there is so much that is just beyond our control. That biology and families and people are messy things. That we are not clairvoyant and cannot research our way into a complete prediction of the future. That sometimes life just spirals into a mess despite our best efforts.

And that made a lot of sense. And sounded pretty familiar since my husband had just recently told me almost exactly the same thing.... He said that I really needed to stop believing the script my parents had bequeathed me that there was a RIGHT choice for everything and every scenario. He said that one of the things that bugs him the most about my family is our belief that if we just think hard enough we can figure everything out. Anticipate every problem, game every situation, avoid every mistake. It’s not only just not true, it’s a dangerous, egotistical way of thinking. It makes you paranoid and overly cautious and very, very critical. And then my old friend asked me something that another friend had asked me just 24 hours before:

“What do you think the larger message is here?”

Normally, I bristle at questions like this. There is no larger message. There is no grand plan or god. Stop getting all Zen up in my face. Life just sucks sometimes for absolutely no reason. But this time it dawned on me: that doesn’t mean you can’t LEARN from the suckiness.

When my first friend asked me this, I nodded and said, YES. Finding a message in all this would be kind of nice – it would give me something to take away from all this mess – like a goody bag of wisdom handed out at the worst party every. I said:

“Well... when I realize this likely means we’ll never have kids, my initial reaction is that perhaps I get to spend my whole life taking care of myself and not someone else. I had a hard go of it for a long time and nurturing myself would not be the worst thing to happen in the second half of my life.”

But when my second friend asked me the same exact question yesterday, I instantly had a different answer. I don’t think my first answer was off base, it just wasn’t specific enough. We’d been talking about guilt and I said:

“Perhaps the message is that the best way to nurture myself is to forgive myself.”

Ever since I got super-duper-call-the-cops (twice) sick in 2003, I’ve been pretty hard on myself about how all that played out. I’ve always hated the idea that my mental illness made me a liability in the lives of those I loved and I often think that what I put my husband through 11 years ago is so unforgivable that I will never be able to make up for it. All I could do is try my damndest to never, ever let things get that messy again. I frequently ruminate over the mistakes I made back then:

• I should’ve realized that I was self-medicating with alcohol and found a doctor to prescribe me proper medications instead.
• When I finally broke down and did ask for meds, I should’ve gone to a psychiatrist and not my internist. I knew better, I was just scared of shrinks.
• When I started the medication, I should never, ever have kept drinking. Or when I realized that I couldn’t do that, immediately asked for help.
• When I did start to realize I couldn’t stop drinking, I should’ve just gone inpatient like people recommended and trusted my family to take care of me.
• When I really started to go off the rails and it became clear that I needed hospitalization, I shouldn’t have fought it for so long & trusted my husband’s judgment.
• When I thought there was no other way out besides suicide or lying, I should’ve just walked into the nearest hospital and said uncle. I came close one day. I stood in the elevator lobby of a local hospital and studied the directory. I knew which floor to get off on. I was just too scared of how much it would mess up my life. So I drove home.

I’m guess you could say I’m petrified of messiness. I’m scared of things getting dirty and disorganized and conflict and unpredictable disasters. But I cannot control everything and should not expect myself to do so. And I can try to forgive myself for thinking I could.

Because the universe is messy and unforgiving. And vast.