Once upon a time. There was a fish. Her name is really unimportant to the story, but let’s call her Alice. She lived in the ocean with her husband and their children. As you might imagine, the ocean was a very beautiful place to live. Filled with the bluest of blues…the greenest of greens. There were forests to explore made of coral and kelp. Alice loved the life they built in the ocean. She felt safe…happy…content. They had many friends and family close by, but most importantly, they had each other. She felt blessed to have such a good life with her husband by her side.
But that doesn’t make a good story. Does it?
Then, one day tragedy struck and Alice’s husband was killed in the prime of his life. Alice was heartbroken. Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe anymore. Her gills were making the same motions they usually did, but she was gasping and choking. In a frantic effort to get air into her lungs she swam for the surface and soon found herself flapping, helplessly, on the beach of an island. Where once she had gills on the sides of her neck, her fins now met smooth scales. She gulped air into her mouth to fill her lungs. It worked to keep her alive, but felt strange and foreign. She had to think about each breath filling and releasing in her lungs. What once had been effortless, now took every part of her concentration.
Thinking about every breath. Can you imagine?
She slipped back into the water and swam back to her ocean home. Her friends and family gathered around her, but it was different now. She was different. Alice looked around at them and saw their gills…working effortlessly. Their lives were still whole with their spouses beside them. They tried to be supportive of her…gave her advice on how to navigate this new gill-less, love-less existence she had thrust upon her…but it was impossible to give good advice about a circumstance they had never experienced themselves. Alice could now only stay in the ocean for short periods of time. She had to return to the island. Just to breathe.
She couldn’t breathe in her home. Can you imagine?
At first, she returned to the ocean often. She tried to fit in as best as she could in her old life with her family and friends. Returned to work. Went out to dinner. But grief for her husband compounded with her lack of gills meant that Alice could never truly fit in. She was not the same as she once was and being around her friends and family was often painful for her. Where the ocean had once been her home, now it was just somewhere she could visit every once in awhile.
She doesn’t fit in anywhere in her old life. Can you imagine?
Alice returned to the shore of the island and spent days…weeks…months…years…staring into the water. She spent her time lost in the memory of what home felt like. Of swimming in the beautiful ocean. Of remembered love from her husband. Of feeling complete…happy…at peace. She wondered what she had done to deserve to have that ripped away from her? Was she not deserving of love like that?
She felt incredibly alone and unworthy of love. Can you imagine?
Every now and again family and friends would swim to the surface to see her. They would visit for a time. Alice would pretend that her life on the island was fine-all the while acutely aware of the gills her family and friends still had…and that they would soon return to their lives in the ocean. Where their home still was..and hers would never…could never be again. And her loneliness grew.
Such unrelieved loneliness, even among people. Can you imagine?
As time went by, Alice realized that other parts of her body were transforming…just like her lungs had. Her fins were becoming arms. Her tail was elongating into legs. These transformations were excruciatingly painful…as the very cells of her body rebuilt themselves. While these adaptations didn’t ease the grief she felt for the loss of her husband and her old life and home, they did help her adapt to life on the island. She no longer had to lay…helpless…on the beach.
Everything about herself had to change, just so she could live. Can you imagine?
Alice rose from the sand and practiced walking on her wobbly, newborn legs. At first she was afraid to stray too far from the ocean. She stayed in the sand on the shore so she could at least feel the moisture in the sand…remnants of home. In time, the sun enticed her to raise her eyes and gaze around her..and she finally saw the beauty and the potential for life in this new place. While it didn’t have the same beauty of the ocean, it did have gorgeous trees…moss-covered boulders…fields of wildflowers…a rushing waterfall…and in the distance, a snow-capped mountain. And as she gazed around her, she felt something that she hadn’t felt in a very long time…hope.
She had existed without hope for so long. Can you imagine?
And as Alice finally stood on her own two legs. Her feet firmly planted. She put her hand on her heart and felt grief and love entertwined…beating…beating…beating. And she knew she had a choice to make. She could either stay on the sand by the ocean…or she could set off on a journey into the trees…clamber among the moss-covered boulders…trek through the fields of wildflowers…follow the rushing waterfall…and climb that snow-capped mountain. And so with adventure in her spirit, love and grief inside her, and a new-found yearning to live as her guide…she took the first step.
Love, Tennis, and Cancer 