I know there should be more sophisticated things that fill my cup, but nothing hits like THC and Bluey, This works in my favor because Josephine has been needing to watch Bluey episodes (it’s her comfort show) to help her fall asleep recently and she’s been sleeping on the couch in my room for months. (We wonder if she’ll ever go back to her room) AND she can’t fall asleep unless I’m in the room. So I’ve been doing a lot of Bluey watching with her. I’m normally playing on my phone while the episodes play in the background but I’ve taken to putting the phone down and just watching the episodes with Jojo. They really are relaxing.
The above practice brought me to watching the longest and most emotional episode of Bluey called “The Sign”. IYKYK. To make a long, tear jerking, story short there was a theme of not knowing how things were going to work out. The teacher, Calypso, reads a story about a man who has a series of good and bad things happen to him in every other order. The people around him said “Oh, that’s such a lucky thing that happened!” Or “That was really unlucky.” Every time the old man would respond with “We’ll See.” Watching this episode triggered a memory from right before I was diagnosed. I had watched the episode many times already but one day I really adsorbed the lesson that Bluey was teaching in that episode – we can find peace in the not knowing of life. We can never know how things are going to turn out but we can always find a way to be comfortable with it. Every time we think something should go a certain way it doesn’t go that way at all. It’s all a practice in saying “We’ll see.” I even bought a sticker of that phrase and slapped it on my water cup! This was all before I got my official diagnosis. I was already getting in the mode of peaceful unknowing. I was already responding to life’s inconveniences as a realistic part of life. Good and bad things happen but we’ll always see how things turn out in the end. Sometimes we realize that the worst thing to ever happen to you was also the best thing that could have happened to you.
I just passed the one year anniversary of being diagnosed with breast cancer. It feels like it’s been at least 5 years, yet it’s gone by in a flash. It’s been like those toddler years. The days are so fucking long but the years fly by. How is it only a year? How is it ONLY a year?! It’s a both/and situation.
I’m on the other side of the first real big “We’ll see” we’ve had in a while (honestly, every day is some kind of a “we’ll see” situation). I’m on the other side of the things I was so scared of a little over a year ago. It’s crazy that I made it out so changed. This version of Emilie is thankful that past Emilie decided to just see how things turned out. I’m thankful I didn’t give myself any expectations. I think that that is what my perspective on “We’ll see” is, it’s not putting any expectations on the future and remaining unattached to the outcome.
Even though I was practicing being unattached to the outcome, I knew I’d come out changed. I started noticing butterflies everywhere and often. They were fluttering past me or I’d notice a piece of art with a butterfly. I’d never been drawn to butterflies like I was drawn to them around this time last year. I even changed to face of my Apple Watch to a rotating variety of beautiful butterflies. Every time I looked down at my watch I was delighted. I knew transformation was on the horizon. It’s like I subconsciously knew something big was coming and it would provide me with a metamorphosis experience. I even got a sticker of that beautiful process and put that on my trusty water bottle/cup.
My cup (not a Stanley) went with me everywhere during my cancer treatment, it still does too. I’m shocked I haven’t lost it or left it behind somewhere, but somehow it has stayed with me, even in my foggiest of times when I could barely remember my name, I somehow remembered my water cup. It truly was and is my emotional support water cup. It’s a beautiful sage green and has all of my encouraging stickers on it. If you know me in real like, you’ve probably seen me lugging my cup with me.
I’m not a sticker buyer, I don’t think about getting a sticker as a souvenir or memento but for reasons unknown to me at the time I knew I needed to decorate a water cup with things that were beautiful and encouraging. I didn’t know I was going to be fighting cancer when I got stickers for my cup but it suddenly made sense after I got diagnosed. I got a few more stickers of Taylor Swift lyrics to top off the encouragement, one that says “Long story short…I survived” and “I cry a lot but I am so productive, it’s an art” Past Emilie knew that things were going to get murky and very unknown. It’s strange how a well placed sticker can help shift a perspective.
In my life, I have always had a premonition about big life events before they happen. I always thought it was the Holy Spirit, but now I think that it’s my inner knowing that gives me a heads up. I knew I was going to marry my husband, I knew that both of my daughters were going to come into our home soon, I knew I was pregnant with twins before the ultrasound, I knew that we were going to get the house we purchased even though our offer wasn’t the highest. I just get a sense that things are going to change and big things are happening soon and then they always do. I see this water cup covered in stickers as my heads up. I didn’t know I had cancer yet but I knew I needed to be unattached to the outcome so I got the “We’ll See” sticker. I knew I was about to go through a big change, a metamorphosis, so I got a sticker that shows the metamorphosis process. I know these are just little things and really only connections that I can make after the fact, but isn’t that the whole point of looking back? Noticing the things you didn’t initially notice and putting things together that you hadn’t connected before. I believe we need those miraculous connections to get us through, or at least I know that I need them. There has to be a sense of wonder, even if I’m broken and bruised.
