On New Year’s Eve, I burned it all. It was Sean’s idea and, well, he’s always been a genius.
First I burned the card with the bar code on it that I had to use to check in for radiation. Then I burned the dozens of pages I used to track the output from the damn drains. There were so, so many of them.
And then I found two (TWO!) binders titled “My Cancer Journey” that I was given almost exactly a year ago from the hospital system. These binders were filled with advice like what to eat when you’re on chemo and how cancer can affect your relationships and shit like that and I burned every last page. I never even read them the first time around. And I ended up writing the book on my own damn cancer journey.
The burning of All The Things was even more cathartic than you can imagine. And it was a most perfect ending to 2020.
Of course, not everything will magically be better in 2021. And pinning too many hopes on that is probably dangerous. But I’m sure as hell not sorry to say goodbye to last year. I’m feeling more hopeful that I have in a long time and maybe that precisely because I know now that the phoenix does eventually rise.
I just learned that there’s a word in Swedish: eldsjäl. It means a powerhouse, a driving spirit, a fiery soul. When I heard it, I knew I had found my word for 2021. Now I just have to learn how to properly pronounce it.