carrying an hour

I've changed my mind about writing about cancer.  When I started this blog, I vowed to keep it "cancer-free" because my previous blog was "cancer-full."  But I must face it;  one doesn't spend the better part of a year dealing with throat cancer, treatment and recovery, and then just forget about it.  There are memories/thoughts/emotions  that run deep into the inner rooms that just keep crying to come out.  

So...I was cleaning out the shelf in my closet where I stack junk, mail, papers to put away, etc. and I came across a scrap of paper. I surmise from the writing that it was something I wrote during the middle of one of those very painful sleepless nights when I was taking narcotics, sleeping pills, anti-nausea meds., etc. and not sleeping at all, but rather spending my nights in a half awake zone of despair. It's my handwriting, but I have no memory of writing it.   I have very fuzzy memories of those nights.

How far I have come;  it's now 10 months post treatment, and reading what I wrote was like remembering a really bad dream one feels relieved to wake up from.

Here's what I wrote:

every night another new notebook another new notebook another new notebook another blank page. I wait. I wait. I toss out the old notebooks they don't matter anymore "got tired, read awhile, fell asleep, woke a time or two then heard the alarm ring, a little too soon."    toss them all out they are old they are someone else's life useless to me now. I wait.    Now I carry the hours of the night. I carry their weight each hour heavier than the last. I carry them all. I wait. I know the silence of 2AM and carry it to the silence of 3AM and on and on through the night I wait.   I hurt.  I wait.    I carry the hours.  While others sleep.  I wait.