Lesson #9 - Wanting to be on the sidewalk

When you get sick your calendar changes. Meetings, networking, brainstorms, whiteboard sessions, training all disappear and make it look as if it was always easy to clear a diary. They just disappear.

In their place, you have blood tests, doctor appointments, surgery, consultations. Your work is to live. Your time, now seemingly so much shorter, belongs to those keeping you alive.

Chemo was 6-8 hours every 2 weeks. I tried to spin the new status. I had the key to the bathroom reserved for patients. How’s that for a club status? I indulged in the sandwiches from the fridge that said, ‘patients only’. Seriously – free sandwiches. Have I mentioned the little tea biscuits? It was so worth it.

But after I finished basking in my new status, I had a lot of time to long. I longed to be on the other side of the wall. I longed to be hurrying somewhere on the sidewalk just outside. I longed to have a calendar full of future. 

I remember promising myself that, when this is all over, I would remember that I'm on the sidewalk. That I am where I longed to be. That now my duty is to walk ANYWHERE I long to.

Because sitting in a room, longing for the sidewalk, taught me to see what was always under my feet in the first place.