By it’s very definition vulnerability makes you “susceptible to emotional damage.” People hurt you when you make yourself vulnerable. You let them see your weak spots and they poke at them. You tell them your thoughts, feelings and wishes, and they stomp on them. They tell you not to feel that way. They ignore what makes you sad or upset. They get pissed off when you tell them they hurt you, and they hurt you some more. It’s just not worth it.

I am now convinced that being tough was, is, and always will be the way to go. They say, however, that if you’re tough, and don’t share your feelings, you will never have true intimacy because holding back entails maintaining a certain amount of emotional distance. But I’ve found that when I make myself susceptible to emotional damage, um…guess what? People damage me emotionally. And when that happens, I distance, in a big way–a much bigger way than if I make myself big, brave, and scary in the first place.

The problem is, most of last year, when I was alone, I became exceptionally good at being vulnerable. I got used to it. And now, it’s harder than it used to be to buck up. I seem to have lost my Teflon coating somewhere between Mesa and Phoenix, and that just sucks. Maybe I need to spend a couple of months in New York and get re-sprayed.

Anyway, remember when I asked everyone to stop telling me to toughen up? I take it back. All reminders are now welcome.

I continued to implement the strategy for most of my life, with varying degrees of success. Using a sense of humor and intelligence as a shield, I built a reputation, a persona, that announced to the world, “Go ahead, fuck with me. I could take it. You won’t win.”

Most of the time my armor served me well. When, rarely, someone saw a softer side to me, I’d make them swear to keep it a secret. I didn’t want word to get around. My bad-ass-ness was a deterrent to anyone who might even contemplate giving me a hard time and got me through countless disappointments, betrayals, breakups, let-downs, and even cancer.

This year, 2014,  however, has gotten the better of me. Maybe it’s because I was looking forward to a shiny new life that crashed unexpectedly. Maybe I really do have a breaking point and I’ve finally reached it. Maybe, after 62 years, I ran out of the kind of energy it takes to keep up my tough girl persona. I can only speculate, but whatever the reason, right now I feel broken, and scared and fragile.

I can tell you that it’s not going over well. I’ve been called pathetic, desperate, weak, and a victim, both literally and implied. I’ve been lectured, warned and advised about what to do with all these unbearable crippling, feelings. I’ve been told how to compensate for them by doing everything from getting a dog to going scuba diving. “Learn to walk the path alone,” you say. “Enjoy your ‘me time’, find your passion, find yourself.”

I’m sending this post to let you know that I don’t need your advice, and I especially don’t need anyone to teach me to be tough. I have been an expert at it all my life. Ironically, THE most important thing I’m finding during this time, is my vulnerability. I need my friends and acquaintances to validate me. If I’m feeling lost and alone, knock at my door. If I’m feeling scared, acknowledge my fears. Allow me to experience my fragility without judging it.

Right now, I’m feeling knocked down. I’ll get up again. But in the meantime, (and this might sound tough, but) please, can the advice.

At the end of March, I moved back into my house, alone. I found a water leak in the pipes  inside the walls that made it necessary to completely demolish both the guest bedroom and bathroom down to the studs and concrete. The rebuild is going very slowly, and yesterday the contractor’s appendix burst so everything is on hold until he recovers.

The demolition of the house mirrors my state of being. For the first time in my life, I try to navigate the world alone, without a partner. I feel stripped down to my studs and concrete, and there are days when the silence is deafening and the lack of human touch is crippling. Despite what everyone tells me to the contrary, there is no amount of work, friendship, or activity that can compensate for waking up every morning in the arms of someone I love.

Nonetheless, I fill most days with work, friends and activities, trusting that there is something bigger and better in store for me, that I will recognize it when it arrives, and that it will come sooner rather than later.

On Friday, I will have surgery to get my port removed. I am in good health, cancer-free, and no longer need it. I am ready for the next chapter. Go ahead, life. Pitch one to me. I have my mitt on.

Goodbye 2013! You were hell-ish. During your reign, I scored 311 on the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale, where “Over 300” is the top category of stress. The surgery, that stripped me of my breasts, the wound complications that required me to spend six weeks, 24/7 on a wound vac,the six months of chemotherapy that wiped out 6 years of hair growth in 17 days, and the 28 consecutive days of radiation sessions that left me burnt to a literal crisp was stressful enough. But between chemo and radiation, my already stressed 24-year relationship fell apart. Fighting for my life left no room to fight in a relationship. We both surrendered.

At a time when all I wanted and needed was a smile and a peaceful place to rest my soul, my friend stepped in, opened her home to me, and became my lover. I temporarily moved out of my large modern home in Phoenix and have been living for the past 4 months in a small historic house in Mesa. My belongings are divided between the two houses and, more and more, I’m finding that I need fewer and fewer material things.

2013, you were hell on earth, but you taught me who I am – a warrior, a risk taker, a lover of life. I happily leave you behind, but I won’t forget the positive things you gave me: the friendships I no longer take for granted, the fearlessness with which I entered a new relationship, motivation to lose 30 pounds and reclaim my body, the nakedness of spirit beneath my tough exterior, the strength to grow and change, and the courage to face adversity in ways I never thought I’d be capable of.

2014, I welcome you.

Since I am not a person of faith which makes me squeamish about counting on the supernatural, I cannot justify the mere hope of not getting a recurrence. So, I saw the radiologist last week. and he gave me the odds. If you stick me in a room with a hundred women with the same size and type of breast tumor and two affected lymph nodes, five years from now five of those women will be suffering from a recurrence and/or dead, even with radiation. Without radiation, 15 women will be in that position. So, like George Bush, I keep attacking the unseen and unknowable enemy. Unlike George Bush, I will be responsible only for the death of some of my good cells and not for the deaths of thousands of young Americans, in the process.

It’s really hard to celebrate the end of chemo when I’m facing 33 visits to the radiologist, every day, five times a week. My body wants a break, a chance to recover and regroup after massive surgery and six months of chemo, but that means giving potential cancer cells a break, giving them a chance to recover and regroup. I have to hope that my cancer cells are not as stubborn as I am in their fight to stay alive.

Thinking about getting radiation reminds me of that old joke: Two guys get captured by a violent tribe shouting Magumba! One guy watches his buddy suffer as they rip out his fingernails, cut off his dick, poke his eyes out and skin him alive, leaving him in a pile of fire ants to die. When they turn their attention to him, they ask him, “Do you want death or Magumba?” He chooses death. “As you wish,” says the leader, “but first..Magumba!”

A grandmother, whose chemotherapy has been ongoing for seven years and will continue treatment until she dies, said with a smile, “I went to my daughter’s wedding and I watched the birth of three grandchildren.”

A 34-year-old equal rights activist whose colon cancer metastasized to her surrounding organs, finds time and energy to do a fundraiser for a friend without health insurance.

A creative writing teacher with both colon and bladder cancer, posts songs and poetry on his Facebook page.

A middle aged woman who endures ongoing chemo treatments five days a week with one month off every six months, laughs it off and announces, “It’s better than the alternative.”

Sitting in a room full of people, who truly understand how precious life is, makes me wonder about the sanity of healthy people who flippantly assert that they’d rather die than suffer. Well, not me. I’ll handle a little suffering to wake up one more day.

The more cancer takes away from me, the more creative I have to be to find things to be grateful for. For instance, I now appreciate that my ears are nice and flat and I’m relieved to know that I don’t have a lumpy head. Nobody has called me sir yet, so that’s good, and my eyebrows are hanging on for dear life, bless their little follicles.

The one thing I can be wholeheartedly grateful for is the support of my friends and family. The phone calls, the visits, the fresh squeezed juice, the chicken soup, the chicken cutlet parmigiana hero, the buff, the emails, the FB comments, the home made blanket, the rides back and forth to doctors, and words of encouragement have been my lifeline and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

Carol started a new job on Monday, so my friend Jackie took me for Round 2 of chemo, which is kicking my ass right now. I feel like The Blob, sort of slugging around all queasy and bloated, tripping over a collection of hats and wigs that I can’t wear because they feel like giant bloodsuckers on my head.

One piece of good news: My book, Rose’s Will is out in print! You could get it HERE.

It takes time to wrap your head around the idea of baring your veins to a killer that will slowly slay your living cells one by one. So, for my first day of chemotherapy I thought it might be helpful to pretend to be somebody else. Thankfully, I didn’t have to rely solely on mind control. The Cancer Center provides a free boutique full of wigs, funky hats and paraphernalia to disguise yourself.  For part of my treatment, I was Mary Tyler Moore. WWMD if she had cancer? Probably, she’d put on a Denise wig and pretend to be me.

“Everyone reacts differently,” said Lauren, my chemo nurse, who hooked a bag of bright red fluid to the IV stand. “We just have to wait and see. But you should feel great today because of all the steroids and pre-meds we gave you.”

I thought “great” was a little hyperbolic in the general scheme of things, but sure enough, aside from the complete mindfuck of it, the first Monday of chemo was relatively uneventful. As the week wore on it hit me with pervasive stomach unrest that bordered on nausea and a bone-tired fatigue that felt like walking underwater.

By Friday, all my little antibodies were in an uproar. “NO!” they shouted, in Ed Asner’s voice. “We will not take this lying down!” I could feel them regrouping and propelling me out the door. “Move! Walk! Don’t give in! It’s only Round 1!

Saturday was my best day: I planted flowers in the garden, went to a movie, ate pizza, grateful for a reprieve. Mary Tyler Moore lurks in a shopping bag under my desk, ready to step in when I lose my hair. But today, I’m still me.

The answer to some of your questions:  1.) No, I haven’t yet started chemo. I was supposed to start the first week of February but it’s been postponed until my wounds close up. Hence, the wound vac, to which I am attached 24 hours a day. 2.) Other than that and the root canal, and the blood clot that I got in my gum from the Novocaine injection, and a little stomach bug that makes one do numerous times a day what one should do once a day at most, if not every other day, I feel just fine. 3.) Nobody asked me this but I’ll tell you anyway: I tried on wigs yesterday,

Historically, I’ve scorned wigs for their unattractive, who-do-you-think-you’re-fooling appearance. But every once in a while, I like to revisit my strongly-held beliefs to see if they still apply. After all, people change; wigs may change. But no. I look magnificently awful in a wig. Besides, they’ve pushed my chemo so far ahead that it will last through the whole summer. So it’s looking like I’ll be applying for a little medical marijuana and wearing this nice light cotton rasta cap with fake dreads.