Chapter 71: What Comes Next?
Last week, I worked a 7-day shift as a teaching attending on a busy internal medicine service in a large urban hospital. It was fulfilling, interesting, inspiring, educational, and also exhausting. I was responsible for multiple, very sick patients with COVID. I could help some of these patients recover, but others I could not.
One patient under my care had metastatic cancer. She didn’t know this, but I could relate. One day, I sat down by her bed and asked what was on her mind. She looked me square in the eyes and very calmly asked, “What comes next?”
After an uncomfortably long and pensive head-resting-on-fist pause, I said “Oh, how I wish I knew.”
She looked at me, her doctor, and appeared confused. Apparently, she had meant “What comes next” as in, “What comes next, today, now, in my medical plan you have created?” Yet, I interpreted her question on a much broader scale as in “What comes next, in life, at this stage of my cancer, without treatments left, with only hope and prayers and wishes and tears?” I had no answer for her, or for me, or for any of us.
What happens when we are sick, when we are tired, when we are hopeless, yet there is no end to our suffering in sight? No cure, no warm weather, no vaccine, no magic time reversal, no easy relationship fixer, no election certainty, no Ruth Bader Ginsberg, no pill for happiness, no pill to end suffering, no pill to go back to “normal.”
I have no fucking clue.
Usually when this happens, I open up a book filled with the words of those much wiser than me and try to find out.
Pema Chödrön reminded me today of the following: “The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have.”
Uncertainty is all we truly have.
To my new readers, loyal readers, family, and friends, thank you for sticking with me through 71 chapters of this blog. Holy cow, that’s a lot of chapters and a lot of honesty. You all know me better than I knew myself a year ago.
It’s slightly terrifying when I think about how many people have read my intimate thoughts over the past year. I never thought this blog would still be going 71 chapters later, but here we are. If you’ve read along from the start, you’ll know that eight months ago, I never could have predicted any single event I’ve typed in the past 71 chapters. I had no idea a brain tumor was growing in my right frontal lobe and even less of an idea that my therapeutic response to facing my own mortality before the age of thirty would involve writing. Not just writing, but public, intimate, raw and honest writing that I perhaps foolishly posted online for all to see.
Uncertainty led me here. Uncertainty taught me that I am a writer, that my words can heal not only myself, but perhaps others in some ways as well. This idea is still almost unfathomable to me. When I hear “You are inspirational,” from readers, I can’t wrap my head around that. All I am is honest.
Perhaps honesty is a lost art? Perhaps honesty is simply so terrifying that it’s inspirational to be this way? Perhaps honesty is better left as a secret, wrapped tightly in a box in the back of your closet, unopened and hidden from stranger’s eyes?
I think the fact that anyone is still reading my story is inspirational. You inspire me. You inspire me to write, to face my uncertainties, to share my uncertainties with others who have uncertain lives as well. You inspire me to overcome fear and continue sharing my story, loudly, proudly, and a little too honestly, with the world.
Life is uncertain. If 2020 hasn’t reminded us all this, I don’t know what will. Isn’t it at least a little better to realize we are all facing this uncertainty together? I’ve learned that it feels much better to embrace uncertainty than to fight it.
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So, what comes next? My writing will continue. My blog will continue. My honesty will continue, uncertainties and all. Other than that, who knows.
Maybe, we’re better off not knowing. Maybe a year from now, you’ll also look back at 71 chapters of your blog, your completed manuscript about to be published, your new haircut, your new job, your new life, your new perspective, your new joy, and you’ll realize that uncertainty wasn’t so bad after all.
Fondly,
Courtney
©CB2020
Book Updates: My upcoming book, Difficult Gifts, finally has a beautiful cover designed by the extremely talented Holly Ovenden (@hollydrawsinink on Instagram) and is getting ready to be printed soon by my fabulous publisher Wise Ink Creative Publishing (@Wise_Ink). I’ll keep you all updated on pre-order info when it’s available. Follow me on Instagram (@courtneyjburnett) for book cover sneak peaks and more honesty I probably shouldn’t share online.