Jumper

I'm a jumper.  While other people wait their turn, patiently biding their time, I leap with both feet.  I know that my feet will occasionally hit the ground painfully and I'll need to climb myself out of that rabbit hole, but I just can't seem to help myself.  When I choose to do anything, I prefer to do it full force, like a hurricane.  This is not always the best idea but I have an insatiable need to give things my all.  This has always been especially problematic in the area of my romantic inclinations.  No matter how bad they appeared on the outside, or to outsiders, I was all in.  I could not stop myself from giving everything I had to these situations.  This led to a lot of frustration and heartbreak.  This does not, however, mean that I have spent a lot of time in love.  There has always been the possibility for love but the boys I dated from my second high school boyfriend to my last college boyfriend were always lacking.  I had dated every variation of personality since high school: the boy with an unnaturally colored mohawk, a bassist in a garage band, a drummer, a frat boy with a genuinely good heart (albeit very poor judgement), a socially awkward engineer and the various other boys who have wandered into my life through the years.  I threw my hat into the ring with wild abandon with each of these young men, and each time results were catastrophic.  While I loved each one of these boys with all of my heart at the time, none of them were able to rise to the difficult challenge of loving me like I loved them.   At the same time, I knew in the back of my mind that each of these relationships was not the right one for me.  I ended each one, and as was the fashion for young women at the time, mourned the loss of my relationships with the same interminable zest that I lived the rest of my life with.  I wallowed, I wept, I wandered around in a heartbroken daze like a zombie who hadn't yet been to see the wizard to restore her heart to her chest.  

Now, after college, I reconnected with an old friend from high school.  This coincided with the year of my discontent when I found out I had cancer.  On September 17th, 2009 I was officially diagnosed with pappillary thyroid cancer.  Dreading the moment that I had to tell my family is the ultimate understatement.  I waited for my family to assemble at home base like the Avengers waiting to be debriefed after a long mission and bought myself a pair of boots (affectionately nicknames my "cancer-boots").  My plan to beat cancer was the same as my plan for all challenges: like a bull charging a matador except this time I would gore the shit out of the matador and not be slowly tortured to death by that ridiculously dressed senor.  So I strongly, although reluctantly, walked into my parents kitchen and asked them and my sister to gather in the kitchen and sit.  My Dad announced that he was already cooking the "Alli Doesn't Have Cancer" victory dinner.  As everyone sat down you could see the intense concern in my mothers face and a vague confusion on my sister's (who had been at college and only come home to do laundry).  The following is a representation of telling my family and also an example of why I, 
a) love them so much
b) love our inappropriate family dynamics 
c) find strength at the route of our ridiculous natures

"Alright, so I have an announcement. "

Blank worried stares and an unending silence.

"So."  I uttered this in several seconds to draw out the moment that I wasn't the cancer ridden sick daughter.  "I have cancer..."

As I said this I heard a huge SLAM as my mom's hand hit the kitchen table and she uttered the sentences that would become my never-ending motto to surviving this diseased state.  As she slammed her hand on our kitchen table she practically shouted: 

"Oh thank God!  I thought you were pregnant!" 

There was a long (or pregnant, if you will pardon the pun) pause while we all processed these words in a whirlwind of confusion.  

"Mom, what the fuck?" my sister replied first, emphasizing each syllable with an astonished comprehension dawning on her face.  

"Your eldest daughter just told you she has cancer," she finished flabbergasted.

"Cancer is treatable, pregnancy is not," were the words my mother had chosen to defend her outburst.

At this, I burst out laughing and I laughed until tears poured down my face.  This brutally honest statement gave me courage and that was the moment that I knew it would be alright.  My mother was where I got my tenacity and I would need that to conquer this demon.  Unfortunately, being a force of nature also sometimes means saying, "I'm fine," even when you're not.  It became a never-ending statement.  Then there was my old high school friend, who was serving overseas.  Online, truth is a lot easier to face than in person for me, so we stated talking about everything.  How we were feeling, admitting for possibly the first time that we were both struggling and going through a really tough time.  Eventually I told him that I had cancer and he became my emotional confidant.  We started dating while he was in Iraq and eventually he came home.  He was going back to school roughly 2 hours from where I was living and we made the decision to move in together.  I moved halfway across the state to follow my heart (again, attacking everything with an excess gumption).  In the end I tried but our relationship imploded and then like a large scale nuclear reaction exploded for several months in one of the most bitter and atrocious break-ups I have ever experienced.  

Now, over a year later, I find myself at a cliff.  The constant advice I get is to be patient and keep myself calm and see what happens.  However, this is really an intrinsic part of my personality.  if I hadn't jumped feet first into my career two years ago, where would I be today? Last year when my school's administration renewed my contract only if I taught middle school (my former worst nightmare) would I have become the best teacher possible if I hadn't jumped right into it? 

Along with learning to love myself completely, I have to love what makes me who I am.  Part of that is approaching each challenge like a spider monkey attacking a threat to her little monkey babies.  A part of that is also faith based.  I have a sense of conviction that although these leaps of faith don't always end well as I claw myself up out of the hole that I've dug, that I will end up where I need to be because of them.  So in my life's current mercurial state, I find myself leaning towards the boldness that I had always favored.  After all, no one really gets anywhere without having a little bit of moxie.  As Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, "Well behaved women rarely make history," and this lady is most assuredly not a well-behaved, well-mannered lady.  Not while that bull in my head is still goring the shit out of that matador.