Over the rest of June my neighborhood would show its guts and its glory. The CHOP was formed. It started out so beautiful and educational. Perhaps you’re wondering what Amy was doing during this time? She lived in Flatbush Brooklyn and I’d seen the news about NYC. It was not as spicy as Seattle, as only PDX can rival us, but it was still a protest hotspot. Well, she went upstate, to the Catskills. She joined zero protests or shared any dialog, aside from her criticism of me. The ones she published to twitter from a wooden porch swing of a rustic airbnb.

As the weeks went on Capitol Hill devolved into murders filmed by live streamers. The ANTIFA kids started bombing things for the rush. Everything got cancelled. The pot shops. The vintage store. The shoe store. The bakery. The churches burned along with the teriyaki joints and every Starbucks, every night. Men with AK-47 started patrolling the neighborhood. The sounds of a war continued outside my windows, every night. It was around this time I took to backpacking. No easy lesson to learn but I threw myself firmly at the cause, desperately needing something to do on the weekend. A way to get.. away.

July 3rd arrived. My one year remission anniversary. I was in a backcountry mountain hut miles and miles from civilization. I’d hike and sit in the sauna and chase chipmunks away from my sleeping bag. I was determined to replace my memories of that time with something brighter and more peaceful.

If you’ve had cancer, you know how difficult the readjustment to life can be. How you wait for the other shoe to drop, assuming every body twitch to be a death sentence. The first few years are critical and they are a mind fuck.

I’d learned these feelings were very normal. Many of us go on auto pilot during treatment and find a year of angst comes crashing down on them afterwords. Many people find a loss of friends or family who were unsupportive. I felt incredibly supported during cancer treatment, especially given my propensity towards independence but there were a few people that I had considered moderately close who never reached out or acknowledged the cancer. Perhaps they didn’t know what to say? It’s disappointing, sure but I’ve never really held it against them.

I took a (horrible) picture of the mountains on highway 20 westbound and later posted my reflection on having made it a full year.

Below is the post I made on IG once I returned home on the 9th. It was a self reflective moment thinking of my own journey and that of my friends I’d made in the cancer community.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, Amy posted her kind thoughts on my one year remission post to her twitter.

I honestly don’t even know what to say to this. Who was abused and shit on? I just said “the kind of friends you call family” in my post. Clearly celebrating my friends. I don’t see race mentioned at all? Am I really playing victim with this statement? It was of course not my intention as I loathe chronic victims and am much more of a “pick yourself up by the bootstraps and handle it” kind of woman.

Stay tuned!