I am participating in Writing 101 on WordPress.com

This started out as the reply to exercise three, which was supposed to be about three of my favorite songs. The exercise directed to just empty my head and write about the emotions connected to these songs. I was sort of stumped because at the time I couldn’t think of three favorite songs. I have so many and I love music so much I wasn’t sure I could pick three. And so I started with “Name” by Goo Goo Dolls and wrote about how the words of this mournful tune whispered in my ear while listening to my headphones on a SEPTA bus on my way to work. The words seeped in to my soul and have remained there. I thought perhaps I would stick with just writing about this one song and call it a day. Because really it just resonates with me to this day. It still makes me cry every time I hear it.

I still had time on the clock and I searched my heart and mind and then it happened, “Galileo” by Indigo Girls popped in to my mind. And I remembered it was the lyrics to this song I posted the day after finding out that the possibility existed that after the first round of 32 radiation treatments there was still cancer there. (FYI: Blessedly, a follow up MRI in October confirmed all the cancer was in fact gone.) Here is where all the emotions connected to that song and that moment came rushing to the top. And it was here where I walked away from this exercise. I thought to myself, how did I get through the day and the days and weeks that followed? How did I wake up every morning and live my life? How did I make it to October?

I was suddenly anxious and upset and I just shut down. I’m not sure the person I am today could be the person I was four years ago. I went back and reread a few of the blog entries that followed and I can’t imagine how I was that strong and resilient. Truth be told, I haven’t read back on many of the 365 Days of Carol Anne posts, but I do believe they are my best writing ever. I freely, openly, and fearlessly wrote my truth on a daily basis for an entire year: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the even uglier. It’s been almost four years since that day, but in that instant, while working on this exercise, I was transported back to that August morning in the neurosurgeon’s examining room, and all the fear and sorrow and loss that I felt came rushing back at me like a tsunami and ran me over like a steamroller.

I know this was supposed to be about our three favorite songs and the emotions connected to them but this writing exercise, which is now two days late, became so much more and took on a life of its own so it took me a few days to actually work through the emotions and put pen to paper and commit this to the web.

Oh, and for the record and to actually complete the exercise, I’ll add “Into the Mystic” by Van Morrison as the third favorite song. I heard it during a lovely scene in the movie “Immediate Family” and fell instantly in love with this beautiful song.