Bear Spray

They say that cancer changes you. Possibly your brain chemistry is altered by the chemotherapy or maybe just the experience of having cancer makes you different. Survivors have been known to emerge from treatment as completely different people.

I am now 3 years post-chemo and mastectomy. I am almost 2 years past my last infusion and my last reconstruction. And, it’s hard to really pinpoint any ways in which cancer changed me. I pretty much feel like the same person.

Well, ok, there is just this one thing: My partner and I have decided to move into an RV,where we will live and work full-time while we travel around the country for the foreseeable future.

 

Why are you laughing?

Ok, I know why you’re laughing. If you’re laughing, it is likely that you know one of the following things about me:

1. I have a contentious relationship with nature. It is not that I don’t like nature. I like to be outside and I love to *look* at nature. I just don’t particularly want nature to touch me.

I once spent four months learning to swim, because my partner loves to snorkel and we were going to St. John and I wanted to be able to snorkel with him.  I signed up for lessons, I got over my fear of putting my face in the water and endured the embarrassment of taking swimming lessons in my thirties. Then, on the trip, we went to the most beautiful beach and we suited up with the flippers and the masks and the whole nine yards.  I learned how to breath through the tube. We started swimming along the route of a well known trail, and saw some amazing coral in the first few minutes.

Then, a fish brushed up against my leg.  Probably it was an awesome fish, at home in the spectacular Caribbean.  I have no idea. Because 10 seconds later, I had already made it back to shore, flippered my way up the beach, had the mask off and was looking for a bar.

I don’t like nature to touch me.

2. My partner and I are nice people, but terrible housekeepers.  We’re not lazy.  We just don’t notice that something needs cleaning until it is about two weeks past when a normal person would clean it.  Countless roommates of mine will back me up on this. I don’t mind doing the work, I just don’t realize it needs to be done until way after everyone else.  

It is weird, because we both worry about lots of other things.  And no one else in either of our families is like this. I think that when we were being made, God said, you know what? These two are going to be so anxious about so many other things, I think I’m just going to remove the part where they care that their bathroom is dirty.

And, far be it from me to question an all-powerful being, but I feel like worrying about when my bathroom was dirty would have been a more useful life skill than worrying about whether or not something I said at work 15 years ago might have been slightly inaccurate.

Oh well. Smaller space is less to clean, right?

3. I am kind of afraid of everything.  I flinch when I play sports with throwing and catching.  Or kicking.

I am not a risk taker. I am not a rule breaker.  I am the opposite of any rebel song you’ve ever heard.  The girl who threw caution to the wind? I’m the friend who made her text when she got home.

4. I am not, nor do I desire to be, Randy Quaid in either Independence Day or Christmas Vacation.

So, why, you ask?  Why am I voluntarily moving into a 300 square foot residence that I will tow behind me and which will require me to learn things like how to connect my house to the sewer and what “slide lubricant” is?  Why would I want to embark on a lifestyle that may require bear spray? I could have chosen to live my entire life without knowing there *was* such a thing as bear spray. How did we get here?

Here’s the thing: this is something I have always wanted to try.  Our lives are sort of set up for it – we both work in industries with remote opportunities. We don’t have kids, or pets, or a house.    If I won the lottery, this is what I would do first – pack up and see the country. We’re just doing it now because I don’t want to wait until some future date that may or may not arrive.  

I am healthy now, and there’s no reason to think that will change.  But, what if it does? What if the love of my life gets sick? What if I get hit by bus?  It doesn’t have to be cancer.  For obvious reasons, though, that’s what I dread the most and we’ve all seen it take too many lives.  Last week, I read the obituary for a beautiful young woman in her 30s.  She tried everything to stay here on this Earth with her family and cancer took her anyway.

My grandmother died from this thing when she was 40.  Every day I get to keep on living is a bonus check that for now, I do not want to spend in an office.  I want to spend it traveling, visiting family and friends and having adventures. Ok, little adventures.  With the appropriate safety equipment.

And, I’m fortunate enough to have a partner in life who will say, “Sure, I’m in.”  He researched tiny houses, he attended RV shows, and he found the model that made the most sense. He is now an expert on things like towing capacity and the purpose of an inverter (which is good, because I know nothing. It has something to do with electricity.  My tuition for those electrical engineering classes was money well spent.)

My man has worked day and night to make this crazy dream happen.

We bought an RV.  We’ve named her Roberta.  We bought a big-ass truck to pull her down the highway.  We quit our in-office jobs and set up remote employment. Our parents and our siblings and our friends have jumped in and helped with remodeling and offered us basement space and taken extra furniture and helped us find mechanics and in general, been pretty awesome.  Because they are.

At the end of this month, our apartment lease is up and we will be full-time – and first-time – RVers.

It is terrifying. It could be a complete disaster or a fantastic adventure.  

Or both.  Stay tuned.  Maybe pick up some bear spray.

#tovictory