Sometimes good things fall apart so better things could fall together.

Marilyn Monroe

Following the breakup of my life, my outlook went into a constant state of flux. This part of my life is probably the hardest to explain, with so much change.

I was dealing with the fact that I was losing so many excellent friends because of the emotions on both sides of my breakup. I was learning every day that my health issues were being made a laughing point in conversations and that was not something I processed easily. I was dealing with feeling alone. Many of you who know me will understand how difficult being alone is for me. I LOVE people, and feeling like no one cared about me anymore was very disheartening. Besides my family and the people I was living for, it seemed like all of the good memories that I had made in college were being taken from me. This killed me on the inside and made my insides feel like rotting vegetables. I was dealing with feeling busy and stressed from school. Not only was the internship that I was on to finish my degree, but everyday I wanted to be my best self to hopefully get a job where I was. Even though I am a master of facade with hiding my sadness, this was a daunting task. I broke down to several people along this journey and I am still very thankful for the love and care they provided. One of the most notable people I was able to talk with was a mentor of mine (who soon passed away after this), Dr. Highsmith. I was working on my big student project with him and he was a point of light and knew something was wrong. Many of my mentors were points of light during this time. This is something I will expand on in the future, points of light. I was worried about how my blood work would turn out at my next checkup. What type of evolving myeloproliferative disaster would I be acquainted with next. I was worried about the results that my skin biopsy would come up with; I was dealing with too much it seemed. What could get me through? What did I have left? Even the things in life that used to keep me sane like weightlifting was given up, I couldn’t stress my spleen out more. A lot of emotions weighed me down, and all of my outlets were slowly disappearing.

 My appetite dropped to absolute zero. I don’t think I ate for a month or two (probably more like two weeks) it just seemed like I lost my want to keep fighting. It’s a very interesting feeling like you aren’t hungry ever, almost like your body knows that you aren’t interested in breathing. My happiness dropped to what I thought was zero. My anxiety rose to unbelievable levels leaving my body in this numb state, almost not even caring what the doctor told me about my skin biopsy. We will get back to this sadness though, it lingered for a while in this story.

If life knocks you down, try to land on your back. Because if you can look up, you can get up. And if you get up, you can stand up. And if you stand up, you can fight for your dream once again. You have something special. You have GREATNESS within you!

Les Brown

I got that call from the dermatologist… And it was what he told me that made me realize I had landed on my back and was looking up from my blood situation. I was told that the skin biopsy came back benign. They still wanted to map my moles on my body (which will be in the next post), but I was diagnosed with having congenital nevi, meaning that all of my moles looked terrible, but I had inherited it. They were still worried about something developing in the future, but for now the noose around my neck from my skin seemed to be held at bay. Having a lot of moles that are deadly looking is better than one that is deadly looking the doctor told me (at least when they are found to be benign). For once some good news. I had to treasure this. Still to this day I think about how I felt throughout this time in my life. I was already at the lowest point in my life and I didn’t know the valley could get even deeper. I had a spark of a smile this day, a spark of life that I later found that I would build on. My body hadn’t completely failed me yet, and that was something that I was extremely proud of, but extremely humble about. It was humbling to me because I know that many are not as lucky. This isn’t the last part of my skin journey that I share with you, but for now in the story things didn’t look terrible.

Life can be such a depressing march if you only focus on the negatives. Depressing because of all the terrible things in life that seem to come in waves. Relentless slaps to the face that can appear never ending. And a march because life doesn’t stop for anyone, time doesn’t stop for anyone. This fact is insanely disheartening because time is the most valuable resource anyone can possess.  Every step of that march depletes more and more of the non-renewable resource and it will be depressing if you only focus on the droughts in life. I, by no means, will ever claim to know all of the answers to life. Not many will claim that I don’t think. But from looking at life in a heightened sense of mortal-awareness, I have to speak my mind about relishing every single moment of life. There are moments, even when they are not brief, that really break a person. Not just upset a person, break a person. Shatter your heart and soul, obliterate what you thought your reality was, break a person. Try and get something from those moments. Although you are hurting, you are still alive. You are still breathing. As you read this message, many people are taking their final breaths. I wonder what they wouldn’t trade to be in your shoes. Although my life seemed grim in these moments, I am grateful for the lessons that were taught by these events. I am grateful for the pain happening to me, instead of those I cared about. I would never want anyone to feel this way, I wanted to take on all of the pain in the world.

I had to take these days one breath at a time, never knowing which one would be my last. One foot in front of the other I got to my mole mapping appointment. One foot in front of the other I got to my first blood check up. That is a story for another time. Peace, love, all the above.

Love, Alex

Thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart for all of your support!

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