in just a few days...

I can't believe it's really happening. And in just a few short days! When I began the donation process, I imagined that surgery could happen as soon as July or August.
August 15 is my date.
When the transplant coordinator, Denise, called me at work to tell me that my donor had been identified, ("It's a boy, that's all I can tell you" she said) and that surgery could be a week from Monday... my heart sped to a million miles a minute. I smiled so hard and my chest swelled with such joy that tears came to my eyes. I rambled to the psychiatrist, the only one still in the office. I grinned like a fool and gasped for breath. "I can't tell if I'm finally nervous or just incredibly excited!"
It's such an honor, I told my therapist the next day. Such an honor.
I have been struggling to write everything I have wanted and needed to write... instead usually sitting in silence, blanking out, distracting, or writing about something entirely different. Everyone asks me, Are you nervous? Are you scared?
I'm not nervous... not about the things I "should be" anyway. I am not at all nervous about the surgery. I'm anxious about getting all of my obligations at work fulfilling. I'm anxious about getting enough PDO to take the time off and be paid for it. I'm nervous about this "boy" and how his body will come through the surgery... and if it will be adequately attached to my healthy kidney when it does. I'm anxious about organ rejection. I'm anxious about writing, and how imperative I feel it is to express this as emotionally and definitively as I possibly can. How crucial I sometimes feel it is to freeze the moment and remember every infinite detail. How overwhelmed I am by all the intense emotions that I feel.
My therapist remarked that she had never seen me feel such joy. "I want you to feel joy more often."
I asked her to imagine the last ten years of her life... all that has happened. All she has seen and done. The places she has gone and things she has tried. The people she has met and loved. The ways she has grown. I asked her to imagine being able to give that time to someone... as a gift. No strings attached.
"It's just..." I shook my head and widened my eyes.
I tried to find words but I couldn't. My eyes welled up again and I felt so, so grateful. She nodded and used my words to finish my sentence "...an honor."
I am so lucky to be able to do this. I am so lucky to have this health, and to have this willingness. SO lucky to be able to give something so big- that could never have a pricetag or be wrapped in a box.
And it is something that is so very, very small in the scheme of suffering in the world... it makes such a small dent in the pain and death and hurt. But it is still something so much bigger than me. A very small token that I can give, in good faith.
I didn't anticipate the emotions I would encounter during this process.
I have felt unspeakable joy. I have felt hurt, betrayed, and alone. I've felt abandoned and completely alien. I've felt lucky and humbled. I've felt an urgency to live my life and love every moment of it. I've seen colors just a little bit brighter and tasted foods just a little sweeter. I have felt just the same as everyone. And very, very different from everyone.
I hoped that through this process I would feel more connected to humanity. More "a part of" something. More like all the others. After all... on the inside, I am just like all the others. I have the same insides. Insides that work like everyone else's. Or, at least the way everyone else's should.
Only in the past days have I felt this. I think it is coming.
Will I miss my kidney? Will my right kidney miss my left? Will I feel wistful aching where it used to be?
I may.
But when I see his body, moving with strength, new health and energy... when I see his color return to normal from a jaundiced pallor, when I see his eyes look forward with a new spark... I won't feel sad. I will feel proud to watch it walk away.
My therapist imagined it to be much like childbirth: watching a part of you leave your body, mourning the separation but looking on with pride and hope... hope that you have helped create something new and beautiful in the world.

I still may never quite understand what people think and feel when they look at me with a hint of disgust and say, "I just don't get it." And that's okay. I guess if there's one thing I've learned, that somehow didn't get pounded into my head by PBS specials in elementary school, it's that sometimes it's good to be different.
I'm not like other people. I don't think the same way, or feel the same way. I have realized that, no matter how open and objective I think I am, sometimes it is impossible for me to see things the way other people do.
This was a startling, concerning discovery for a therapist. But it's true. And I have to accept it. Sometimes I'm just too different from other people.
This decision, and I hope many more to come, will only serve to make me more different. No matter how much it hurts, no matter how lonely it is, no matter how many times my expectations are disappointed... I have to remember the good.