In the middle of the day yesterday, as I was working at my desk, I glanced down at a note written on my pink breast cancer awareness desk calendar. Sideways chicken scratches on the May 20th box indicated “2 Years, Found Lump.” I don’t even recall when I made that notation.

My heart thudded louder in my chest and my imagination immediately brought me back to that shower, to the adrenaline rush when I found a hard pea that normally didn’t reside in my right breast, to the naked trot across my house to my fiancé, and finally to the unease and very controlled panic that we both experienced.

I sat at my desk and wondered how much would I give to return to two years and a day ago. Before mortality actually became a daily issue in my life. When I was in love and felt loved. When life was perfect and new again, and I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. I am so grateful that during those first few weeks after moving to Steamboat that I consciously stopped and told myself to appreciate the joy and peace I felt, because life was not always going to be this good. In reflection, that was an incredible gift to give myself, to impress upon my conscience that I can obtain a heightened sense of happiness just from existing in the “right” circumstances. It’s nice to remember that for every anti-depressant, anti-anxiety and other self-medication I’ve tried over the past year, that the best medication, at least for me, is to find a place that and a person who sustains me, who feeds my mind, body and soul and encourages me to be…myself. I am happy alone (with my menagerie), but of course I yearn for the completeness I once had. I talk with my friend Brooke often lately, and we both say that we are 51% happy most of the time, but then question, what is stopping us from being 90% happy most of the time? We are supposed to dig deep down and find that other 40% in ourselves, I understand that, but sometimes it does take relocation or another person to help you find it. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

I know tenets of reality say that we can’t freeze moments in time. I know that regardless of cancer, my life was bound to change and I would probably have landed in the same place I am now, just under different circumstances. But I still wish, when I am feeling 51% happy, that I could time travel to two years and a day ago, and live in that day for a very long time.