I had no intentions of posting this blog. It is unpolished and simple because at the time I wrote it I barely had the emotional energy left in me to type these words. But now that I am feeling better I believe perhaps it is right to leave it as it is. I have had three people tell me they offered my blog to someone they know who was diagnosed with cancer, and that some amount of comfort has been found here. I am honored to think the telling of this journey may have helped another. It is for this reason I have decided to post this entry. It is for those who are battling cancer, those who will and those who are finishing. It would have helped me in a time of darkness to know I was not the only one…
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Star light, star bright
if I made a wish tonight,
you would not grant me my peace of mind.
For you are just a star in a mass of black,
And I am just a girl wishing you were more;
wishing everything was a little more.
I was working a few weeks ago when I saw one of my old regular customers sitting in a chair watching me. He was looking at me curiously and I stole glances trying to decide if I should walk over and say hello. Our eyes locked and I realized he was trying to figure out how he knew me. He knew I was familiar, but also strange.
When I got home that evening I looked in the mirror and tried to see what he saw.
“What must I seem?” I asked.
“What must I seem?”
I wished someone had told me I sometimes would not be able to recognize myself.
The past month has been as close to true hell as can be had on earth for me. No one tells you what life is like once your treatments are winding down post cancer. No one ever said, “If you thought chemo or surgery was rough, wait until your emotions kick in.” No one ever said, “Post traumatic stress can come in all shapes.” Or at least no one said it until I was too far in to hear it.
I’ve been wishing on stars for as long as I can remember, but never with as much desperation as this past month.
I wished there was a definite answer.
My depression started with a visit to the doctor. We were discussing my future appointments, and I asked him when my first scan would be scheduled to make sure I am cancer free. He told me we would not be doing any scans. Apparently one of those scans is equal to getting 150 chest x-rays at once. Given my propensity for cancer, should we continue to do scans, he would be guaranteeing me cancer from the machines alone. We would do blood work every visit which may alert us if there is a problem, but ultimately I was instructed to “listen to my body.”
I wished I could trust my body.
I do not know how I am supposed to listen to my body when I no longer know my body after chemo. I also do not know how I am supposed to listen to my body, when everyone said how strange it was that I could feel my cancer the first time. The very fact that I could feel pain and swelling from the tumor is what made every doctor I saw assume it was not cancer. It seemed to me that waiting until I felt something could be the same as waiting until it is too late.
For the first time since April 1st I crumbled. I felt so angry. So sad. So disconnected from the outside world.
I wished I could feel as happy as everyone thought I was.
I had thoughts that were unwelcome as my mind explored darker places than it ever has before. When I would see kids playing outside of my apartment I would think, “They don’t even know there are things ahead of them like cancer,” and I would feel genuinely jealous of their ignorance.
I had nightmares about either Adam or myself dying. I would wake up crying and I would not be able to stop, because I knew my nightmare would one day be a reality.
When certain people tried to tell me that Adam and I were not alone in this battle I would feel angry at them, because they would get to go home and not think about cancer if they so chose, but we actually had to live it. I never would wish anyone to live it, but I was angry at the emptiness of their statement, because I felt so very alone.
Almost every day someone would tell me something similar to, “My aunt’s best friend is a 17 year survivor,” and they would smile as I stared back at them. I did not appreciate that this cancer survivor had lived 17 beautiful years. Instead I thought that if the cancer survivor’s best friend’s nephew knew the exact number of years it had been, then they are clearly still watching each year pass with bated breath. I did not believe I could hold my breath that long.
When people would tell me how strong or brave I was I would inwardly scoff at their words. I would think, “If they only knew what I was feeling they wouldn’t say that. No, they would be ashamed of me.” And I knew it was true because I was ashamed of myself.
Every time someone said, “You must feel so happy,” I felt like a freak. At first I strove to rejoin the world I knew pre-cancer, but everything felt different. The world had continued living while I was sick and I hated the world for leaving me behind.
I struggled with anything I felt was meaningless. I had trouble listening to people’s accounts of drama or keeping up with small talk, because ultimately I felt most things were trivial and petty compared to the bigger picture of the world. I wished so many people would hold in their unnecessary words and just let a little more silence fall on the world of those who wanted to think.
I felt unable to cope with violence or negative behavior. When I left the house I saw anger or hate or ugliness lurking in so many interactions and I disliked those people for making the world feel so unwelcoming.
And so I hid. I hid from facebook. I hid from email. I hid from my blog. I hid from family and from friends. I worked while counting the hours until I could just go home and be alone, and when I did go out I practiced my smile in front of the mirror until I had almost convinced myself it was true.
I wished I never had cancer. I wished it so much I would cry from the pain of wishing.
Then one very lucky day I was talking to man whose wife had battled breast cancer years earlier. He asked me questions and listened to my story. He wanted me to talk and it felt good to talk, because I felt he genuinely wanted to know any detail I was willing to share. I could see the remembered pain in his eyes as he thought of his wife and when I finished he said to me, “You look so brave, but I know right now it is the hardest it has been.”
I was so startled by his knowing that I simply stared at him. He smiled and patted my shoulder.
He said, “All I can tell you is that it is what it is.”
His wife had gone through the same emotions I was experiencing once her treatments were winding down. He told me it was a big battle for her, but eventually you just have to realize that wishing will not change what has happened, and he was absolutely right.
Ultimately, for whatever reason or no reason at all I had cancer. I may have cancer again. Nothing I can do is really going to change that. But I would like to know that whether I am moving on from this world in a year or in eighty years that I didn’t waste any of that time being bitter or wasting my wishes on things that cannot change. I would like to know that I have found some peace in what has happened. Some happiness. Some contentment.
This was not an immediate cure to my depression, but it was definitely the first step in the right direction and since that day each of my days have gotten a little better, and each of my thoughts a little brighter. And if I find myself late at night wishing on the stars, I am no longer wishing that I never had cancer.
I am wishing for the strength to move past it.
