Post edit: I wrote this post about 2 weeks ago. Then we went to hang out with a friend, I got drunk and don't remember things. From what I've been told, we're playing Cards Against Humanity, I had a card along the lines of "my life wouldn't be the same without __" some of the answers came up as genitalia or the equivalent. I'm told, at that, I broke down and had some kind of emotional breakdown. I guess this post makes sense then. I wrote the following 2 weeks before that drunken breakdown.
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I hate my job. There have been times its made me want to cry. The key words here being "want to". In life there is always stress, it's something we all have to deal with.
Yet since my diagnosis and subsequent surgery, things have changed. I no longer felt like wanting to cry, to relieve stress about life and job. I felt like I needed to cry. It was no longer about the mountain of stress on my back. It was that I couldn't hold that mountain up anymore, knowing what I now knew.
That mountain of work stress didn't crush me. It fell sideways. But I was still left with the stress of dealing with my diagnosis.
Stress is an interesting word. In computing, it can mean making the circuits do as much as they can. In engineering, it can mean pushing a design to the limits where it might, and will probably, break. In both, and other disciplines, stress defines where things break. So then, how do we define where a survivor breaks?
By popular definition a survivor doesn't break. But anyone in this knows we break the moment the doctor says the word "cancer". Our psyche breaks at that moment. At that moment, we are no longer normal. We have to check that damn box. At that moment, we aren't human, but rather a subset where we get fake sympathy, or overly accute relationships.
My seminona was found and surgically removed. As far as we know, it hadn't spread. So for all we know, I'm a survivor. But I still feel the stress.
If stress defines when a physical object will break, how does the emotional analogue work?
I hate my job, and have been looking for over a year. Now I got a new one, a position that will provide a mentoring and teaching stance. I love it, it's awesome.
But I still have the stress. So clearly this stress wasn't job related (that's not to say there wasn't job related stress, that was a different kind).
When I got the new job offer, I nearly cried. I'm finally free of a depressive, vindictive, and uncaring work environment. My new position is inclusive, encouraging, and uplifting.
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Yet I'm still near tears every day. The new job clearly isn't the solution. The problem is me. The problem is that I'm still dealing with fact that my fun bits tried to kill me. Perhaps that's the reason. I'll have to explore this further. But is this feeling a result from the cancer that was in my man bits? Would I feel differently if it was elsewhere?
Granted many other cancers have much worse survival percentages. Yet there are still survival stories. Am I maybe feeling a form of survivors guilt? Is that why I want to cry? Am I crying for those who lost the fight, or because against all odds I won? Or both? Or neither?
What do I even feel about anything, on any side of this? I don't even know yet.
My own body tried to kill me. My mind got me a new, satisfying job and workplace. Where is the disconnect in these? Is there one? Which one takes presidence? Can one take presidence?
Good gods this is a lot to process.
