After the doctors fights, after you're all done with what others can see, when you just want life to go back to normal, it doesn't.
(Aside, I don't mean to minimize the fears and worries of any friends, family, or caretakers of Cancer patients in this post. I simply want to highlight the difference between what they see, and what we feel.)
Through all the surgeries and chemo, the side effects and the time out of work, you really just want to get back to normal. I just wanted to go back to work, live my life, and move on. I tried. I did go back to work after the orchi, and then later after the chemo.
So does everyone else. They all want life to carry on. But there is a difference between you and them. For them, it can. Life feels normal again, everyone is doing what they did before. You're doing the normal, because you think it can make normal again. They are doing it because they see you doing it, and they think normal is back. It isn't.
For you, it never will be. Certainly life will move on, the days will come and go, and there is always the regular life stuff to take care of. But for them, it's back to business as usual. For you, however, it can't.
I say "can't", and "won't" because it's true. Sure someday, once you've recovered from the treatments and gotten through the doctors fights, life moves on. But it's not the same life. For them, once you're out of treatment, what else can they do?
(I'm just now finding out, months out of chemo, these side effects show up later, and will probably be permanent. There is no going back to the old normal.)
So they move on, try to make life their old normal again.
And sure, you try to. But you can't. There is something in your head that is blocking the old normal. In the last post (Part I) I talked about how that something is projected onto others. Here I want to talk, in brief, about what those emotions do on the inside, about what those fears really are.
The fear, sitting inside you since the diagnosis, stays there. Even after surgeries and chemo, clean scans and "so far so good" meetings with the doctor, the fear doesn't go away. Inside, that fear brings energy. It brings with it an atypical "Fight or... What?"
The old normal resulted in Cancer. How could I possibly go back to that? I know how that story ends! No thank you! The old normal I was fearless and invincible. Then I found out I wasn't. I really don't want to go back to that false sense of security, only to be crushed again.
I could work on the old normal, to make it better. I could look for something then, that could make me and mine happier. I didn't find it then, then ended up with so much hurt and fear. That old normal hope died.
The biggest thing is the fear. The old normal wasn't afraid. The new normal, after first finding it, and then finding it again, knows fear. My body, my teeny tiny little cells decided to go rogue, and try to kill me. If just a handful of little rebels can try to take me down, whats to say it can't happen again, and again? While we're on the subject, the chemo and multitude of scans can actually cause more Cancer.
The old hopeful normal is gone. It's replaced with a fearful normal.
And it's a change in your head that noone can see, noone can know. (to be Part III)
No comments:
Post a Comment