I think sometimes when we are suddenly submersed into our own personal hell it's easy to forget that there are shining moments in life. It's easy to feel like there's no way that anything will ever be remotely the same again. And to be honest, maybe it won't. But that doesn't mean it won't ever be good again.
After the first time of having cancer, I remember just feeling annoyed that it had all happened to me and I found myself actually wanting to just forget it. I wanted to move on and get life back to how it was supposed to be and carry on, really. I used to feel sad that I didn't feel the new lease of life that so many people who had gone through cancer had described feeling when they survived.
Nevertheless, I started to feel comfortable again- comfortable and hopeful in my life and that I would have a blissfully average future.
Then came the second diagnosis. I remember waiting those three months to be re-scanned and confirm, and going over and over in my head what was happening and why it was happening.
That comfortable, sure feeling vanished and I was uncertain again- it's difficult to describe how my head was at those times.
You can't explain to people the fear, I suppose. The fear of dying, of the pain, the sickness, having to go through being different all over again. Having to have my life shattered in front of my eyes again, and then having to pick them all up again when I was fixed.
The fear of picking up the pieces takes over a little, even over the fear of dying. I mean, as a human I have a strange sense of invincibility- even when I was afraid of dying, I wasn't really. Because in my head, it just couldn't happen. I am to die at 100, and in my sleep, and that's how I've always pictured it- not at sixteen and probably drowning in my own lungs. Luckily that's not happening, but for a split second it was a possibility.
Today I went to see the Amazing Spider-Man 2 film that came out last week. I'm not going to give anything away (that would be mean) but at one point Emma Stone's character said; "We have to be greater than what we suffer".
Though I'm sure some people would think me conceited or arrogant for saying this out loud- I have been through a lot. Over the course of my life time, I have known suffering. Now, not suffering like I am starving to death in a third world country, or having my family shot in front of me, or having everyone I love die of disease around me- but in my own circle, in my own head, I have.
It's all relative suffering, I suppose. It all depends on the amount that persons mind can cope with, and what that person has to live with or go through every day. But in my mind, I know that emotionally and physically I feel like I have suffered (a little, anyway). I also know that I am trying my very hardest to be greater than it. I'm not sure I know how to be greater than it at the moment, I think everyone has to be great in their own ways and I think I finally understand how to be greater than my cancer.
I said earlier that I was sad that after the first time I didn't feel a new lease of life immediately. Maybe I just needed another round to make me see, I thought, second time round. After stem cell, it came gradually. When the throwing up stopped, I felt grateful. When the tube was taken out, I felt grateful. Gradually as everything got better and better and I realised what it was to feel well (ish) again, the appreciation started to come. The more I thought about it, the more I started to love the fact that I was alive. I realised it's not an automatic thing, the lease of life. It doesn't just turn on like a light as soon as you're out of chemo or radio, it takes time. It takes the courage to reflect on everything you've been through and know that being alive is definitely worth it all.
It did take time, I still don't trust my body. In fact, I'm very angry at my body. Angry it betrayed me not once, but twice. Angry that it put me through everything it did, and angry that it never told me. My very favourite author once said, though, in one of my favourite books; "the only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive". So I'm trying to forgive. Forgiving and living, is what I am doing.
And while doing so, I finally understood that the only way to be greater than what I have suffered is to live. Not just for me, but for everything I fought for over the past two years, for the people who helped me through it all. Maybe even just for the sake of life itself.
And it's just unfortunate it took two rounds of cancer to show me that.
Contemplating life and love and other 'L' words,
B x
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