I Thought It Would Be Weirder

They say it takes three months to make a habit.  It's now been nine months where my focus has been entirely treating and beating cancer.  Aside from working part-time and an occasional gathering with friends, every day of 2017 has been nothing but doctors, surgeries, being sick, feeling injured, more doctors, nurses, hospitals, medications, ointments, special bras, special diets.  It has literally been non-stop, day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month.

And as the end neared, I expected to have an emotional reaction once it was all over and I was free to let any repressed feelings surface. 

I wasn't sure what kind of reaction it would be.  I thought it might be giddy and celebratory.  But while it was a good feeling walking out of radiation last Tuesday, there have certainly been other times in my life where I've felt even more relieved and excited and ready to start life anew.

I also thought I might react with a sense of shock.  I'd imagined sitting in my garden over the weekend, looking around and asking myself, "Wow, what the hell have I just gone through?"  When you're in the moment, you only focus on the moment, the immediate task at hand.  I thought when it was all done, I'd finally have some sort of epiphany about this year as a whole.

And then I thought I might react with anger now that all the fear and effort is behind me.  It's not fair!  Why me?  I just lost a year of my life!

So I took these last few days off work, intentionally didn't plan to do things with friends or family.  I just wanted to have my space, spend some time alone, absorb what I've been through and allow myself to feel whatever I felt.

And you know what surfaced?

"Hmm, I should prune the roses and clear out that bed of bearded irises.  I gotta seal that post in my garden so I can get the bed ready for a fall planting of garlic.  I really want to go see IT.  I think by next weekend, I'll be in good enough shape to turn the compost bin.  Door stops.  Next time I go to Lowes I need to get some door stops."

Seriously.  I feel like a bear that was leisurely foraging for berries in the forest, got shot with a tranquilizer, tagged, captured and studied for 9 months by animal scientists, then released back into the forest, and my first thought is, "Okay so what was I doing?  Oh yeah, berries, I was looking for berries."

One might say all this will come to me later, but I don't think so.  I think there will be moments where I stop and appreciate being alive more than I might have before.  I'm also slightly more of a hypochondriac now.  I no longer have that sense that I'm immune to illness because "nothing ever happens to me".  Future mammograms are going to be extremely stressful, and I do carry around fear of ending up in this place again.

But as for any post-traumatic reaction to this, I've found the end to be very anti-climactic.  And I think it's thanks to writing this blog through it all.  I've already done the "Why Me?" thing, I've already expressed anger, fear and joy through the process.  I'm very been-there-done-that, and now that it's over, I just want to go back to my berries.

The moral of this story is, never underestimate the power of journaling.  Regardless of whether you share it with the world or keep it to yourself in a box under the bed, there is something very healing about putting your feelings down on paper as they happen.  You don't have to be good at writing.  It doesn't have to rhyme or be witty.  It just has to be you and how you feel at the moment.  Because, for me, at least, once I've written it down, it's gone I can move on.  So today, I am moving on!

Part II will be coming.  I have goals to lose 60+ lbs, and that will not be an easy thing to accomplish.  But for now, I'm just going to go outside, water some plants, and think about groceries for the upcoming week.  And believe it or not, that's a very good feeling!