This coming Tuesday, it will be exactly ten years since I got the call that I had cancer. Ten years. I know some who might say, “I didn’t know if I’d live to see this day” when they got their cancer diagnosis, but not me. I knew. I knew I wasn’t done with life, or life wasn’t done with me. That’s not to say I wasn’t scared, or that I didn’t worry about what the whole journey ahead of me would be, but in a world where my brain very often defaults to the worst-case scenario, my brain simply wouldn’t –couldn’t– fathom this being the end. Perhaps that’s naivety, or my well-known sense of optimism (yes, I know that flies in the face of my brain defaulting to worst-case scenarios, but I’m a complex creature–a true dual-natured Gemini, so just go with it) but I could only wrap my brain around what trials I might have to go through to get to the other side, rather than there being no other side of cancer for me.
Truth be told, I have a bit of imposter syndrome when it comes to my cancer. I was lucky. The doctors and the mammogram caught it early. It was localized; it hadn’t decided to hit the highway of lymph nodes and fast-track its way into my bloodstream or knock down the doors of my bones. There was no chemotherapy or radiation to wrestle my cancer into submission, all it took to excise the cancer was to literally cut off a body part entirely. And still, because I didn’t get sick, because I didn’t lose my hair or my sense of taste, or have to infuse my body with poisonous chemicals to further choke additional cancer cells, it almost feels like it’s unfair to say I had cancer. It feels false to say that I have experienced cancer when so many have much more difficult and even tragic relationships with it. I did have it though, and as a wise friend told me once, cancer is not a contest. ‘Easy’ or not, it was still big, overwhelming, and scary to be in a relationship with cancer.
It is a relationship, after all, and I was in one. Me and my cancer. You and your cancer become fiercely intertwined–no matter what stage, no matter what kind– and even when it is in the rearview mirror, even when you are able to put the abusive partner behind you, you are changed. The experience leaves a marker of indelible memory on the core of your being. You know that person who was unhealthy for you but who was inextricably tied to your psyche? The one that you knew you had to unencumber yourself from in order to save your mental health? It’s kind of the same thing. Even when you know it was not healthy for you, part of that relationship remains embedded in your soul–the memories and experiences remain part of the chemical makeup of your current being. They shaped who you are currently; just because they are no longer there doesn’t mean they weren’t part of your becoming YOU.
Anyway, cheers to me. Cheers to 10 years–and many more to come. I am not done with life yet, nor is life done with me.
Posts
