Imma about to get real here, that's not easy for me. The me that I see in my head isn't the reality of the situation.
THAT frustrates me.
Did you know that once people are cancer free there can be YEARS that go by that they struggle to get back to "normal" or establish a NEW "normal"? Oh, and I am FULLY aware that just cuz I have had cancer that this isn't limited to that area of disease/injury/anything that devastates a body. I need to just get real here for a minute, hopefully someone else out there will read this and know someone out there understands that being cancer free doesn't end that story. Once you are deemed cancer free you start to lose all the friends checking up on you , the story gets looked at like "oh well you beat that, move on", your circle of support starts to fade, and you are left to find your new "normal". That's when things can get pretty real...
It's very anticlimactic but can be so dang frustrating and hard to deal with. All you want is to get back to at least half of what you were, but that's a straight uphill climb for some of us.
I am working on getting back closer to that "normal" I knew for so long before treatment. I know I can get there, but what I see myself doing I find doesn't always correlate with where I am.
Anyone else feel that?
I know I can't be the only one. I SEE myself jumping, just simply jumping and yet I still can't. Left over from the chemo and my body just being broken for that period of time. Looking at the hurdles I am like I can totally do that, then I look like a clown when I actually try.
I have been doing great in my training, and then he sets out those stupid hurdles. There is some great metaphor in all this I know... I just see those stupid yellow hurdles of shame. I made him put out the little speed hurdles so I could actually do what he was asking but they were RIGHT next to the stupid big yellow ones. The ones I KNEW I could do but my body won't let me. I felt like I did when I started to lose my hair, I didn't feel like that image that I saw looked like. It's hard to describe, it was a mix of frustration, shame and sadness smudged together.
Tears, Stupid, frustrating tears make it worse because they are there because I can't help but want with all my heart not to be this person. They don't talk about this part of beating cancer, it's roses and life, not this crap.
5 years is coming up since diagnosis which means I have about 6 months to get this girl back to fighting shape. I jumped those hurdles before leaving, with tears in my eyes, and you could see every second of the fact those were a HUGE struggle to make. But I did it, tears and all, they didn't get me either. Stupid cancer, stupid frustration, stupid recovery. Some days I've earned the right to just be frustrated and a little sad. That was one of those days.
Some days there is tears.... Tomorrow will be better.