I find it interesting how human resilience ebbs and flows throughout our lives. It can seem to disappear and then reassert itself if given time. Below are two passages I wrote independently of each other. What a difference time and healing can make!
Written 11/27/2022
I expected my cancer to have profound effects on my body, and it did. I lost my hair. I lost 14 lymph nodes. I lost my energy. And on and on it goes. What I did not expect was how the cancer affected my state of mind.
I lost hope.
I lost joy.
I lost interest in all things and all people.
I lost my faith that all will be okay.
I lost my belief that anything is possible.
I lost MYSELF!
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Written 12/12/2022
I have spent almost all of 2022 dealing with my cancer diagnosis. From finding the lump, to the mammogram, to the biopsy, to the chemotherapy, to the surgery, to the fluid accumulation issues, to the radiation, to the . . .
It went on and on while the rest of my life was put on hold. Now my treatments are completed, my energy is improving, and my depression is gone. So, what now?
After focusing my entire being on fighting cancer for so long, I feel kind of lost without that focus. Do not get me wrong – I am glad to be done with treatments and celebrate that my cancer treatments were successful. But spending so much time dedicated to just that one part of my life has left me with a void of some type.
It may be how a prisoner feels after serving their incarceration and then being released. In fact, I did feel like a prisoner much of the time this last year. A prisoner of this terrible disease called cancer. I felt trapped in a way, trapped in a cell that so many others have served time in. During this last year I became aware of how insidious this disease is, of how so many are afflicted with it themselves, or have loved ones who are dealing with it.
I am free now, sort of; the fear of a return of the cancer is sometimes lurking in the background. However, I am not going to think about that, and I am going to celebrate my life again, with an acute awareness of how fragile the time we have on this earth can be.
Change, Grow, Evolve
©bcreed
Senior Metamorphosis Moments 