I have been thinking about this recently, I have been thinking about it a lot. It was said to me recently and I was hurt by the words and the implication. In my head I have always been generous and kind, in my head I always put the wants and needs of others before mine so how can I be selfish, I really can't? It has been swirling around my head because I have changed as a result of my experience, I know I have changed and whilst I never really wanted to look at myself too deeply before I realised that by writing this blog I had started to do that and maybe this was the place to start looking to see if it was true. I went back to the start and read through it all, I went back to the places where things looked and felt bad, to where I didn't know what would happen and what the future held. I see that I really did break, that I stopped being the man I was before I walked into the hospital on February 11th 2013, that man and his thoughts were now gone and if I'm honest he wasn't coming back. How could he? He genuinely felt he was invincible, he had never considered his own mortality or that life would be nothing but long, happy and an adventure. That was all gone with those first 6 words, well one of them anyway, malignant that was the one that changed all of that. So I had changed, I knew I had changed so what sort of man am I now? Am I now a selfish man? How have I changed? Is it in my thoughts, my actions, both? I have written about the physical things it took away from me and also how it had altered me mentally. I have written how I struggle to be alone at times, how it makes my mind wander down roads it doesn't need to go down, but also how I do appreciate my life and how I want to survive, to be happy, to love and to be old. But what has this got to do with being selfish? I have always wanted to control my life, to make my decisions, to make my fate, to choose my journey and because of that I guess I have always wanted things done how I want them done. I have never suffered fools gladly, well more truthfully those I considered fools. I am outspoken and people do know where they stand with me. I don't lie but sometimes the truth is not well accepted and that maybe makes me appear arrogant and maybe selfish. That's not the selfish that was meant though, it was the selfish where I only think of myself, or where I only think of myself before others and that is a different feeling. A friend of mine split with his wife as she went NED and says it was because she was selfish, another friend who is in remission said that he felt a lot more selfish these days and then I really started to look at myself. Everyone who is NED that I have met have all found a new and probably more intense love of life, we appreciate it, we cherish it, we know what it means to stare our mortality in the face. That's not a quick life flash in front of your eyes moment when you are in an accident or something dangerous happens, it's a long slow look at it whilst you go through diagnosis and treatment, its hours, nights, whole days spent worrying about what it means and even making plans in case the worst happens. Then you get told its treatable, you can have a future. It's here I always think of those worse of than me, I know how lucky I am to be told that, I do still have a future and for that I am grateful to whoever I need to be, I could of been a lot worse off. So after you have been told it's treatable you have your treatment, all the time worrying that this time, for you this treatment won't work, that you have built your hopes up and the plans you made you will need after all. Then comes the NED appointment, you have beaten this, you have won the battle, you have to be happy, everything is over, life is normal..... This is where the above picture comes in. There are some that can live like that afterwards, life is normal again but for me and for a lot of people I talk to it's not, it never is normal again. I couldn't be happy because my biggest fear was that it would come back, that the next time it would be terminal, my life would not be the long happy adventure I wanted it to be. I would only have limited time to live and I would have to do all of my living within that time.
How can I explain that to someone who has never felt that way, who hasn't stayed awake all night because there is a real chance of death being just around the corner, felt the fear of it, felt the guilt of leaving the ones we love behind to grieve without us being there to console them. I'm sorry to say this but unless you have been there you really can't understand it, you can imagine it but you can't understand it and this is where I think the "selfish" thing comes from. I lost all control, or what I perceive to be control of my life the minute I was diagnosed. I can't explain how that feels, yes none of us really know when we are going to die, but I have a real chance that something I can't control can come back at anytime and put me right back into those long lonely nights of wondering and planning. I can't do anything to prevent it, I just have to accept it. That's hard to take so maybe just maybe I want to control the parts of my life I can. I have said before that I think about cancer every day, not one day goes past where I don't think about it and about it coming back. I can manage it better these days but it is always there and underlines a lot of the decisions I make. Those decisions are based on what my future can hold and what I want it to hold, they are based on me being happy, on me living the best life I can for as long as I can. I don't want to be miserable, I don't want to be cautious, I don't want to have my last day on this earth full of regrets for the people I wanted to spend time with and the things I wanted to do. As I wrote earlier, as in the Noah and the Whale song "on my last night on earth, I'd pay a high price, to have no regrets and be done with my life" that's me, that's my only aim. Maybe that's where the selfish comes from, I think it does, I really do. I want to live, love and be loved, to smile and laugh, to see the places I want to see and fit it all in before I run out of time. There is nothing wrong with that and I won't apologise for it. I want to control my life so that I only experience the good as well, so I try to control it to make sure all the situations of my life suit me. Please don't think that has stopped me thinking about others and wanting the people I love to be happy, I probably want that more than anything! I want them to have nothing but good memories if the worst ever happened, I want them to know how much I loved them, what they meant to me. I guess this is the battle raging in my mind some days, that and the fact that the "normal" is difficult for me to get excited about. Work, bills, hum drum life is not what I want to think about, problems that once seemed impossible to deal with don't feel so big anymore, money doesn't seem important why would it? No amount of money will save me if the cancer really wants to win and take hold, it could pay for the best treatment but that won't necessarily be enough. This isn't a pessimistic look at life, it's not an optimistic one either, its just mine, just me, trying to make sure that in the end my loved ones know I loved them. Whilst at the same time I make sure when I look back I have no regrets or feel I missed something in my life. I guess in a way I am selfish, I want everything, I want everything and I want it now, I don't want to wait because maybe I won't have time to. Who knows, certainly not me, I guess I will just have to try and be more patient.
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Darren EvansOn Feb 11th 2013 my life changed forever when I was diagnosed with a myxoid liposarcoma of the right thigh. This is my version of my life since then. Archives
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