I think about cancer every single day, there is never a day off, never a day when I don't, I think about it every single day.
Most days I manage those thoughts but as I have said over the last couple of days, recently I've been struggling to do that. This makes me not great to be around, I'm miserable, I'm snappy, I look for help, I look for reassurance, I look for people to be there. TI've started to wonder if that is actually the right thing to do, because I really do need to be more self reliant, I need to find the mental strength that I had before all of this started. That will help me get back to being the old me, the confident, laid back, impulsive to the point of reckless, lover of life. That man is still here, he's just down deep, he comes up every now and again but I need him here more often. I told you in the last blog that I used to be laid back, I used to live for now, the future could wait. But now as my future is more uncertain and I can't really control it I find myself looking at it more, wishing for it more. That's made me worse, I can't wish for anything other than a cancer free future, from there everything else will come. From a cancer free future I can see my kids grow, I can see their future, I can love, I can live, I can travel but all of that comes from the first wish, the cancer free future. The problem is it's just a wish and not a guarantee and I have to accept that, well I have to learn to accept that and deal with it. I thought I had, recently I really thought I had, but maybe I haven't. I'm closing up again, I can feel it, I'm lapsing back into my old ways of holding onto my thoughts and feelings and not wanting to talk about them, of holding onto the bad and not processing it well. I think I've let it get a bit more control of me than it has in a while and I need to get that control back. I don't want to close the cancer thoughts off, that way will lead to nothing but trouble, burying them will only store them to give them strength. Dealing with them now and controlling them will remove their power. Yes, I will always need support I know that, and I will always accept any support that's given. I need people to be there I know that too, and I will always hope that they are there when I need them but I can't expect to depend on them all the time, I can't expect them to carry me. I have a small circle of people that I trust implicitly, and only a couple of people who I would call my best friends but I have to learn to carry myself as well. I have to find some strength from inside me again, I know it's there, it always has been before so why can't I find it now? That frustrates me. I'm am though finding it easier than I used to to talk to people who have been in "The cancer club", I know now that they understand how I am, that helps more than I thought it would and I'm glad that I've discovered that. They have the same feelings, they have the same fears, they struggle with the same things. That's why I'm starting to see that a support group would be good for me, it would allow me to talk about these feelings in a place where people won't look at me confused, where people won't think I'm daft for having these feelings. I'm going to my first support group meeting in a couple of weeks and I'm really looking forward to it, I'm going to meet people who have been supportive of the blog and have talked to me about how I feel and how they feel. I feel I already know them to some extent because I know they know how I feel and vice versa, that's quite a thing for me, it really is. I have always been private about things but I suppose that one of the sliver linings from this illness is that some of those barriers have started to come down. Those barriers stopped me before and I won't let them stop me again, but I can't constantly be in a support group, I can't always be around people who have had this disease, they have their own lives, fears and thoughts. Again I need to deal with my dark thoughts again, to find a way to break them before they build to large. I guess I need to rediscover the strength in myself again, the picture at the top has struck a chord with me. I think I just need to clear my head, to get it all out, all the sh*t I seem to be carrying inside my head and analyse why it's there and what it means. It's weighing me down, really breaking me down and it's doing me no good. I need to think what it is that's bothering me, think about what I can do to change it, accept that much of it is out of my control and just trust it will work out. Hopefully if I can accept it I can start to see clearly again, I can start to rebuild again after this latest relapse into the dark places of my mind. I wish more than anything I could just stop thinking about cancer, that I could put it to the back of my mind and just leave it there. I've realised today that I never will and that's impossible. It will dominate and to an extent control my life forever but I have to find my way to deal with that and only I can walk that path. People can support me, but it's support, "to bear all or part of the load, to hold up" as it says in the dictionary, but they can't do it for me, I have to learn to do that myself.
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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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