Living not fighting.
My Journey through cancer.
It‘s an interesting one after diagnosis how quickly your social media feed fills up with all the relevant posts on the story. To be honest with you, it all got a bit much for me from the outset. I'm a member on forums, but only silently and only occasionally. I hear others need to share the minutia of their treatments, and find most folk in this arena seem to keep a tight knit boundary around who they let in to witness them. I understand this need. But I don‘t share it. For me it was starkly clear that I needed to do the absolute opposite of hiding my circumstance. That is all too easy for me, a lifetime of practice had made that path clear. I'm choosing another path here though. Its the wild one. The one that cuts through the tangled branches of convention and beyond into the wooded glade of open sharing.
I decided, or rather my inner scream compelled me to write a post to everyone I knew in the first few days after my verdict was given. I found myself setting up groups and being in the presence of people. All people, just that. Humanity in its entirety, well the ones I knew, and now all of you that read this I suppose. I've no idea if this was the right thing to do, I still don‘t. Maybe it will change if things turn down more difficult paths for me. Maybe I will crave the safety of those who know this landscape better. That remains to be seen.
One thing that won‘t change is my opinion on this idea of fighting cancer. I don‘t agree. In fact it feels utterly wrong to be thinking about fighting something that is in essence an auto immune disease. Its your own body on a crazy self destruct mission. So how can I get behind fighting that? Rather I feel I'm learning to live. I really believe that something in me needs tending right now. The medicines and treatments are all to that end. The eradication of the rouge cells I see as a repatriation for them to go back to the earth. The parts of me that got lost and a little twisted, now need untangling. That's the real journey, I think. And I believe everyone at some point will be finding a way to a new life, post the interventions of the kind medical staff or alternative therapies. To a new way of living. I just want to embrace that now and bypass the idea of fighting myself like a split personality.
And yes I do question myself about all this. I know I have a lateral way of looking at the world, slightly odd ball, as my friends know. I'm a good listener, I've heard so many of you and your stories. In recent years though I have had to lay my bounds with some and reclaim my own need to be heard. I think that was what I needed all along. Me speaking my truth. Regardless of who agrees or doesn‘t. That has always been hard for me. I didn‘t realise how easy it had become to slip into the dress of a people pleaser. Or when it happened. Its not an outfit that suits anyone. I really believed I had good boundaries, but now I realise that I was living a half life of the quiet listener and holder of space. And there is no choice now, except to express: its the only path I can find into fully living. So here I am.
I'm not really brave. I know you likely think I am. But I'm not. I just have no choice, and so to all of you out there it likely seems brave. Well, there is a choice strictly speaking. I could choose to do nothing. Or not do the doctors tests and treatments. In fact I think some folk who do that are the brave ones. And some of them thrive and survive. I've had to dig deep to understand my way through this messy tangle. Am I really saying anything? Am I doing the right thing? Does it matter? I'm being me, whilst I still can be me. Hopefully it will form a strong foundation for the living to be done on the other side of all this. And more importantly a staff to help me in my moment to moment journey now.
