Surviving Cancer

My silent tears fall, when no one is watching. Without control, and without stopping. They fall for my exhaustion. They fall for my pain. They fall for the days that are too long. They fall like rain. They fall when I’m too tired to be a mother. They fall when I’m too tired to be a wife. They fall for no reason at all. How can this be my life? They fall during my prayers, to the Lord up above. They fall when I ask him, to give me a shove. To shove me down the path, that I need to be going. A shove to show me, where I should be growing. My silent tears fall, more often than not. They fall and they fall, and cannot be caught. My silent tears are silent, sneaking up on their host. They start without warning, when I’m needed the most. Tears dry up, pick myself off the ground. Time to finish the day. I’m sinking but not drowned.

You know when your child sticks a sticker onto the floor, or another hard surface? When you go to peel it up, it comes up torn and in pieces. It becomes difficult to put back together. Well, the sticker is, me, and my husband has to do the peeling. I often find myself in very dark places recently. A place where nothing is right, and no one can fix anything. On these days, my husband does his best to peel up my pieces off the floor, but it’s exhausting, and I know that. It’s also getting harder and harder to put me back together. I’m at a point where I don’t even recognize the person that I am. What am I doing with my life? Who is this person?

Cancer didn’t kill me, but cancer killed, me. I am no longer the person I once was. I’m not fun, or funny. I’m not confident, but rather very insecure. I’m not the mother I thought I would or the mother I should be. I’m not the wife I promised my husband in my vows, or the woman he said I do to, almost 3 years ago now. I’m not that person, and I will never be her again.

I’m sad and lonely. I’m insecure and depressed. I’m guarded and no longer the optimistic person I once was. I’m moody and impatient. I’m angry and cranky. I’m stressed and overwhelmed, all of the time. Sure I have good days, where I can be some of those things that I’m not anymore, but they are getting harder and harder to come by. I’m a person I do no recognize, and a person I do not like.

I really can’t say that this new me is all due to cancer, because that can’t be known. It’s likely a variety of things that turned me into this terrible monster. Choices I’ve made not due to cancer and choices I’ve been forced to make because of cancer have come together in this hurricane storm of person, to make this new me, a disaster.

Where do I go from here? I am confident this is not who I want to be for the rest of my life. I need to find a passion, find my calling, find my purpose. Where do I begin, is the big question. How do I go about making myself a better person, the best person, I can be?

I write these blogs when I’m in the darkest of places, sometimes. They can get morbid and sad, but this is all part of my unseen struggle.