this is the way
I’ve been feeling something strange lately. I think it’s...happiness? It feels so new and different, kind of like I haven’t really experienced it for months.
It’s been almost six months since I received my diagnosis, and it’s not that I haven’t experienced at least some happiness in that time, but this feels like the longest, strongest stretch of it since before I was diagnosed.
And it feels weird. Especially when, as is so very often the case anymore, it feels like the outside world is a huge mess (understatement of the century). I was telling Joe the other day that it feels almost wrong to be feeling this good. So many of my friends are struggling right now, whether it’s due to illness, lack of employment, too much employment, or just general concern about the state of the world. And I’m over here, finally feeling like I’m exiting the cancer fog, remembering that there were things about my life that I loved before cancer and they’re still there waiting for me.
It’s just that, while the pandemic was tearing the world apart, we were having our own internal crisis and it felt like OUR world was falling apart. It made it a lot harder to focus on the external crises. And as I start to come out of the internal trauma and we rebuild our lives, I suppose it’s natural that my mood would improve, even if the world still seems a bit of a mess. My mood really had nowhere to go but up. And I think…I wasn’t even aware of how miserable I’ve been the last few months until I started to stop feeling that misery.
As pissed off as I am that this still happened to me (and believe me, the anger is definitely there, it just doesn’t come out to play very often...I’m looking into therapy), I also feel like all of this has given me a better outlook on life. I certainly (at least so far) don’t get as worked up and anxious about some of the things that I used to. I always enjoyed going on my daily walks, but I find myself noticing and appreciating little details even more than I used to (and I’m someone who used to stop and kneel on the ground so I could take a picture of a slug or a snail or a weird leaf).
Lately, I’ve been excited that my legs don’t seem to get as tired when I go out for a walk, even if I try to walk at my old pace. I can feel the muscles reawakening and working as I climb up and down hills. I notice the streaks of sunlight shining through the trees (you know, when the sun actually appears). I notice the drops of water desperately clinging to branches on the trail. I notice every single bird flit by, delight in the sound of their calls. I still stop and take photos of every goddamn duck that I see.
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment or reason that my mood changed, but it started happening a few weeks ago. If I had to guess, it’s due to a combination of these things:
The radiation side effects, at least the worst of them, have started to dissipate.
Bringing home foster kittens immediately after radiation was probably not the smartest idea since I was still pretty messed up physically, but it did wonders for my mental state.
I’ve stopped using my feeding tube for meals and, though I’m still not eating what I would call a normal diet, I’m no longer reliant on the tube to stay alive, so that’s nice.
Some food is starting to taste good again! I’m finding that I actually want to eat sometimes, rather than just making myself eat so I don’t die.
I started work again and everyone has been JUST SO NICE about me coming back.
My energy for starting new hobbies (my favorite hobby!) has started to return.
I’ve been reading up a storm, something I found difficult to do during treatment (for the first time in my life).
When I was diagnosed, I joined a few support groups on Facebook specific to head and neck cancers. I had most been posting questions or asking for advice, up until a couple of weeks ago, when I noticed I’d started answering questions posed by others and offering suggestions to people who were newly diagnosed. It feels good to be able to impart some of the knowledge I’ve gained. This isn’t knowledge I ever wanted, but since it’s stuck in my brain anyway, I might as well use it to help other people.
It’s not that I don’t still have bad or sad moments. They’re still there. I get angry. I feel blue. In those moments, I want to dig myself a little blanket burrow on the couch and hibernate until I feel better, so that’s what I do. I give myself permission to wallow, because these moments are going to keep coming, cancer or no. But I’ve become much more aware that those moments are fleeting and they’re really NOTHING compared to how I was feeling even a couple of months ago. I got a close-up look at “things could be worse,” and it’s changed my perspective. Though I know I still have far to go to get to where I want to be, at least right now, in this moment, it feels like it might be possible.
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