Where Am I…and What Have You Done with Me?

Cancer is not unlike war.

For the few and the proud, imminent threat comes suddenly and immediately. Scared shitless, we are enlisted for battle with promises of victory and defeat. We blindly subscribe to the battle cry. We are thrust into a sort of perpetual boot camp that includes endless internet searches and doctors prognoses/ diagnoses in a land far from our home, surrounded by strangers that speak a foreign language. We are taken from our loved ones and thrust into a world that will leave us scarred and broken. We are the Walking Wounded and we will leave the battlefield knowing, that someday, some way we will be called up to fight again.

 In the meantime, we arrive home frightened, damaged shells of our former selves and pretend that we are heroes. We attend parades and walk proud amongst our supporters all whilst remaining silent prisoners of war. We make believe that we are indeed fine. Pretend that things have not changed because we know that for those who have waited terrified for us at home, things have to remain the same. We reluctantly get up every morning and move through the memory of our lives as ghosts. Daily activities seem to pass through us like the morning mist….cold, damp and threatening to completely swallow us up.

We pray for relief.

The mirror now reflects faces and bodies we do not recognize. Strangers in the place of ourselves. We practice our smile knowing that that smile is the key to the survival of the hopes and dreams for others. Our deceitful promise of the future we know will probably never come.

We have gone to war, returned and we will never be the same. Mere visitors in a life we used to call our own.  

We pray that the quiet stops being quite so loud and we wonder if it will haunt us forever. We go to bed at night dreading the darkness, fearing that which we cannot see. Knowing that it’s there. Waiting. Hoping that if we close our eyes real tight, it will cease to exist.  

Knowing that it won’t.

Knowing that the irony lies in the fact that we fought so hard to preserve a way of life that is no longer a possibility.

Knowing that our loved ones have unsuspectingly lost us to our enemy in a way that they will never quite comprehend. Because though they remained here, holding on to the idea of home, we now live in another place. A place far away. An unforgiving land where they speak a foreign language. And though we have returned home, we will never truly live here again.

There's a Monster Hiding Under My Bed

Photo by Eric Von Bargen

Fear. At some point and time all of us can recall when we first became aware of fear. The time when we learned that the world was so much bigger than what was inside our of our warm, safe homes and much scarier to boot. Maybe we started asking our moms to leave the light on in the bathroom at night as we slept or perhaps we found ourselves sprinting and taking a flying leap onto our beds so that the monsters underneath wouldn't grab us and drag us under. Either way, most of us remember the first time we really felt afraid.

For me, it was when I was ten years old. I was a child of divorce and as such was thrust into very grown up roles from an early age. I suddenly found myself often alone at home in charge of my six year old brother while my single mother worked long hours to make ends meet. At night, when the clock struck six and my mother wasn't home as scheduled, my thoughts turned to worst case scenarios and I felt real fear. Instead of letting my baby brother know just how frightened I was that our mother wouldn't return, I invented a game. I called it "Counting Cars" and it was as simple as sitting on the porch in the dark with my brother and watching the cars go by.

"I'll bet you that one of the next three cars that drives by will be mom", I'd say, then we'd huddle and count the headlights together "One....Two.....Three" Then it'd be his turn and so on and so forth. Sometimes we would play this game for hours and she always did come home but I will never forget that fear and the need that I felt to protect my brother from it. The way I needed to make him laugh, make him believe he had the power to bring her home. That just by saying it out loud, would make it so.

It seems I'm not so different with my Cancer.

You see I am one of the lucky ones. My cancer is completely gone. The mastectomy took it all and according to my doctors the chances of it ever coming back in my breasts are next to nothing. But what I am left with is a terror that I cannot explain. The fear that if it's in my breast, why wouldn't be somewhere else as well? It is a fear that takes a small, very normal ovarian cyst for anyone else and turns it into full blown ovarian cancer in my mind. It sends my world into a tailspin of trans vaginal ultrasounds and CA125 tests that I am currently awaiting the results for and waiting is where the real fear lives. Not knowing is the terror in the night. The monster under the bed.

I can remember fear as a child. It hasn't changed much as an adult. I am still waiting, Counting Cars and hoping that the next phone call wont be my doctor telling me that I now have cancer somewhere else. Oh and as for protecting those around me from my fears? I'm still doing that as well. I'm writing this blog, I'm being there for other cancer patients and I'm trying to seem as much like the old me as I can.

But in my mind, when the night is dark and quiet, I find myself counting "One....Two...." and I hope that in a few days, I'll have the answers I need and that proverbial car will drive up and I will once again fell safe. That is of course until the next time.....