I realize that I've been reflecting a lot this week, as evidenced by the stickied post at the bottom of my blog, the slideshow, and several other posts that have gone up. I almost can't help focusing on the past, and doing a lot of soul-searching, while I wrap up things in my life, as I get ready to go.
There's been a lot of self-evaluation going on, a lot of introspection, and a lot of coming to terms with what will happen, and who I am. And it's been hard, hard enough that I had to go and see someone to help me deal with parts of it. I'll be seeing a psychology team over the weekend as part of what I'll be doing. In among the other "refinements" of evaluation, and making sure I'm healthy, and offering up my opinions, and doing what needs to be done, is a psychological evaluation on how I handled the last five years. And in all honesty? I haven't handled it particularly well.
People wanted me to go, and work with people who have problems similar to mine, to help them cope. "Giving back" is what's it called, and it would be selfless, and would make so many people's lives better. Because I *do* know what would be coming for them, and how to cope to a certain extent, and I am and would be in a unique position to help form support groups and organize those types of things. My opinion would lend both credence and weight, in a field that simply lacks any credible information. I have verbal and written communication skills, and an education that would probably make that possible.
And I don't want to do that. I don't want to be a shining example anymore. I don't want to live a fishbowl existence, on display as 'the girl who lived' anymore. I am *grateful*. I am. I am so grateful that I have done everything they have asked of me. I took my medication. I followed every guideline they have given me, and done everything they asked. Given my opinions, took their tests, done their procedures, signed their papers, and will help them every way I can. Until Monday. And then I want to go home. I want to go home, to my house, and my life, and stop being the girl who lived, who was sick, who was a miracle and survived. I want to stop being that, and just be me.
I want to be a college student, who lives with her cat, and has friends, and does the normal things that normal people do. I want to continue to lose weight, and learn to cook new recipes. I want to work on my homework and drive myself insane with regular problems, instead of wondering when the next time I need to go to the hospital so they can ask how I'm doing, and needing to know my opinion on what the long-term ramifications of *anything* brain-tumor-related are.
I don't want to be the guinea pig anymore. I'm sorry that I happened to be 2% of the population in medical terms, and that I can't do more. But five years is enough. Enough of tests, and of giving impossible answers, and beating impossible odds. Enough of being the only one, with no one but me as support for myself. I can't give back to the people who will come after, there isn't enough left inside of me. Maybe there will be, later. But there just isn't right now. It will *destroy* me, to try. That's why I don't volunteer in cancer centers now, because trying to cope with anything else, on top of what I still don't completely understand for myself, is something I just can't do.
I'm *not* a trained psychologist. I'm sure, given the time and the tools, teams will be assembled, to help ease the transition for people like me, people whose memories have been damaged, and who have to cope from trauma to their brains from surgeries like these. But those teams and those support groups aren't there right now. If they were, I would have been in one, and would be in a lot better shape than I'm in right now. And I've *been* in therapy, for quite a while. But there aren't a lot of people specializing that around here, and yes, I've looked. I know exactly what I'm looking *for* now.
And I sound like I'm whining, even to myself. And perhaps I am. I'm tired. I'm hurting, and I'm frightened. Afraid of who I'll be, when I'm finally home, and picking the pieces of myself up. I have to, because I have no other choice, accept that for all intents and purposes, I am as 'cured' as I'm going to get. I know, in the back of my mind, I might get sick again. But I cannot live my life based on the 'what if' possibility. I don't treat any of the rest of my life that way, and I refuse to treat the cancer that way, either. When they give me those words, and I'm no longer a cancer patient, and am instead a survivor, it changes. I'm not sick anymore then, and the little ticking time-bomb, stops. I can treat it as remission, the way I do everything else, and live.
The trouble is, I've been this way for so long, that I don't know exactly *how* to live, now. And I'm not altogether certain what to do. Where do you go, when you're free to pursue anything you want to be?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
You go to the all the places you dreamed of the last five years, when they seemed impossible. You do all the things you put off because you didn't know if you would "have the time".
You try to cram as much of the five years of living, really living not just surviving, into your current life without putting it on hold.
While you could be a help to others you need to help yourself first. If that means you expend all your energy into taking care of yourself and volunteering or giving back would be a drain and detriment to yourself, don't do it.
Seems to me you've been through enough already without putting yourself through unnecessary stress or strain.
Post a Comment