Remember - A Letter to My Future Self

Dude.

Remember that one time you had cancer?

Remember how you went from working out 5-7 times a week to not being able to walk up a flight of stairs without having to lie down and wait for the dizziness to pass? Remember when you fainted trying to walk to the bathroom? Please remember that when you're lamenting the fact that there's a 4 mile run on your workout schedule. Run it with joy. Because you can!

Remember how scary it was to tell your kids about your diagnosis? Remember how it felt like you physically broke saying the word cancer to Anna because you knew she knew what that could mean? Remember how she hugged you that one hard night when you cried that it wasn't fair that this was happening and shared her beyond-her-years wisdom that no, it wasn't fair, but it would be OK? Remember how Henry always had a perfectly timed butt or fart joke to break the tension? Hang on to those feelings of immeasurable love and joy. Know that these kids are the best gift you've been given in life. Hang on to that tight, because puberty, it is a-comin'!

Remember how you felt like you were married to your pillow, your bed, the couch. Like you would never want to "rest" again after cancer? How many books you read - so many that you actually got TIRED OF READING (that is not even a thing!)? Remember how you longed to be busy again? Treasure those commitments that you enjoy and let go of the ones you don't. Because you now know how easy it is to put your life on pause. And the things that need to get done, will get done, either by you or someone else.

Remember the incredible joy you felt about the simplest things on your good days during treatment? How just sitting at Anna's volleyball game or Henry's jiujitsu practice made you feel like all of life was perfect? How taking the dog for a walk was the best part of your morning? How excited you were to do laundry? Stop looking for happiness in the big moments and just accept it in all the thousands of little ways it floods your life every day.

Remember how easy the "I love you's" flowed when you felt scared and vulnerable - your rawest self? Let them flow like that always. Tell your friends, every day, that you love them. Because you have some of the very best people on your side and they deserve to hear it!

Remember when you shaved your head? Lost your eyebrows? Felt like everything about your exterior was different? Appearances change. Work on holding on to the things that matter, like humor, kindness, love. Those last, even in the face of cancer.

Remember when it felt like 6 months of treatment would last forever? That you'd have a metallic taste in your mouth for the rest of time? That your body would never fully physically recover from the harsh medicine required to knock the cancer out? Well, you did it. NOW GO LIVE! Climb the mountain, hike the trail. Explore the woods. DO THE THING! Don't wait for life to deliver adventures to you. Seek them out. Go see this beautiful crazy world and meet as many people as you can. Life is too short not to.

Remember when you only had 3 chemo treatments left? 7 weeks? 49 days? Remember when it felt like maybe you could do this after all? Survive this? Not just survive, but come out the other side even better than "before"?

Remember these things - these are the things I want you to take from cancer.

P.S. Future self, do you still feel euphoric about laundry? Or no? Did that wear off already?

Who Am I?

I had the very strange experience this week of looking at a pre-cancer picture of myself and not recognizing the person in the photo as me. So much has changed - my hair, my weight, my eyebrows/eyelashes, my activities that defined my days, my energy, my outlook on so many things, my innocent belief that I'm invincible against horrible health things that only happen to "other people". In a lot of ways, I'm not the person in that photo any more. It's disorienting.

I know ultimately, I'm the same person deep down, and things will go back to normal. But I've been living in crisis mode for so many months now, that it's hard to remember which direction is up. I just want to put my life back together. I want to not feel awful any more. I want to not feel so exhausted and so incredibly lonely.

By the time this is done, I will have spent 6 months of my life dealing with cancer. That's a long pause. It's a long time of feeling not like me for a majority of that time. I'm so scared that I won't be able to get back to me. That my husband won't get his normal wife back, my kids won't get their normal mom back, that this whole experience will have changed me into someone that I don't recognize. Permanently.

I know I have only 3 chemo sessions left. But today I am mad. I'm so mad. I don't want this. I didn't ask for this. Or do anything to deserve this. My kids don't deserve to have a mom who's in so much pain and nausea that they can't even sit on the bed next to me. My husband doesn't deserve to have to act as a single parent every other week. THIS IS NOT FAIR. I HATE THIS. I JUST WANT TO BE DONE WITH CANCER. I want to be me again.

Ugh. I don't even have the energy to end this post on a positive note.