Edited: There is one more post after this; it got switched with the July 28th post.

The past two years have proven to be quite a battle. On the fronts that I haven’t even really expected. When we all see movies about cancer, it’s the chemo and the radiation that do the character in. Or what they triumph over. I don’t know—to me that was the easy part. There were medications to combat the nausea. Creams to help the dry skin. It was finite—six rounds, here’s what you’re getting and on this day it would be over. Scan shows your clear, we’re done treating you.

It’s the after. It’s the “what now?” part that I struggle with. I bridge two worlds—I feel like I carry the pain and the fear of having gone through the cancer with the reality that I’m not in a chemo chair but a work chair and the only radiation I’m getting is from my cell phone or computer. I don’t have cancer. The only vestiges of it that I have to deal with are the scars on my chest and my neck and the six month CT Scans.

My doctor told me that getting through cancer is like experiencing a loss, as real as losing a sibling. And I thought of the way that we often handle the death of a loved one. We hold on to them and bring them to the forefront as much as possible because we simply can’t, or won’t, forget. You know that life has to go on, but how can you honor and remember while still moving forward? How do you get to the next step when you’re still stuck in some of the pain?

I don’t know if there are any answers. I think we first have to acknowledge that any grieving process takes months, years, to heal through. There are some things we get good at, some things we find ourselves always working on, and some stuff we’ve decided we simply can’t change. I have spent the past year thinking I’m somehow damaged in ways that can’t be repaired. I’ve been so critical on myself—I should look like this, I should feel like this, I should be doing this—because of this unrealistic notion that there is no room for imperfection. That in order to erase the cancer, I have to prove that I’m more than what I was. But I’m not. I’m no more damaged than anyone else. I’ve been playing into the very things that I’ve asked people not to do.

So, I think that it’s time that I stop this phase of my life. The past few weeks have been so much upheaval for me and in a lot of good ways. I’ve been forced to look at the person I’ve become and why do I keep trying to get back to something that probably wasn’t even there in the first place. And stop focusing on all that I’ve lost and look at what I’ve been able to gain. I’m not going to be making any more entries for now. I’m not cured. I’m not 100% fixed. I’m not anywhere near where I hope that someday I will be. But I think in dwelling so much on what is wrong with me, I’m damaging a relationship that I really treasure. And if anything, I need to mend my heart and move on, before I lose something else. And the only way to do that is focus on the now and who I am today, and be positive about all that I’ve gotten through and all that there is out there. The possibility of more.

Thanks for reading. I hope that you find something useful in the other entries, for other young cancer survivors or someone experiencing the illness, or friends, or just life in general.

This is a post that I want to dedicate to my friends and family who have seen me through the ups and downs of the past year. Who have shown me that there is so much more out there and whose love for me has really made me who I am today.

Love is a funny thing. We hear the word and depending on who we are, we associate a million different things with it. My doctor was talking about it with me. She was discussing how crucial it was for cancer patients and their families. How sometimes just walking around the ward can make people feel better. Why sites like ChemoAngels are so successful; it makes people feel connected and ultimately cared about. I mean, love is so many things. And everyone has a different definition for it—some liken it to a flutter in the chest, a flip-flop in the stomach, romance, friendship, family, trust, loyalty, caring, the list can go on and on.

Our life experiences color the word too. Some of us take love in the form of money; others will have the life beaten out of them because that’s what they were taught love is. Some of us hide from it; some of us embrace it. Some of us run from it, while others of us constantly find ourselves chasing after it. It’s elusive, it’s intangible and can be as healing as it is destructive.

But for me, and I believe like so many of us, love is friendship. It’s comfort. It’s caring. Love isn’t some mystical and magical movement in your heart. It’s the feeling that you get when you know that someone means a lot to you. When I was sick, I remember feeling the need to constantly tell everyone around me how I felt about them. And I was lucky that I was surrounded by people who would love me back; I can't imagine how lonely someone would feel if all they had was themselves to rely on. And I've met people through my work with the Lymphoma society that did feel all alone and unloved and confused and unlucky. And I kept thinking, "how unfair is that?"

Because this whole experience taught me a lot about life and love and friendship. It changes how you look at the people in your life that you care about. Who you let in. It changes how much of yourself you’re willing to give to any one person; I've been accused of giving too much to friends who don't seem to give much back. But it also gives you a certain freedom in not keeping around people you only have lukewarm feelings for. And you just want to constantly surround yourself with love. Because it’s what gives you the reason to fight the disease that has infected your body and to make sure that it doesn’t come back. When it seems like your world is just going to be surrounded by so much darkness, when your body fails you, and all your left with is hope, you truly believe in the fact that love—the way your mom holds your hand, the way your brother sits at the end of your bed, how your friend brings you over a ton of movies, and your dad just sits in a chair and looks at you—will make it all better.

I could’ve been very bitter after I got better. The person I had once been in love with had skipped out. Best friends since college, whose wedding I had read in just months earlier, had bailed out. I had no hair, scars on my chest, pounds added on from steroids and a complete lack of direction. On one hand, I might only have a few years left. On the other, I may have had just as long a lifetime as anyone else.

They say that having cancer is a grieving process. Most of us suffer something akin to a broken heart or losing a sibling. Imagine, at 23, you feel that you have your entire life ahead of you. Then at 25, feeling that you’re not sure how much life you have left in you.

So, first you shut yourself off. You look through old pictures, crying about the past, the memories, thinking, “If I could just recapture that feeling, I’ll be okay.” But then you realize that isn’t why you were given a second chance. So, you start to go out again. Remember what it’s like to smile, to laugh, to dance, to have a good time. All that stuff you were in that hospital bed fighting for comes rushing back. You start to remember how good it feels to be open to possibilities.
But see, your heart can still be broken from being sick. You feel betrayed by your body, by God, by things that are out of your control. You cry for no reason. You don’t trust anyone, including yourself.

We forget that we tell our parents, our siblings and even our friends we love them all the time--because we do. They’ve become such a fabric of our being that we just simply love them. They’re a part of us.

But being able to be to love, means being able to be vulnerable. If you’re not willing to be vulnerable, to be open, you’ll always be scared. You’ll always be looking for something that isn’t there. If you’re going to embrace the good in life, the good in the people that care for you, you must first let go of all your anger, all your hurt, all your confusion and all your pain. Let go of your expectations, your comparisons, and your conviction that you know how it should be. I know that life will work itself out and show you that there are things that will be surprising. No one person can fix someone else’s broken heart—but they can make you see the possibility of more. And if you’re willing to take the time, to let yourself heal from this sickness, to accept that right now there are no real answers, then you have a shot. Because there are some things in life that are very rare—and a friend, a good friend, a great friend, a friend who loves you for all that you are and all that you can be—is one of those things.

I think that experience is our greatest teacher--and our worst enemy. It gives us the tools survive but at the same time can make us jaded and wary; cynical and distrustful. It shapes who we are in ways we're sometimes not even aware of.

Because of my experience, I know that I have trouble with trust and having faith. Fear--of what I can't control, of being vulnerable, of opening my heart--rules who I am these days. I find myself constantly uneasy with just BEING. Everything has to have a plan, a purpose. I need to know EVERYTHING & ask a million questions instead of just letting the answers make themselves known. I subconciously test people--pushing them to the point where they are looking at me and saying, "Is this really even worth it?" Once something takes on meaning to me--I feel the need to question it. Confidence becomes uncertaintly because now it has weight and value and the potential of loss is really...well, there you go.

But I know that these thinsg aren't who I am. They're simply my experiences getting in the way. Shielding me from getting hurt but at the same time blocking me from being 100% happy. We guard our hearts for lots of reasons--but ultimately we are all terrified of getting hurt. Because when we didn't know any better we handed all that innocence and trust over and said, "this is important, don't break it." But we're all only human and for one reaon or another we find our hearts, our innocence, and our trust shattered into a million pieces. And whoever wants to go through that again? If you're me--you shut yourself down, away, find something wrong with every guy you meet, swear to your friends that love is a myth, a joke. And then three years later, you realize how much has gone by. How by not taking the chance on being disappointed, you've accepted just being empty. Using a broken heart as an excuse. And it never heals because you've forgotten what it means to connect. Experience has kept you from experiencing anything--pain, misery and ultimately happiness too.

I may have a ton of hang-ups. A relationship with me is uncovering all those land mines, those things that I've been very good at forgetting about and running away from. Opening up old wounds and healing them--but ofcourse first it's got to sting a little bit. And not hiding behind my illness anymore. I believe that I have the capacity somewhere to let it all go and start over. To not bring all my disappointments with me. To allow myself to be vulnerable without being insecure. To trust the good stuff. To stop questioning everything because I'm so scared that if I've not thought of every scenario, every angle, then I won't be prepared. I need to appreciate the unexpected and be open to all the possibilities. Because if experience has taught me anything--I deserve to be happy.

Trust has to be the most loaded word in the English dictionary. Way so more than love. Probably because love is sometimes contingent on trust and if you love someone and they break your trust then that is probably the most devastating thing.

Anyway, the thing about having cancer, going through cancer, surviving cancer is that you have to have so much trust: in your doctor, in the research, in the medicines, in yourself and ultimately in some unknown force that you are hoping is watching out for you. The lack of control that cancer bestows on us leaves us vulnerable to so many outside forces—chemo makes it so that even the tiniest cold germ can have us taking up space in the ICU, sucking on oxygen. You have to believe that the doctors know what they’re talking about, that the researchers have stumbled upon the right combination of drugs, and that the medicines won’t kill you when they’re trying to make you better. That was the hardest part for me. I couldn’t look at the statistics, I couldn’t listen to the success stories—stats can be altered and truthfully for every success story is a sadder story of loss. So, I’d have to go on blind faith and the notion that whatever will be will be.

So one would think after becoming completely dependent on forces outside my control, that I would have far less trust issues. After all, it worked! But I don’t. I constantly question the good news, wondering why I should make it through and be okay; the unfairness of it all is something that I dwell on. I was never like, “Why me?” when I got sick, but I’m completely like, “Why me?” now that I’m okay. I can’t trust the present. I’m petrified to let my guard down and be that vulnerable again. When your whole world has been shattered and rebuilt, you tend to put up better fences this time around. But it makes you a hard person to have a relationship with. The constant doubt, the constant questions, the insecurity, the fear, the tears, the confusion—I can only imagine that it would become too much. Or maybe that’s one of the walls. Make it hard enough and then there’s your excuse and you get to say, “see I knew you couldn’t handle it.” I don’t know. Some of it is probably real and some of it is probably a defense mechanism.

Saying the right thing. It’s so much harder than I thought it would be. And I’ve learned I have very little patience for people who say the completely wrong thing.

For instance, I was talking with my mother today. A friend of mine may have a serious condition and I was a little upset about it. She goes, “Why did she even tell you if she wasn’t sure what it was yet. Why didn’t she just wait?” And I’m all like, what the hell does that mean? And she proceeded to tell me that ofcourse, she would wait until she was certain before unloading that on “someone like me”. Which put me through the roof. And I was like, “What the hell does that mean? Because I would think that if you had a friend who had been through a serious illness, that that would be the first person that you turned to because they would understand. So, now people are supposed to avoid telling me unpleasant news because at one point in time I was sick and they should only tell me things if they’re certain?”

She had no reply and she just couldn’t answer, just kept going on and on and about how what this person did (by telling me, mind you) was inconsiderate and wrong and blah blah blah and I had to say to her, “You know what? You’re making this worse. I have to go.”

I’m sorry, I love my mother, but I’m going to disagree with her here. But at the same time, I don’t know if I should take her advice. So, when I feel sick or if the doctor tells me, “I’m going to do some tests” I should just not tell anyone? Just kind of go through that alone? Wait and see what comes down the pike? Keep it all in? Be scared and nervous and just say, “Well, I mean I’m a nervous wreck and talking about this with someone might help but since I’m not 100% sure what’s going on, I’m going to keep it to myself”. Which I’ve been accused of doing. And told not to do. I don’t know, I don’t like to be thought of as fragile, as not being able to handle certain things. Not true!

I’m a very superstitious person. I mean, sadly so. Recently, I haven’t been feeling all that great, so I was staying away from putting anything down on paper. My fear was, I put it out there, completely out there for me to read again and again, and I might make all my fears real. Saying something makes it true I suppose in my warped world.

But the good news is that what seems like it really just a little fatigue (probably from the heat) and allergies, really is not signs that my tumors are back. This time I was extremely nervous. I kept playing out all sorts of scenarios in my head. How to break it to my parents, what would I do with work, etc. I thought to myself—this is it. I have to do this. But being overdramatic has its benefits since it would seem that I was not only fine, but really fine, and I was able to spend a weekend without the threat of needing to get thrown back into that life that I happily left behind. I always feel guilty for feeling like it has come back, and then there are other people who have already gone through that moment, and I get to be like, “whew, worried for nothing.”

My anxiety hasn’t totally gone into remission though. Like right now, I still have butterflies in my stomach. Why? I’m not really sure. My friend says it’s because I refuse to let anything good happen to me. I’m always searching for the loophole, the way out, analyzing everything to death until I’ve come up with every scenario and have gone through the gamut of emotions so that I wind up tired and empty and totally don’t remember what the happy part felt like.

See happiness is so much more like trying to catch water. Whereas misery is much more visceral, much more lasting, and ofcourse, loves company. It’s not that I’m miserable; I’m just realistic but am a generally contented person. It’s the excitement piece that I’m not so good at. I remember my friend Alessandra used to say every time she started dating a new guy, “Hope for the best but expect the worst.” God, I remember that since the 9th grade. Anyway, I cant’ tell you how many times I’ve heard that since then in almost every capacity. Maybe that’s what we train ourselves to do. Hope for happiness but expect to be let down. Then if it works out you’re pleasantly surprised; but still expecting it all to come crashing down around you. So, hmm, maybe that’s a really crappy philosophy.

I don’t know. Like, I get the all-clear and I’m already panicked about the December one. I think we all do things like that—for women waiting for your period to confirm that you’re not pregnant, only to spend another month waiting for it to come again because this month might be different. We’re always walking on eggshells. Waiting for something to happen that will upset the balance we’re trying to create. Life is compartmentalized, broken down into manageable units of time, either by months or weeks or milestones and events. We spend our time thinking of how what we do now will affect our future; and then if when we look back on what we did, if we wasted any time. There’s so much planning and Monday-morning quarterbacking, that I’ve forgotten how to live in the moment. Like to enjoy this exact moment in time, to think that this is perfect for right now—and if I wind up sick in December it takes nothing away from those two years that I was okay.

Sometimes people surprise you.

After dealing with the extremely rude office staff yesterday, I emailed my doctor. I didn't out and out say what a horror the woman was, but I said, "unfriendly and unhelpful". Oh well. Needless to say, he writes back, apologizes for them, takes full responsibility and will be having a chat with them later on. Nice. :-)

On a separate topic--yesterday was a bit rough for me. Besides dealing with idiot office staff, I occasionally have to deal with idiot co-workers. Let me say this: I love my job, I love my boss and I love about 80 percent of the people I work with. It's the 20 that is driving me up a wall these days. Some people are neverhappy, they love to complain, they think it's their job to give everyone "feedback" (which is just cattiness disgused as criticism to help you "improve") on every little thing that they do and it's just so frustrating.

A lot of people work with an agenda. I don't. I may talk about work an awful lot, but I certainly don't spend my day plotting and thinking about "why are they ahead of me"? Because seriously--I DON'T CARE. I go there to do work, do a good job, the intermitent "good work!" is great, but I'm not gunning for anyone's job, or to be anyone's boss or anything. It's just not where my energies are. I know that I'm just trying to make the most of the time I have on the planet. But other people want to spend their time trying to figure out how to bring you down and then I have to waste my energy, my time, my thoughts, my everything, to deal with this. Then I get stressed. And then I get upset that I'm stressed. And then, all anyone sees is not my strength, not my "I can do this" attitude, they see my tears, my frustration, my mini-breakdown, cause man, everyone has their breaking points and sometimes I'm just not up to hanlde the stress, because there is such a thing as too much.

My boss says that stress is a choice. I believe her--but it's also hard to escape your conditioning. I used to not pay too much credence to "feedback". Then I was told I needed to care more about what other people had to say, listen, not ignore it and use it. So I did that. Now, I'm back to the "filter" stage. But if I'm filtering I've still got to listen to that crap! And I'm telling you, when it's time for you six-month scan or your friends have been sick or whatever, listening to the petty, small things makes me want to lose it. Which I guess is just one more thing I've got to work on.