I'm still furious.
I'm well past the "woe is me" stage again, and I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be to start treatments again.
Still, I'm so damn angry, and I can't shake it--and I'm not sure if I want to.
It doesn't make sense to me that after an invasive operation and 6 months of pretty intensive chemotherapy, I'm essentially still at square one. In many ways, worse off than I was when I began. I don't understand.
I know it doesn't have to make sense.
Understanding what's happening and why isn't a prerequisite for coping. I don't know why this has happened. I don't know why nothing has "worked" yet. I don't know what lies ahead. I just know, right now, the uncertainty, the questions that can't be answered--even by my doctors, leave me fuming angry.
Not the kind of anger where I'm stomping around, scowling at people. At the moment life is as normal as ever and I have been social and made a trip to Chicago and in general am content.
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| you wouldn't like me when I'm angry...and have cancer |
In the quieter moments though, when there are no distractions and nothing else to occupy my thoughts, and I involuntarily begin to consider all of the details and implications of my illness; where there once was false bravado and some amount of optimism and insight, there is just anger.
It's well directed. I'm angry at the predicament and at the disease. Angry that the disease will "get the best of me" in some ways (hospitalization, not death). Angry that the people who have been so good to me at work will be asked to make more sacrifices.
Angry that my family and the people who love me couldn't receive the news they were hoping for.
Just fucking angry.
When I feel this anger, I feel energized. I want to start treatments immediately, I want to do whatever the hell is necessary to "win," to succeed, to survive.
I also feel isolated, cold, and while still just as determined as before, less optimistic.
I'm not holding on to it, the anger, but it isn't fading on it's own. I don't know if this will benefit me or if the generally negative emotion hinders me. Maybe it will fade on it's own. Maybe it won't.
I don't know if I want it to.
It's difficult for me, and maybe even unnecessary, to share the more emotional aspects of this experience with all of you. To offer glimpses into my psyche.
I can hardly claim to be a "private person" any longer, since I made the choice to begin a blog and share it with the world.
I know why I thought I started it, and to this point it's been a useful tool in many ways. I've been honest about the details of "daily life" during treatments and how I've been feeling physically, but haven't really delved into the emotional experience. That requires a certain amount of balls that I don't think I have.
It is evolving now, though.
I now see this blog as a place that forces me to be honest. Honest with you all about the experience, yes.
The truth is though, much of what I write here is nothing more than me talking to myself.
I know a good amount of people read it, but when I'm sitting here alone, just the keyboard and my thoughts, it's just me.
It's tough to sugar coat the realities when you don't allow a thought that scares you to wander off and be replaced by something more pleasant.
It's hard to lie to yourself in written word.
I'm furious. I'm angry.
Probably because I'm scared.
If anger is the alternative to fear, I'll take angry every time.
Anger doesn't take defeat lightly. I'm not going anywhere.
"I intend to live forever, or die trying."-Groucho Marx
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