It never ends.  More testing.  So not that complications have arrived.  I am still fine in that sense of the word.  But there is of course more testing to be done.  One thing is figured out and then the domino effects of that treatment are causing more problems.  I guess not really problems in the sense of what I have been through just more concerns.  My body is broken in a lot of ways.  So they keep finding more broken parts that they are trying to fix.  My lady parts broke a long time ago due to treatment and now it’s creating more issues.  Long term issues.  Fun stuff as always.  It’s just a part of my everyday life though.  I will never been the same in that regard.  It’s hard because it does worry me but doesn’t at the same time.

There are more important things on my mind these days that I am working on that are taking my focus away.  Not that there is anything to focus on because it is literally out of my control.  I guess I am just not that worried about it right now.  Everyone else seems to be a bit more intense about it than I am.  I don’t know what that means really so until then I will go through more tests, tests and probably some more tests.

“This is the year of change”, a yoga teacher told me.  I don’t know if that’s true or where she got that from but it’s 100% true.  Things are changing.  Shifting.  I can feel it.  I know it’s happening.  I feel it inside of me.  Yes, I still have a ton of shit to work through but I feel it changing inside of me finally.  There is a tremendous amount of loss and heartbreak.  I think I am starting to come out of the darkness.  I am starting to let go of my baggage that I have so diligently been carrying on my back for too many years.  I should have shed it a long time ago but I guess I still had it for a reason.  Then again repeating to myself over a thousand times in the last 25 days ” I am worthy of self love and the love of others”, will start to create that change as well.  Meditation has brought a new light to my world.  A way of forced focus to get through emotions, thoughts, situations and events that I would never think about otherwise.  I did put in a large amount of work to get to this point.

I am starting to feel different.  I don’t know what it is exactly and I can’t say where I am going, what this means or how really different it makes me.  I just know that something from the bottom up is different.  I feel like I am finally offloading the giant emotional backpack I’ve been carrying.  The fog is starting to clear.  Clarity in vision is happening.  Again I don’t exactly know what it means but I feel a change is happening.  Coming from within.  The path hasn’t been easy, mostly full of steep hills, winding roads and other obstacles.  I know I haven’t found the end of a clearer pasture, either.  But I think I am to a reflection point where I can finally look back and see just how far I’ve come.  Enough to see a light of clearing just ahead of me.  Renewed hope for something more and new just out of reach.

I know it really doesn’t make sense.  I know it’s very obscure what I am talking about.  Not actual events or about what is going on day to day in my life but I really don’t feel like sharing it yet.  My journey continues…

There’s so much grief that I have to process for this whole experience.  Letting go of what I didn’t have and can’t have going forward is something hard to work on.  Hopefully through all this muck and letting it go a bit some clarity will come through.  I mean isn’t that what we are all looking for?  Maybe not, but I definitely want to come out of this whole experience better than going in.  At least in a better head space.  I need to open up more about me and let people into my world.  I didn’t know how closed off I was to outsiders.  I didn’t realize that I could go an entire two and half hour dinner without revealing one fact about myself.  I guess when you don’t know your own defenses it’s hard to see the other side.  I don’t want to be that person anymore.  It’s a long hard way to live.  It’s a lonely way to live.  I don’t want to do that anymore.  I want more from my life going forward.  I want to thrive.  I am done with “but your alive”, like a fucking consolation prize at a state fair.  Fuck that, it’s terrible.  I hate when people say that, it’s fucking annoying.  Doctors say it and I want to really just punch them in the stomach.  I mean I get their perspective, like hey you made it, but it still just sounds so shitty.

I am paralyzed lately making any decisions.  It completely sucks.  Not small decisions but any sort of decision that is greater than “what are we having for dinner?”  My therapist says this is normal.  That after not having control for so long over the majority of what is happening on a day to day basis that it does take a toll.  So here I am not being able to make any decisions.  Ugh, so frustrating.  I just keep thinking that no matter what I choose, it’s going to be wrong.  Even when there is literally no bad decision to be made.  I even have a hard time making plans for larger things that totally stinks.  Dinner plans used to be no problem, now it’s like this five minute internal conversation.   I mean it’s just making dinner plans and my dumb brain can’t handle it.  Frustrating.

Fuck you cancer.  Just one more thing to pile on.  Thanks a lot.  Dumb stupid annoying cancer.  You truly suck.

Today is my new birthday.  February 20th.  The day of my transplant.  Since, a transplant basically reboots your entire system it’s starting over.  Do I celebrate?  I don’t really know what’s appropriate.  What I should do is get a mini cake, invite a bunch of people over and smash it with my hands and face like one years do at their birthday party.  All the while saying “I’m one!”  Have everyone watch and cheer.  Creepy when it’s not actually a child.  Creepy when it’s a grown adult.

Do we celebrate these milestones?  I don’t know.  How much of this do people want shoved in their faces?  I don’t really have the answer.  But I will take cake, well maybe not cake but some sort of sweet treat.  😉  I mean really who doesn’t need a reason to eat a brownie or something delicious?

Getting to the root of my anger.  I am working through it.  Trying to get to the root cause.  I figured out where it’s being directed but why it’s there?  I mean I know why some of the anger is there.  Cancer can go fuck itself.  Today is the fourth anniversary of my diagnosis.  Four years of shit, four years of hell, four years of my life being derailed.  I can’t believe it’s been four years.

Is it safe to get back on the life track?  Can I let my guard down enough with cancer to move on with life?  When will it be safe, if ever?  Will I find my groove again?

I have so much more work to do still.  I feel like I have made so much progress already but there is so much more work to do.  Mentally taxing and emotionally draining.  I hate having to talk through problems like an adult.  But I will, I am putting in the work to get better.  Stronger.  Building upon a foundation to get me through this.

So my therapist said to work on my new non negotiable’s with life going forward.  This is part of working through all this anger.  Okay, well what won’t I deal with going forward.  Not just with people, but with work and other aspects of life as well.  This is hard. Sometimes you just get used to how this are.  Stale, comfortable, complacent.  So what won’t I put up with anymore?  That’s a great question.  I refuse to be someone’s verbal toilet.  I want to travel more.  I desperately want a real vacation this year.  I haven’t had a proper vacation in over four years and it’s depressing.  Not just a long weekend somewhere, but like an a whole week away somewhere.  Honestly, doesn’t even really matter where as long as it’s warm.  I want more friends.  Like friends that are in Chicago friends outside of my husband.  I have friends but honestly most of them don’t live near me so I can’t go hang out with them.

What would be your non negotiable’s in your life?  Think about it.  It’s really hard to come up with ideas or things that you just will no longer tolerate in your life.  So what would be the consequences then for these non negotiable items?  I don’t know what they would be if any.  Just a guide for what you or me would be willing to put up with.  I no longer want to just tolerate living life.  I want to thrive again.  I will get there, it’s just going to take even more time than I anticipated.

Just more work on myself mentally.  Work that will pay off in the long term.  I know it will.  I will be a better person for it and have a better life for it.

I think I have moved on to the anger portion of the program.  Yes the stages of grief is what I am referring to.  I think I am there now.  What the fuck and why?  It’s not enough for me anymore to just be alive.  Ohh fucking great consolation present.  I mean don’t get me wrong I am glad I am alive.  But at what fucking cost.  My life is a mess.  My body is a mess.  My mind is a mess.  It’s taken a toll mentally, physically and all parts in between.  When is it my time to shine from all this?  I don’t know what that even means but now I feel like the world owes me something back.  Like fuck you world, give back some good now; you asshole.  I want some sort of direction from all this.  What now?  How the fuck do you expect me to put the pieces back together?

There’s more anger inside of me, trying to figure this all out.  Fuck being grateful for my life.  I want more.  I need answers and there aren’t any answers.  I need something much more than what this dumb life has given me for the last four years.  I’ve been put through the “test”, now give me what I am owed.  Yes, I feel like I am owed something out of all this.  Fuck off if you don’t think that I am owed anything but I am.  I deserve it.

Ugh, this stage is exhausting.  When will the next one come?  When can I continue to move forward?

Well, still no cancer so I suppose that’s a good thing.  I don’t really know what happens next.  I seriously just feel like I am waiting for it to come back again.  I don’t really know.  I can’t make these feeling go away.  I really wish I could but I guess that’s just not how it works.

Right now I am just frozen.  Almost literally because my little feet have been icicles for about a week since it has been so cold outside.  Dumb Chicago.  I need it to warm up, like as soon as it can.  I hate not having an internal thermostat.  It really isn’t comfortable at all.  Ugh, I am down to wearing double pants and multiple sweatshirts at one time.   Please warm up weather.

These wonderful, extremely truthful words come from my dad.  He’s right maybe we aren’t supposed to all have long lives.  It truly is how the world works.  No rhyme or reason to who gets all the the things they want and some get the short end of the stick.  A lot has happened in the last month that kind of make me not really want to write for a various reasons.

At first I couldn’t exactly figure out what was going on.  I have com to the realization that I am not emotionally equipped at this particular time to be a great or even good friend to someone who definitely deserves it.  It’s hard to say I completely understand where you are coming from but at the same time in a very selfish way want nothing to do with it.  My mental capacity just couldn’t process all that what was happening.  More feelings of PTSD were coming through that I didn’t even realize were there.  It’s hard to make yourself available both in presence as well as emotionally when I myself am still trying to rifle through all that is going on with myself.  It sounds so very selfish and that is the exact opposite of what I was trying to accomplish.  I needed to be a better friend and I just didn’t know how to do that.  I failed and I know it.  Hopefully going forward I won’t be such a jerk about it and tell this person that I know what is happening to them and any capacity in which they need me, I am here.  Or at least do my best to be there.  Ugh, sometimes I just suck.

Next what do you do with news you already knew was the truth?  Hearing it from a doctor as more of a finality or I guess just more of a 100% truth was harder than I thought.  I never really felt one way or another about kids.  Having them, I was mostly on the fence because I didn’t want them to be all fucked up like my childhood was.  That was the main reason for not really having the feeling one way or the other.  But as of the last year or less I had been thinking about it more an more.  I maybe wanted one.  I knew even wanting this wasn’t really in the cards for me to begin with.  When I was first diagnosed I didn’t have a chance to get my eggs fertilized and stored away for a later date.  So I knew in my logical brain that this was next to impossible with chemo, radiation, stem cell transplant and immunotherapy.  But going to the endocrinologist and having the tests run with results that I am menopausal.  My eggs are completely basically gone. Hearing those words from her mouth was like getting kicked in the stomach while already down.  Just another thing that cancer has taken away from me.  But I guess as my doctor put it I could always adopt, get an egg donor or get pets.  This is literally what she offered.  So I am pretty sure that if she is offering pets as an alternative that’s not a sign that I can have my own babies.  I have no idea even as I write this now it makes me so upset.  Tears are running down my face.  I am not mad, just really fucking sad.  Sad that I will never get the chance to have my own child with my DNA.  It’s like mourning for a person that doesn’t even exist.  It’s so strange.  I told my dad and I don’t think he took it very well, although I’ll never really know because we just don’t talk about that shit but I know it’s hard.

I am just a broken, damaged person that is hurting for something that I didn’t even know I wanted.  How fucked up is that.  I mean men can have kids until they are like basically dead, so what if my husband wants kids all the sudden?  I mean I can’t provide that.  I am so broken on a level that until your in this position you just don’t understand.  I don’t know how to cope with this emotional stuff.  It is so much harder than anything physical.  I feel like I am just walking around in a mental fog searching for anything to make it better.  Or at least let me forget, even if momentarily.  One positive is I won’t have to worry about my kid growing up to be an asshole.

Fuck, that got depressing fast.  That’s just how the truth is for me right now.  Fuck it, I guess that’s what therapy is for.