Cry today, smile tomorrow

One thing I have struggled with immensely over the past 5 months is the feeling of guilt whenever I sense myself being upset or when I want to complain or feel down. I got into some dark places these past couple of weeks and I actually started multiple blog posts which, once I had written a few paragraphs, I re-read them and was disappointed with how negative they were, so then discarded them (this is why I haven’t done a blog post in over two weeks). When I feel these urges of “oh woe is me”, I try to shake it off and tell myself something along the lines of “well at least you’ve been given a chance! Some people aren’t – you should be thankful”. I fight these thoughts all-day-long. In so many ways they have so much merit and they really do help me stay focused and positive. Although I have been starting to realize that I really do need to give myself a break. Having Breast Cancer is no joke and it plain out sucks. My life has been turned upside down – and that is terribly upsetting.

Despite having so many reasons to feel positive at any moment of any day - I’ve realized I need to give myself a chance to grieve and feel those negative thoughts without the guilt and maybe even cry about it. Some days I am so committed to my stand on not feeling hard done by, that I literally am not able to squeeze out one single tear. While my uplifting perspective has been one of the main sources of my strength and positivity, it has also been the source of my bottled up emotions – waiting to flood out with the right trigger. It’s a hard one for me to get over, but I am trying to be more kind to myself and have attempted to feel the negative without the guilt. Yes, life can always be worse, but that doesn’t mean that today doesn’t suck!

Things that sucked recently:

1. I hate looking at myself in the mirror. I look like I am from the movie “Downsizing” with Matt Damon when they shave off all of their body hair. Cute.

2. I have ~5 eyelashes left on each eye. I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes because an eyelash will fall out and go into my eye. This may have happened last night, so maybe the number is more like 4 eyelashes

3. It has occurred to me that while chemo is done soon, I won’t get my hair back for quite some time yet.

4. I had to miss out on multiple important milestone events this past weekend because I was too weak to stand up or walk for extended periods of time.

5. I found a birthday card the other day from my 29th birthday (Jan 31st) that read “let’s make your last year of your twenty’s the best year!”…… this disappointing thought hadn’t yet occurred to me, but after reading this, it sure did.

6. When I need to pick up something minor from the grocery store or pharmacy, I have to decide whether I want to spend 15-20 minutes on my make-up, or decide whether I don’t give a shit (easier said than done and it usually ends up being 15-20 mins on my makeup)

7. On a daily basis I get pangs of fear that the cancer will reoccur and I’ll have to do this all over again – which makes me think that the rest of my life will be filled with anxiety.

8. I’ve had to re-write this blog post about 5 times because my brain just isn’t working. I am struggling to structure sentences and link thoughts together. It’s a very upsetting and frustrating feeling

This photo is hard for me to post because I feel so exposed, but at the same time it's the most stripped raw I've ever been, so that would just leave me as human right? ain't nothing wrong with that. Thankfully there are such things as make-up, fake eyelashes and wigs.

The last thing I want to do is make this journey appear easy because that would be a BIG FAT LIE. These crappy thoughts are a reality of my situation. On the same token though, I’d also be lying if I let you think that was all that was going through my head. The days where I can bounce back into positivity land certainly outnumber the ones where I can’t and that has helped me come to terms with the negative thoughts and let myself reduce the guilt.

Things that were great recently:

1. I got to hang out with my sister for two full days!

2. A girl at the dog park came up to me and bravely told me that she had Alopecia and said that seeing me day after day wearing my headwraps gave her the courage to step outside with her shaved head for the first time ever – I was so incredibly touched by this! Made my day/week/year/life. Little did she know that she was the one giving me the courage.

3. Playing with puppies at the dog park……..so in all honesty, everyone needs to get a dog for the sole purpose of being able to hang out at the dog park. Don’t be the dog-less people that have to be on the other side of the fence trying to reach over and pet the dogs. Get on the other side of that fence! (but don’t be the dog-less people inside the dog park….#dog-ophile)

4. Mark and Alba’s cuddles

5. The chance to spend so much fun, quality time with my friends – I love them so much!

6. I found out on my bad days I can just watch Ellen on repeat (why it took me so long to realize this boggles me)

7. Generosity and empathy from everyone around me which makes my heart full!

8. The realization that in a week I’ll have my last chemo (…..of this occurrence – I like to say this because who knows what the future will bring….) but regardless is pretyyyyy great!

9. And mostly that I live a beautiful life and I won’t let this get in the way of that!

I want you to be aware of the inner light that we all have available to us to use even in the darkest of times and how just by changing our mentality and outlook, we can have so much power over our physical well-being. Yes, I was bed/couch-ridden for 3 days for the last two rounds of Taxol, but I still laughed and smiled every day in-between the down times and had special moments hanging out with Mark and my sister, RuthAnne, who came to take care of me and who gave me forehead and food massages (what a GEM!).

This past round of Taxol really amplified how my mentality can make a huge difference in how I feel physically. As you may have read in my most recent blog post (when I was being a sad negative person and hated the world) my second round of Taxol caught me off guard and hit me like a GIANT bus – like one of those double decker GO busses - ouch. I had no idea I’d be so completely debilitated. As a result, that hit me extra hard mentally and emotionally, making the physical side effects SO much worse. It was a very real and dramatic “oh woe is me” situation which lasted for 5 days. I felt defeated which lead to me feeling upset and demotivated which kept me in bed longer (what a great equation!). My emotions and mental state were crushed, which prolonged my recovery.

Fast forward to my third round of Taxol – I now knew what was coming, I was ready this time. I cleared my schedule other than the all-day appointments with my couch (with some time allocated to my bed). Thankfully my couch and bed had equally open schedules so they could fit me in. While I was hit hard again with the pain, my emotions stayed strong and my mind didn’t dip into a state of despair. My reality this time met my expectations. It amazes me how powerful that can be. If we set our expectations too high and are met with a reality that is materially below those expectations, it can have such a huge effect on our emotions and turn a seemingly manageable situation into a very unmanageable situation. I let myself have the rest I needed which released the pressure I had put on myself the last time of having a quick recovery. This time I acknowledged that the chemo was kicking my ass instead of me trying to fight it, providing me peace of mind and leading to much less stress and anxiety.

Everyone tells me a rendition of “I don’t know how you do it, I could never be a strong as you”, but I’ll tell you what – that is FALSE. Totally and completely false. I believe that when we’re put in these types of situations we find a fight within us that we had never discovered before. We switch into “survival mode” and give ourselves the mental pep talk that we need. Just because you can’t see the light within you right now or haven’t had any way of knowing it’s there – doesn’t mean you don’t have it. Thankfully, so far in life, maybe you haven’t had to find it! But trust me when I say that it’s there. Don’t be scared of adversity in your life because I can promise you that it’s more than likely coming for you in some shape or form at some point in this loooooong life we all have. Have faith in yourself that you have what it takes to get through it – because really, if we don’t have faith in that, then what do we have? This thought alone is what keeps me holding on. Are there going to be totally shitty days – HELLS yes. But are the good days going to outnumber the bad days – YOU BET. If you have 10 cookies and you lose 3 of them, you still have 7 cookies – yum!!