Today I Feel Frustrated.
I previously shared that I want to go about the documentation of this journey in the most honest and authentic way possible. I will not be a positivity guru 24/7 or a martyr or I don’t know what else. Really, it would be creepy if I was happy all the time.
Today, I feel frustrated.
The “excitement” of test results, consultations, and bustle of week one is over. While I still have many more appointments, generally, I now know the course of the next few months.
While yesterday was a win (the cancer is contained in my right breast and right lymph nodes), my NYC appointment afterwards walked me through what the next year+ will look like, and that felt like a loss. A huge loss.
I am frustrated because I feel that I am too tired and jumbled to focus on the things I love most.
I have developed an amazing journaling practice this past year. I journal about 3-4 pages a day. Not because I feel like I should or because I hold myself to a strict routine, but because I love it and it feels freeing to me. It has changed me into a more awake, vibrant person who is reflective and loves herself and cherishes the life she lives and people she surrounds herself with. I can’t journal right now- at all. Instagram posts are the closest form of journaling and honestly, if that’s the best I can do, I’ll take it.
I can’t sleep and I love to sleep (although that is getting better).
I have no appetite and I love food.
I’m lacking in emotions, something that anyone who has met me knows I have A LOT of. I once cried happy tears publicly in front of friends and parents because I had a massive crush on a boy I had met ONCE. I am startlingly emotionally available. My emotions are a huge part of who I am. I love them. However, they feel mostly unavailable to me at the moment.
What really just ANNOYS me is that I have no time to see my friends. And when I do see them, it’s at the end of the night when my mood is soured from a big slap in the face by reality.
My days are filled with appointments and phone calls and I wish I could just send my parents to the appointments to collect information and relay it back. I am surrounded by so much support that I sometimes I forget that I am the one with cancer. I forget that MY body is the one needed physically present to do the scans and have the biopsies and fight the thing. While my family, friends and community are fighting their own battles around what is happening, I am the one who will take this on as my own.
Despite this, my mind is at ease knowing that all of my favorites will come back. My journaling, while still present in this form, will come back. My sleep will come back. My appetite will come back. My emotions will come back. My free time will come back. All of these variants will return at different times and sometimes they’ll decide to leave again for a blip. But sooner than I think, they will come back, and I can’t wait for those days!
Xo,
M
