Trusting the process

So I was walking the beach this morning and had a revelation. You don’t “beat” cancer. You just survive it. My entire role in this process has just been to trust my doctors and say yes to treatment. I haven’t done anything other than put one foot in front of the other and keep my head above water. 

I would imagine it’s like if you were to lose a child to some random freak accident. There’s nothing you could do about it. There was no way you could have stopped it from happening. All you can do is grieve and hope that one day the pain and anger and devastation will lessen. 

How do you move forward from something like this without letting it define you? I’ll never look at the world the same way again. I’ll never interact with people the same way as I used to. It’s like I was picked up in a tornado, beaten by the debris, and dropped down in the exact same spot. Everyone around me is looking to me to be the same as I was before, but I’m not. I’m bruised. I’m battered. I’m scarred. 

But I’m also not willing to dwell on it. I was chatting with a friend about how I’m currently examining all the pieces of my life, and he said “well, aside from cancer, are you happy?” It kind of took me aback. I have been so busy surviving that I haven’t thought about happiness in a long time. I am happy. 

I have a pretty good life, aside from treatments and trauma. I have a good husband, great kids, a wonderful family, a solid foundation. I live in the most beautiful part of the world. My house needs work and our finances are tight, but I am still blessed on a daily basis. I don’t have to make any decisions today about whether or not I want to go back to my job, but I really do like working where I do. Life is good. 

Sometimes I feel like experiences like this make you dive into the “deep” end – by which I mean you suddenly spend all your time trying to find meaning in things, figuring out the why and what fors. I think it’s important to go there every now and then. A lot of people go through life and never delve into any sort of introspection. But there has to be a balance. Living here in the deep end is exhausting. Time to pull out a floatie and have a margarita.