Today I had a breakdown of epic proportions.
For the last three weeks I’ve felt down. I think it started after my six-month oncology check up, where, if I’m honest, I was hoping to get a clear-cut answer and go-ahead on planning to start a family some time this summer. And it just didn’t go that way.
I realized that even if or when we get the all-clear, which is at the soonest possible still much longer than I had ever wanted to wait, it is not going to be an easy process, but instead one that involves months of tests and scans and shots and ultrasounds and I still can’t stop worrying about it being our only shot and fear it won’t work.
I feel like even though I have beaten cancer, I still can’t get away from it. Life after cancer is not like life before cancer. It’s like being divorced to someone you share children with, so you can’t completely cut ties, and you’ll always have a relationship with that person even though you don’t want one.
It’s been a year since my surgery, which technically made me cancer free, but I’m still not free. I don’t know how long I’ll have to continue taking daily hormone blockers and monthly shots. I don’t know how long my laundry list of side effects will affect my daily life and mock my “cancer free” status. My future looks and feels very different than the one I had before cancer.
Don’t get me wrong- I’m thankful to be cancer free and am still amazed when I think back to where I was last year at this time, but now that the dust has settled and I realize that there’s no real end date to this possibly forever phase of treatment and the after-effects of cancer, it is hard to take. Especially because to me it is all still a daily thing, but to the outside world, and even those closest to me, it appears that everything is over with and fine.
This is my twelfth year of teaching and I have been brutally honest when people ask how it is going; it has not been an easy school year. Without a doubt, it has been the most challenging in my entire career. The taxing student behaviors are at an all-time high and new initiative on top of initiative that we teachers are expected to implement with 100 percent commitment on top of an already full plate has left me wondering how many more years I can do it.
This stress has been wearing on my for a while. Added to my silent struggles with aftereffects, in addition to a beautiful string of unpleasant everyday life happenings like three different car repairs and expenses in two weeks, and on top of unexplained sadness and annoyance in what is usually my favorite time of year, I met a breaking point today.
This morning Nate had taken my car to the gym and left my key in his coat pocket on accident when he left for work, so I couldn't leave until he came back home and brought me the key. In the fifteen minutes I sat waiting, worrying I’d be late for my first hour class, something in me snapped, and I lost it.
Even though I still made it in time for class, it was too late. I was already ruined. I exploded in tears when I got to my office. Everything had been building and I couldn’t hold it together anymore.
Thankfully, I work with the best people in the world, who stepped in, covered my first hour, didn’t make me feel like I was crazy, and convinced me to get sub notes together so I could go back home for a mental health day.
It took close to two hours from start to finish to calm down and stop crying. I couldn’t get a hold of myself.
I’m tired of being strong. Tired of giving easy answers when people ask how I’m feeling because I know that they just won’t understand my reality. Tired of feeling silently sad and angry about it.
I’m so tired of cancer now that I’m supposed to be cancer free.