I love the color gray! Almost all the walls in our house are gray, half of our furniture is gray, my favorite coat and shoes are gray. If I go shopping for clothes, there’s a 90% chance that I’ll come home with a new gray shirt. I just feel so comfortable in/around that color in my environment.
However, I’m learning that I do not feel so comfortable in the emotional gray space that is this “life after cancer.” Yes, I’m “cancer free”, but I’m not done with procedures. Yes, treatment is technically over, but I still go to so many follow up visits so it doesn’t feel over. Yes, I feel better than before, but still nothing like myself yet. Nothing is black and white and I miss that. I’m in the middle of my 6 month wait for reconstructive surgery… and it’s (again) something that I need to be patient with. I’m uncomfortable with this unrecognizable body… it looks and feels so different than what I know. I’ve been slowly working out more, but it’s hard to see how much my body has weakened. I caught a virus from the girls last week and it took me SO long to recover from. They did bloodwork and made sure I was fine… it’s just that my history and my current medication makes it hard for my body to recover. And, an especially weird, potentially depressing issue of bathing suit shopping consumed me last week. Please friends, do not ever complain to me about how hard it is to find a comfortable bathing suit. There is nothing that compares to shopping for one after a bilateral mastectomy. Good news though- I found one! And, in time these physical issues will continue to improve. The emotional things will too, I presume. In my attempt to be thorough and address some emotional things, I attended a survivorship support group last week. Yikes. I still don’t know how to put into words what I felt there. I know I cried the whole way home. Nobody was mean or insensitive… I think it’s just living in this reality of post-cancer life. And every time I think that or write that, I am reminded how grateful I am to be able to include the word “post”. But my heart is still sad that I’ve had to live through this… with the gripping fear of hearing the word recurrence. Although I didn’t love the group, I did hear a good take-away point that I’ll paraphrase: Don’t live in the past- it’s too depressing. Don’t live in the future- it’s too anxiety provoking. You can only live in the present. So that is currently my main goal to focus on. If you’re looking for words to encourage any survivor- I highly suggest those ones. And as I sit here and think about the present, I’m reminded of some beautiful things. Rob turned 40 on Saturday! I’m so thankful that he’s 40 and thankful that I’m here to see it happen. I’ve been lucky enough to be his partner for 23 years!! And, as always, right after his birthday is the day that Amy went to heaven. So that is what we remember today. It’s a day that anyone who knew her will never forget. It’s the day our hearts broke open in a way that could never be filled again. Oh how I miss her and miss having her guidance in life. She left this world when she was just 29. So her loss reminds me to be grateful to be here at 37; and makes me appreciate Rob’s milestone even more. If she was here I wonder if she’d tell me that instead of trying to be comfortable in this gray space, maybe I should change my perspective by changing the colors around me. I think next time I buy a shirt I’ll be thinking of her and I’ll pick one that’s as bright blue as her eyes and the sky… because that’s true beauty. And I’ll never forget how comfortable I felt in that space with her.