#chemo cw

The one year anniversary of getting diagnosed with cancer is coming up for me and I have. A lot of feelings. Too many feelings to fit inside one person actually. I don't know how to talk about these feelings without like, dopey poetic metaphors and shit so pls excuse me while I get knee deep in my own psyche with my flowery language boots on

I really and truly hate cancer. I hate it and what it took from me. I am filled with immense grief and rage at everything I lost. But I also feel like I got a literal second chance in this somehow? Like it's been a double edged sword if I have ever seen one.

I feel like I am being reforged. Like cast into the fire and melted down to a molten sludge that doesn't look like the old me AT ALL... but made again into something new without all the divots and scratches of the old.

You know when people sometimes pose the hypothetical "if you could be born again but keep all the knowledge you have now, would you?" I feel like I'm experiencing that in earnest. I lost so much of who I was and what I had built that I don't know myself when I look in the mirror. Which is like. Unnerving. And deeply sorrowful. But it's also given me this ability to step away from all the BAD from before. The threads of self criticism and fear and resentment towards myself that strangled me a couple years ago are just... gone. They got burned away too.

I just got my hair cut for the first time since chemo because it was getting fluffy and shapeless and I wanted it to look like I chose a pixie cut. For YEARS, going to the salon and having to stare at my face in the mirror while they chopped up my hair would send me into this self loathing, dysphoric spiral. All I could ever see was all my flaws and shortcomings and the ways I wasn't pretty enough or good enough or likeable enough. And this time I watched the guy trimming my teensy little hairs and it was like....

Who are you? Why did I hate you so much? I'm so sorry. I couldn't see it before. I can see it now. You don't deserve my hatred. You never did.

I used to feel embarrassed and ashamed when I had to dig deep to find something kind to say about myself. What do you like about yourself? Eeeuugghh.. uhhh..... I make people laugh... I guess? It felt insincere and vain and like I was trying to fool people into thinking I had value. And now it's like... just this righteous indignation on my own behalf. I AM an interesting person and I have value! I am a complex, contradictory, multifaceted human being and it's not my job on earth to be demure and appealing and pleasant! I like melodic death metal, my favorite color is pink, I read horror and romance and I love both, I'm learning how to belly dance and roller skate, I fucking love tired goth mom fashion, I am funny and have made multiple people urgently leave the room lest they piss their pants, I take my daughter out to do as much enriching stuff as possible and know her body language better than anyone in this house, I'm a good cook, I like doing laundry, I would probably drink coffee until I threw up if left to my own devices, I want kitschy mugs from places I visit and macabre jewelry and tattoos, I am a whole ass person! Why did I spend so much time trying to hate myself into being more palatable? Why was I so concerned with making concessions and compromises at my expense and stamping down the things about me that are beautiful?

I look at myself in the mirror now and I don't know that girl anymore. It's not who I was at the start of this. But I like her. For the first time in decades, I like that girl. I want her to be happy. She doesn't deserve what life threw at her. She doesn't deserve what I threw at her.