World Cancer Day was this week, and I have mixed feelings about it. So I wrote something about what the rest of the days actually feel like. It’s constant mental math of “is this normal, or is it the beginning of the end?”
Because here’s the truth 12 years later: for me, every ache in my body comes with a story, and none of them are casual. A twinge in my leg? Bone cancer. A sigh that feels too heavy or broken? Lung cancer. A headache? Brain tumour. Fatigue? Lyme disease. A cramp in my calf? The beginning stages of MS. And logically, I know how irrational it sounds. I know how dramatic it reads on paper, but that doesn’t silence it. My brain has been rewired. It’s scanning for danger, for safety, for anything that could mean “I’m not okay.” And it never shuts up.
People think time makes it easier. They assume distance equals healing, like the further you get from the diagnosis, the lighter everything should feel. But I’ve found that time does not fix a traumatized brain. Time does not unwrap the years my nervous system spent in full-blown emergency mode waiting for the next blow. If anything, the further away I get from treatment, the harder it is — because now there is no structure, no appointments, no oncologist reading my scans and telling me what’s what. There’s no team of specialists monitoring me, watching every number, every change in me. I’m on my own with the disasters my mind invents, and the distance from cancer hasn’t softened that.
This year, right out of the gate it hit me hard. I got sick the first week of January, and it just dragged on. Week after week, I wasn’t getting any better, and the whole time I could feel my brain turning up everything louder than it needed to be. Every symptom had a spotlight on it. And honestly, I believe my brain was making the symptoms worse. The stress, the fear, the “what if this isn’t just a chest infection?” loop runs all on its own. By the time I finally went and saw a doctor on Feb 4th and got a chest x-ray, I could see how I probably should have gone sooner. But even walking into urgent care comes with its own set of issues. I know I have major health anxiety which in and of itself makes things worse. I know it’s rooted in justified trauma, but I still carry so much shame around that part. I feel stupid for panicking, stupid for assuming the worst, stupid for not being able to just “be normal” about being sick. It’s a constant mix of fear, overthinking, and embarrassment combined with a body that remembers way too much.
Yes, I know how it sounds. I know “I’m dramatic”. I know people who haven’t been through it call it catastrophic thinking or anxiety. And yes, fine, it is. But knowing that doesn’t stop it. Logic doesn’t override what happens in my mind. Breathing doesn’t magically wash away the ingrained patterns in my brain. Neither has 8 years of weekly therapy, somatic healing, or cold plunging. None of that has turned my safety switch back on. My brain is doing exactly what it thinks it is supposed to do: protect me, even if the protection feels like punishment.
Manually walking myself back from the edge everyday is a full-time job. Just yesterday — literally yesterday — I was crying to my husband about how mentally fried I am. The sheer amount of work I have to do every single day just to convince myself that I’m okay is exhausting. Imagine being mindful all the damn time. And not in a cute “wellness yay” sort of way. In a survival way. Constantly being aware of my thoughts, my breath, my body, my fears levels. Constantly reminding myself, “You’re safe, you’re okay, stay here, stay grounded.” It’s not calming. It’s draining. I feel like I started running a marathon in 2014 and there is no end in sight.
I told my husband I just wanted a break from being me. Not from life — but from the constant internal alarms, the nonstop vigilance, the way my brain is always one step ahead in the worst possible direction. And the thing that gets me isn’t just the fear. It’s the shame layered on top of it. I feel silly for still being like this. I feel like I should be “over it” by now. I distract myself, I stay busy, I do everything people say you should do. I have hobbies, I do crafts, I take classes, I even went back to school. I don’t sit around dwelling on this stuff. But it’s always there underneath, humming away. And without kids or the kind of family distractions other survivors often talk about — which cancer also took from me — it’s just me and this brain that sometimes feels like it’s working against me. I’m surrounded by people, but this particular kind of exhaustion doesn’t always translate. Even when I try to explain it, it doesn’t land the same way. So I end up feeling alone in something that has shaped my entire adult life, even though on the outside I look like I’m doing everything right.
And here’s the twisted part: when I actually had cancer — when I was sitting in chemo rooms and talking to oncologists every week — I had clarity. I had experts. I had a plan. The fear was huge, but at least it was concrete. I knew what I was up against, even if it was awful. Now I’m over a decade out, and somehow the fear is blurrier and louder. Now I’m fighting invisible enemies, and most of them live in my own head. There’s no team monitoring me, no structure to lean on, no appointments that reassure me something is being handled. Just me trying to navigate a brain that learned to expect disaster — and still hasn’t fully unlearned it, even after all this time.
I’m not writing this for sympathy, and I don’t care if anyone even reads it. I wrote this because keeping everything inside hasn’t been helping, and I needed it to exist somewhere other than inside of me.
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