Cancer is Emotional

April 18, 2008


When agreeing to write about my experience with Cancer, I didn’t even contemplate the idea of this being a difficult subject to reflect on. I mean I’ve been talking about cancer since I was 16. Yet, I have found that even with a thousand thoughts, memories, and facts all running through my head I can barely contain it all long enough to convey my experience. I am finding that when I start to write something, my automatic reaction to the subject of cancer is anger and hurt. To be completely honest, I’ve seemed to have blurred a lot of it out. This surprised me because I was very confident that I didn’t have lingering unresolved issues with my Dad’s passing, or the experience that my Mom had triumphed through.

I’ll feel one way about what cancer and my experiences represents to me, and then completely different a day later. Sometimes I am mad, hurt, sad, and resentful. Other days I feel empowered, proud, and even thankful for the lessons cancer has given my family and me. I guess the hospice nurse was right, cancer does make your life a “wave” of emotions. It sneaks up on you when you’re not looking and changes everything– executing its damage then leaving you to make sense of the whole mess. Even when I think I understand, and think I have moved on, new things come to light for me. As I grow older it means different things to me, and I begin to have multiple perspectives.

I was beginning to get emotional today, sifting through images of my family on a trip to Wyoming, and attempting to make this journal entry. I put down the pictures and drove to my campus library to study and get my mind off of cancer for a while. Upon walking through the doors of the Library I ran into a wall decorated with a tribute to Breast Cancer awareness set up by a Sorority. I started crying right then and there. I don’t know why, but while I consider that I’ve moved on, it will always be emotional. Cancer is emotional.