When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was absolutely determined to enter my new world with a sock it to 'em attitude. And I did - wow, how I did. I blogged, I talked, I tweeted, Facebooked and Instagrammed (not to mention mammogrammed), proudly showing off my puffy body and baldy head. I didn't care how I looked; I had cancer!
And then, almost as suddenly as it came, it went. I didn't have cancer any more, and it was time to return to normal. Except I had no idea where I could find 'normal', and I wasn't sure how I'd ever be able to return to it if I didn't know the way.
That's when I started sinking. That's when the voice came into my head. You're not good enough, it said. And it told me this repeatedly until my own thoughts became lost and all I could hear was that voice banging against the insides of my brain. You're ugly, you're fat, you're mutilated, your husband's going to leave you, your children hate you, you're a dreadful mother, a terrible wife, a horrible sister and an awful daughter. All these phrases, without fail, became facts in my ragged, bruised, tortured brain. It was exhausting. It still is.
Just before Christmas, I went to the doctor. I was prescribed Propranolol for my anxiety; he didn't consider me in need of anti-depressants. Then, in the two weeks of dark tunnel that was my Christmas and New Year break, something cracked. One morning, after being particularly unpleasant to my husband following an evening of self-medicating with too much gin, I sent out a couple of emails asking for help. As I wrote the emails to organisations offering support for people affected by cancer, I thought I might be sounding a little melodramatic, but I wanted to get them off before anyone else woke up - and before I re-read them and lost my nerve.
A week or so later the replies started coming in, and I caught sight of my original emails. My words swirled about in front of my eyes; paranoid, anxious, worried, usually very happy marriage, sabotaging all that, help me, sinking.
More than anything, I felt embarrassed; weak. As if the months I'd spent managing the physical side of my breast cancer diagnosis with a smile on my face – mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormone therapy – were fraudulent. It was all a lie. I wasn't an 'inspiration' or 'brave' or a 'pink hero' or even remotely close to all those terms that got chucked at me when I was fighting the good fight. I was feeble, cowardly and powerless and I had finally done the thing I'd sworn to myself I wouldn't – I'd asked for help.
I never wanted to be seen as a victim. It's impossible to get through a day without being confronted by cancer – in newspaper articles, on billboards, TV ads – and most of the time, it's support for 'victims' that's being offered. I hate that word. Hate it.
At the moment – as far as anyone knows – I don't have cancer. This could change tomorrow, or next week or next month. I live day to day in the shadow of what hold cancer might yet gain on me. I should be carefree, light, but I am not. I wonder if my most difficult battle is still to come.
When you've got cancer you use all the reserves you've got to keep your head above water. People understand that you're going through the mill and might not be up to your usual standards of socialising, making jokes or parenting. You're excused for being rubbish because you've got the best excuse there is. When the cancer has gone you're expected to step right back into the place you left, but you don't fit that vacancy any more because that person is gone. You can't fill the corners properly and there are bits that bulge out of the sides, and all the time while you're trying your hardest to squeeze this square peg into this round hole the voices are screaming at you, reminding you of your failings – the failings cancer left you with.
Here, on the other side of cancer, the noise is deafening, and my head cannot grasp nor engineer the one thing it craves – silence.
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Guest post: "My cancer's gone – but depression has taken its place"
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MumsnetGuestPosts · 12/01/2016 15:21
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