I can't feel guilty for how I feel.....

3 minute read time.

Well that's it really. For the last few years I have been on one long guilt trip! Always feeling guilty about what I am thinking or how I am feeling, but why? More importantly am I the only one who feels like this. Well no I am not as I have spoken to people online and in the real world and the whole guilt thing seems to be something that so many of us go through!

Now how do I explain this, well of course I will do it in the long winded way that I talk about everything! Why use 5 words when you can use 25 ;-)

Back to guilt! So I wake up one morning and I am feeling awful. I am in pain, I can barely walk, I feel sick, I'm exhausted and all I want to do is to go back to bed and curl up in a ball and wake up when this is all over! But instead I go to work, I moan and groan to my friends, I get annoyed with myself for moaning, I force myself to find the good in the day and then I give myself a good talking too for feeling sorry for myself. I remind myself that there are people worse off than me, and then......I FEEL GUILTY! Guilty for allowing myself to feel so sorry for myself when things could be worse!

You see, I ONLY have bone mets, yes it's that word again, ONLY! Well because of this I am not allowed to feel sorry for myself, because there are people with extensive mets that would swap places with me tomorrow and they would accept all the aches and pains and wouldn't bat an eyelid, what have I got to complain about compared to them!

Then there's the people with Primary Cancer that has been treated, they are now NED and on Tamoxifen or another hormonal drug, they are suffering with awful side effects and they are having a rough day and feeling sorry for themselves. Then they see someone like me and feel GUILTY for feeling low, when clearly "what have they got to moan about"! So they continue to give themselves a good kick up the backside, and so it goes on!

So do any of us need to feel guilty? Are any of us in the wrong? Do any of us need to give ourselves a good kick in the pants......NO....I don't think we do! Instead I think we all (assuming it's not just me) need to accept, that this is a very individual journey. None of us chose to be here and none of us wanted to be taking drugs that can make us feel so 'ill', for use of a better word. We are all at very different stages in our lives, with different hopes and dreams. No two people want the same thing out of life! So my cancer can't be compared to my friends cancer and how I feel about my cancer can never be wrong! This is the one time in our lives when we have to be a bit selfish, we have to put ourselves first, because if we don't we will drive ourselves mad. 

No one can ever tell us how we should or shouldn't feel and none of us should be too scared to talk about those feelings, for fear of upsetting others. We will all have times when we wish we could take someone else's pain away or times when we are pleased that our pain has gone away (for a bit) but on the bad days, when I am trying to work through the horrid side effects, the days when I am struggling to put one foot in front of the other, those are the days when I don't have the energy to worry about feeling guilty, I like everyone else am entitled to have a bad day!

Because even before Cancer, we had down days, it's all part of being 'human' and I am slowly but surely realising that you know what, it's okay! I don't have to feel guilty! I'm not doing anything wrong! None of us are!

Anonymous
  • Beautifully put I'm having telephone counselling and today the lady counsellor said she thought my emotion and fear is perfectly normal especially as my children rely on me and we love each other so much. I used the term not coping to which she said I shouldn't say that about myself as its so big a deal anyone would be the same I just have so much emotion to contend with. Made me feel a bit better anyway as I always put myself down . Love to you you're amazing just always stay yourself xx