Did anyone wake up one day and think the world now looked different somehow? Not necessarily different good or different bad, but as if the colour palette or spectrum had shifted slightly?
I did.
The first time you hear those words, "you have cancer" you know life will change. You hope only for a short period of time while you have treatment and as aggressive and vile as that may be, you can compartmentalise it and think, "It'll be okay, and once it's over, life can return. I'll go for coffees, return to the gym, go for shopping trips and spa days with the girls again." But what if it never returns to coffee dates, gym mornings, shopping trips and spa days? Is the new normal worse than the old? Or does everything just look and feel different now, like the shine has begun to fade, ever so slightly.
Cancer takes away choice, I think that's the hardest thing about it. None of us chose to be here, and I am sure I'm not the only one who heard,"You're now part of a club you never knew existed and you wish you weren't a part of." I'm sure I'm not the only one to have asked whether the club do membership returns, and whether I could please trade it in for a bad coffee and a stale biscuit instead?
But does seeing the difference in the world make the world worse? For a (hopefully) short time, the world certainly feels worse; the sickness, the exhaustion, the anxiety were definitely not invited and none of them made life better. But after that, once the bell has been rung and the medications returned, why must everything still look different? It feels as if that shine has gone and the BC colour palette may never return... Like you can see two worlds, the world through the eyes of you before and afterwards too, like a hall of mirrors.
Let me know your thoughts.
K
x
