Memories
A couple of days ago, I scrolled back through my Instagram to posts that I made before I had cancer. A strange, sickly, and bitter sadness came over me that was hard to describe. Things were so different back then. My mother and her mother were both still alive. My relationship with my family was different. My body was so different. Though I had turned away from my dream of being a singer/songwriter professionally, I was still young (mid-late 30’s), and my hope for the future was vast and strong. This was pre-COVID, and things were going well at work. I had been in a relationship for about a year and a half, and after the dating insanity of my twenties and early thirties, I was so happy to be in a normal situation. I had been taking better and better care of my body and mind with my diet, yoga, and a meditation practice, and after a lifetime of journeying through my own dysfunction, I felt stable and was turning my attention to my side hustle of selling designer bags and clothing, and bigger accomplishments like returning to higher education and making a career change.
Looking at those photos, I remembered the mental and emotional freedom that I didn’t know I had and deeply miss now. I don’t have that space in my mind anymore, and realizing this made me so sad. I felt so sad for that version of me. She didn’t know what was coming, and after everything she had already suffered, it seemed so unfair to hand her cancer and all the terrible problems that came with it.
Getting cancer made my life unrecognizable. It altered my friendships and other primary relationships, and obviously, it changed my body, how I could live in it, and what was accessible to me as far as physical activity, intimacy, parenthood, and even diet. As I was repeatedly re-diagnosed with more and more advanced cancer, my mind struggled to keep up and cope. At some point, I think it just exploded, and a dark wet blanket was cast over my hopes for the future. I fought this… hard. I really did try to just get back up and keep going, but as time went on, more and more things felt like they died inside of me. I felt less passion or hope; I felt more fear and anxiety, and though I have continued forward and actually made some big accomplishments, like getting my bachelor’s and master’s degrees and becoming a therapist. Which I recognize is huge, especially given the circumstances. But that happy ending that I was attached to back then, that I believed in back then, often feels like it’s vanished.
When you are young and have your whole life ahead of you, you don’t know that you take for granted the freedom to dream. The freedom that you have to travel, be open to experiences, take risks, and reinvent yourself is an option that just exists both in reality and in your own mind. It’s more a part of the fabric of your thinking than it is when you start to stare down your mortality as you get older. When you get to middle age, things begin to feel heavier, more serious, and static anyway, but for me, because my future is so uncertain, things feel even more stationary, and it takes considerably more effort to open my mind to hope and possibility now than it used to. It’s harder for me to have enjoyment or experience joy. Not impossible, but harder, and sometimes chasing happiness just feels like too much effort, and I don’t like the rebound that happens when that feel-good moment passes, and I have to remember that I’m dying of cancer.
It’s a strange thing to look back at earlier incarnations of yourself. At each point in time, a different version of naivety sort of allows you to stumble and make mistakes, but as the older version of myself, I know what it looks like to have to pick up the pieces and start over. I know that life is not infinite, that you don’t have all the time in the world, and that it’s important to be thoughtful about how you want to spend your time, with whom, and doing what.
I know that it’s important to work hard to try to stay open and hopeful, even if it’s scary and even if it hurts when you get disappointed. I’m not sure, to be honest, how to do that all the time. Throughout my cancer journey, life has not just handed me illness; during this time, life has continued to happen as it does for us all. People I love have passed. Really important relationships in my life have ended in painful ways; COVID happened; disappointments and life’s general ups and downs have happened. Maybe it’s just all been too much. Maybe it’s fitting to stop believing in miracles… but is that really me? Have I really given up all hope and belief in magic? The answer to that is an unequivocal, NO.
As I write this, I feel and hear that nagging whisper in the back of my soul saying, “Don’t you dare, Stacy! Don’t you dare turn your back on magic!”
Sometimes I just have to remember who I am!
So what if… just what if… they cure breast cancer? Does it really hurt to hope…?