Just get on with it!!!!

      All my treatment ended just before my birthday, I'd been helping a friend at markets with her small business, so for the weekend of my birthday we organised a girls weekend away which incorporated a market, it also included a winery tour, but that was just a bonus lol. Being away from home, away from hospital, away from the responsibility of family, just away, I felt I could breath for the first time in months. I was starting to feel alive again, I hated looking in the mirror, the lack of hair, the weight gain, I hated my body, I hated myself, I hated feeling lost, not knowing what direction I was headed anymore. All those things that had seemed so important a year ago, were meaningless, why stress over stupid things, why work myself into an early grave, why neglect myself while caring for everyone else, it hadn't got me anywhere, it got me cancer.

       I used the time away to think, I no longer wanted the stress of a management position, it wasn't worth it to me anymore, I wanted more quality time with my family, I wasn't going to say yes to everyone, scared if I said no it would upset them, I needed time for me. Enough worrying about everyone else, maybe it was time to be a little selfish, time to look after me for a while. It was time to work out which direction I wanted to head in, should I take the safe road? Keep doing what I knew or should I break out, try something new, invent a new me?

       Over the next few months life formed a new type of normal, but only on the surface, underneath there was so much turmoil, so much left unsaid, feelings that hadn't been expressed, emotions hidden deep inside. A trip to Vanuatu to celebrate my brothers wedding was supposed to be the honeymoon we never had, but to me it emphasised how far apart we were drifting. I had no idea how to fix that, I had taken so much rejection during treatment, that I had lost the self confidence to try to begin anything physical, I longed to be held but was so scared of being pushed away that I hid those feelings from him, I needed to discuss what should happen from here, what had happened and how it had affected us, but he wouldn't let me in, a wall had been built that felt so impenetrable, I wondered if I'd ever see inside.

        I was so alone, no one understood how I felt, the loss, the fear, the daily struggles, to everyone around me I was better, treatment was over, I was supposed to pick up my life again, almost as if breast cancer had never happened, if I mentioned it in conversation I was an attention seeker, if I retreated because I felt uncomfortable, I was rude and inconsiderate, I couldn't win, nothing I did was right, so I stopped trying, I looked after my kids and the house, worked when I could, the whole time pretending, dying a little more inside each day, I was a shell, empty and alone!!