My Resilience

Come and hear Alex read her story at our upcoming Perkatory event on November 13th!

The cancer journey can take a lot from you. Outsiders may think it’s only the physical things that get to you, like your hair. They’re wrong. It’s so much more. It starts once you hear the word. The infamous word that brings fear when said out loud. It begins when you first hear the word cancer by your Dr. When you first find out you are sick. That’s when you experience your first loss, you realize you are losing trust in the world and your body.

Every body is different, every cancer journey is different. In my case, I tried really hard to pretend the losses weren’t hurting me. That they weren’t painful. When I first found out, I made a joke to my family. “Hey, what’s my zodiac sign?” I would ask with a grin on my face. “Gemini?” They would respond with a confused look on their face. “Nope, cancer.” I said while laughing. When I lost my hair I told everyone I was in my Pitbull era. I tried coping with the losses I was facing in the best way. I didn’t have time to think about my actual feelings. I was too busy surviving. I avoided the feeling of loss by telling myself it was only temporary. It was something my providers always reminded me of.

My way of avoiding, pretending I wasn’t afraid of being sick when I first found out. Pretending I didn’t care that I lost my hair but yet I would avoid completely looking in a mirror. I told everyone I wasn’t superficial and didn’t care the way my body had changed. It all happened so quickly. I didn’t even realize that all the avoidance was me trying to hold on to my old life. I wasn’t just experiencing temporary losses, I was losing me. I was losing my old life. Everything changed. I tried hard to hold on to who I was but she was no longer there. I became someone else. I became a patient. Once everything was over and I beat cancer, I became a survivor. I lost my old life. But I was evolving. To something different, someone better. I survived. That was the important part.

During my journey, so many people would go up to me and say, “these tough moments always have a lesson.” Or “this is only going to make you stronger.” I heard those words so much that after a while hearing them would only cause me anger. What lesson will I learn? I thought I was a good person? If this is what being strong is, I don’t want it. Till this day while writing these words, I have a hard time understanding what I gained from all of this. What I learned from this experience. Looking back at all of it, the journey and survivorship did teach me something. It taught me how to live. How to smile at life when life doesn’t smile back. How to find yourself even in the darkest of nights. Maybe there is no beauty to certain situations in life, but the journey itself will always teach you something.

My life was unbalanced for a while. It felt like I had so many downs in one year, I thought life would just automatically get better after I was cancer free. In the beginning when I first found out I was sick, everyone around treated me so differently. They dedicated so much time to me, having so much support was amazing. I really felt like I had so many people behind me helping me fight. They made the situation a little less bad. Then I entered survivorship, less people came over, fewer people called. It seemed like life was going back to normal. Well, for everyone else but not for me. Even when I started looking healthier and my hair started growing, I still felt sick. My mental health was at an all time low. Everyone moved on, but my life was no longer normal. How could I even try to go back to the way life was before cancer? What did being a survivor even mean, especially when I had completely lost myself? Everything felt beyond unbalanced. My mental health got so bad that I would sometimes even question what the point of surviving was. I was no longer me. Everyone around expected me to just go back to the way life was before but how could I? Being sick was what I thought about twenty four seven for a whole year. I forgot how to live without having to worry about my body. It left me broken, it left me feeling constantly unsteady. My older sister always would tell me that there was a balance in the world, that it couldn’t just be all bad. I held on to that and pushed through. I pushed until I felt some sort of balance back.

I hate when people say I’m strong, mainly because the situations that made me “strong” were so painful. Cancer didn’t teach me anything. In fact, all it did was hurt me. Somewhere along the line of constant pain you realize how much resilience you have. You realize that regardless of how many weak moments you have had you are strong. You are resilient. I am resilient. I learned how far I can be stretched and how life heals and I go back to my original shape. How I bend but do not break. I learned a lot from my family too. The way they held my hand throughout my journey and never let go. Cancer took a lot from me, my old life, my old me but it did not take my life. Therefore I have no regrets, I do not wish anything in return. Although I do often miss my old life, I’m content with my resilience. I survived and I learned. I look outside and see life, it is beautiful and I’m just happy to be alive.