I was living dead
I don’t need to harp on about how getting a cancer diagnosis is one of the most harrowing experiences that one can go through. It’s awful. It’s bigger than awful. It’s full of confusion and questions and you know you are facing an early death.
I was so fortunate that I didn’t die and I made it through the horrible months that proceeded the diagnosis but I was seriously screwed up. Fear took over and despite reading The Fear Cure, by Lissa Rankin, When Fear Falls Away, by Jan Frazier and Love is Letting Go of Fear, by Gerald G. Jampolsky I was still riddled with the fear that I was going to die. And this was way after being told that I was all good to go.
I started to fear heading out the door. I wanted to reconnect with long lost childhood friends so that they could tell my children what I was like when I was young….they needed to hear that I was a wild, risk-taker and so much fun. I wanted them to know that I went to my first over 18 nightclub when I was 16, that I was dancing on podiums, I wanted them to know that I loved helping people and always attracted those in search of ‘finding themselves’ and that I would work so hard to bring out the best in them. I wanted them to know I had saved a few friends from committing suicide and that I could read a person’s story without their words. It was only old friends who could share these stories.
Ironically however I stopped connecting with people. I retreated. I walked around in a daze and with a sad face. I’d smile sometimes and often pretend to laugh at a joke but mostly I was anxious and scared. Simple tasks became too hard. When I did go out I found I was judging everyone. “Why aren’t they dying?'“, “Look at how they treat themselves…they should get cancer, not me”.
I was eventually referred to a psychiatrist. He was a very intelligent man and I thoroughly enjoyed our discussions. He said he had never actually met anyone quite like me. I told him he needed to get out more. He told me that he was not interested in prescribing me any medication because I didn’t need it. I told him I didn’t like medication anyway. He told me I was suffering from anxiety. I told him I was dying. It was what came next that shook me at my deepest core. He went on to tell me that he sits at the bedside of people in palliative care and THEY are dying and that death was a process and I was nowhere near death and that I wasn’t dying. He was so right. I was so wrong.
I was not dying but I was dead. I was sitting there in front of him 100% alive but dead. More recently I have become ashamed of myself for thinking that I was dying. How selfish was I to waste a good 12 months of my life not living when people were seriously facing death?
I’m sharing this story so early in my blogging career because I know there are many people out there who are dying despite being alive and that’s such a waste of precious time. I was in that place and I must admit it took a lot to bring me into the light. I’m wide awake now and 100% of service to others who are living with illness. Please don’t die before you’re dying. I lost so much alive time.
