Six weeks after radiation I met with my oncologist. I had a clear scan which made me feel so relieved. She asked me how I was doing? “Not well”, I answered her. I felt like I’d been put in a blender since I’d heard the words, “You have cancer.”

Lying face down on a table. My limbs strapped down as someone drilled into my shoulder bone. The pain like the deepest pressure to the foundation of my body. When I said, “That hurts.” and then “…really bad.” The nurse pushed more pain meds, the doctor said, “I’m sorry. It’s almost over.” So I endured it.

The knobby port implanted under my skin. The needles straight into my chest. Accessing and de-accessing my port for chemo infusions and blood draws. It made it easier to receive the cell-killing poison into my veins. So I endured it.

Radiation through the tissues of my lungs and heart into my chest wall and shoulder. The cold metal circling around my body, distributing invisible rays. The breath holds to try to pull the lungs away from the chest wall. The treatment both curing and damaging at the same time. So I endured it.

The lumpectomy. The positive margins. The double mastectomy. Losing my breasts so the risk of recurrence would be lessened. Removing my ovaries. An ending of my life-giving super power. An ending of the hormones that make me a woman. The food source for my specific type of cancer. Gone. So I endured it.

Losing my hair. Regrowing my hair, then being put on an oral chemo pill that causes hair loss. Trying to cover the pale white skin of my scalp with the scant pieces of hair at the crown of my head. The nausea. The vomiting. The diarrhea. Side effects of the same medication that will help halt the growth of new cancer cells. So I endured it.

Finally, reconstruction of my breasts. The 13 hour surgery to take the fat from my belly along with a vein to supply the fat tissue with blood flow and connect it to the vein just under my ribs so I can have a semblance of breasts. The cutting. The pain. The drains. The scars. Looking at myself in the mirror when I got home from the hospital. I cried. I felt like an experiment gone wrong. But it was supposed to help me to regain some of what I had lost. So I endured it.

I wanted to come out on the other side of my treatment journey healed, whole and ready to move on with my life. But something has fundamentally shifted inside of me. I can’t ever go back to who I was before my diagnosis. And I didn’t want to share how I was feeling with you, my friends and family, because I had been so brave. I had been so strong. I powered through every treatment to help save my life, and I did it with grit and determination. I should feel grateful to be alive, in spite of the fracturing of the life I knew before cancer. And I am. But I’m also floundering.

I should be out adventuring. I should be living life to the fullest because I know that I will die one day. I fully understand now that this body will cease to be. Instead, I carry on as I always have done. I work. I pay bills. I try to maintain relationships. I make dinner. I decorate for holidays and help make birthdays special. I’m here living my life. But I’m numb. I feel like a spectator in my own life. Watching myself as I go through the motions. Wondering from far outside my body what all this suffering is for.

The scars on my body are slowly paling. Moving from red to white. The scars on my mind and soul are not so easy to mend.

And that’s why I haven’t written. Because I don’t feel brave or strong anymore. I feel like an empty shell trying to find my way forward. Trying to find joy and meaning again among the damaged pieces of myself.