For most of my battle with cancer I have felt like I would beat it. I've been encouraging others along my way that are also fighting cancer and telling them not to give up and to keep up the fight. Today this cheerleader is ready to retire her pompoms. This boxer is ready to take off the gloves. This cancer survivor is ready to give up.
I can't tell you how much I want to just stop chemo. Stop doctors appointments. Stop everything. I feel like this will never end and I will never again know what it is to be "normal". Between feeling yucky from this last chemo treatment and Papi running away I feel like I am just waiting for the final straw to fall. The one that breaks the camels back.
Even when I am physically feeling okay I am emotionally drained out. Just getting through each day - just getting out of bed - has been an effort. And each effort I make just drains me more. I feel of absolutely no value to my family. I'm either physically sick or emotionally wiped out.
Usually I am so much of a people pleaser that I just say "I'm okay" when people ask me but I don't even have that in me anymore. Now my response is "I'm here". I was talking to my younger but wiser sister tonight and she said "remember, even Moses had a time where he could no longer hold his arms up and his friends had to hold them for him". She is so right and yet my response was "if anyone gets too close to me right now and tries to cheer me up I may deck them". I'm at a place where it's just God and me. I'm angry. Not at God, just at life. I just don't care and I feel empty and ready to give up.
I'm sure this will pass, it always has in the past, but right now it feels permanent. It's hard to believe that just a week ago I was at an event at our church and feeling great even though I had just finished my first round of chemo. I had no idea about the storms that were about to come our way. I suppose the same is true for right now. Maybe there are some good storms around the corner.
I'm sure I have just made a lot of people cry and for that I am sorry. It is really good therapy for me to type this out. I'm still not okay. I still want to give up. But, I do have a glimmer of hope. I know there are many of you out there right now holding my arms up for me because right now - I just can't do it.
Please do not feel like you need to do something right now. I know that is my first response when I see people hurting. I want to help - to cheer them up. I am not posting this to make you feel helpless. I am posting because this is part of our journey. Our honest journey. Right now what I need most is prayers. Prayers that I will get through this pit once again. And prayers for my sweet children who are all handling this all so differently. And also prayers for my husband who cautiously walks through this storm with me . . . sometimes reaching out to me to pull me through and other times knowing when to duck and run for cover :)
