Still landing

One of the midwives I work with called tonight to ask if I'd be ready to assist at births again any time soon (as in, immediately lol), or in the foreseeable future. This is something I've been mulling on, this, and many other things. When will I be ready to go back to work? At some point, do I just call it on the calendar and jump back in, sink or swim? I can't just 'sink' when I'm at a birth, too much responsibility. But how will I know if I'm ready if I don't dive in? Why do I feel so resistant?

I think a lot of it is that going to births requires such a huge amount of energy from me and I feel like right now, I am spiraling deeply inward, not outward. I want to cancel plans, not make them. I want to stay home, not go out, keep silent, listen, process, assess, write, analyze, think, reflect. I want to be a tree, I guess.

My aunt told me at one point that having cancer has changed me. I didn't realize that until she'd said it and as I move further away from having had cancer, it starts to feel so very long ago, another lifetime. I don't recognize the person I was before it because she feels quite different than who I am right now. I'm sure, six weeks from now, I will say the same thing because the change seems to be happening so darn quickly. I feel like I need to continue to cocoon myself for a while longer, and am curiously wondering who and what I will be when I come out. I really have no idea.

Taking out the cancer wasn't the end of the story. I don't know when it will end. I wonder about writing here 'still' when I don't have a cancer story anymore. I wonder if anyone feels as strongly or responds to it or if it makes a difference - and even though I don't have answers, I still come back and write. The difference it makes, I think, is that it helps me, and that is the most important thing it can do, at the end of the day.

I am still working through some things about my cancer experience that lack explanation- and I am unclear how to talk about them without possibly hurting people, but not sure how to process it without writing it out, because I've done all the talking I can do, and I am still hurting over it. Until I find a way, I feel stuck with this energy and it comes up in my thought processes all the time. I'm still chewing on it, trying to find the spot that will give way.

I'm so glad that the midwife called today, I hadn't realized until she asked me basically if I'm ready to 'get back to my old life' that I'm still trying to land in this new one. I don't know another way to describe it. I've gone through deeper changes than I ever expected or even knew I could, and I'm still finding out who I am on this side of it.