Milking it

After I discovered the birth community and started getting heavily involved, it didn't take long to discover that there is a huge support network for people who want to live in their trauma. I didn't realize it fully until I joined and separated from a couple of different birth organizations (who ARE doing good work!) but when I saw that people literally defined themselves by their birth wounds- it was a huge epiphany to me and I knew I didn't want to hang out in that land.

Then I had my daughter and got to really enjoy my own pity party for a while until a friend said, "SNAP OUT OF IT. You're alive, she's alive. Quit wallowing." Well- that's direct. And honest. And.... true. Why am I wallowing, again?

So two days into this whole situation and I"m already wondering, am I writing to process? To share? Or to wallow?

Is it too early to worry about whether I'm spending too much time feeling sorry for myself? Am I feeling sorry for myself (not at ALL, but I still have to ask)?

I process best through writing, through telling the story and hearing what it means to the people who read it. It gives me fresh perspective and sometimes a well timed face slap and is overall a major part of my sanity. Which in the last two days, has been tenuous at best.

I count the minutes when I am not thinking about having cancer, wondering what surgery will be like, whether it has spread to my lymph nodes, questions for the endocrinologist, whether my kids are TRULY okay with this or if the earth quaked beneath them too and they're just not saying it, if my friends are okay, if there's anyone I forgot to call and tell (there is), whether I will still laugh when I say it out loud (it's less funny but still... I still laugh), how I'll feel after surgery, if I keep clearing my throat because of the cancer, if I will ever say "Cancer" and have it be a benign word to me ever again, what it will be like having an endocrinologist in my life for the next ten years to make sure I am truly in remission, what other tests I have coming ahead and if they're going to hurt, if I can breathe. If I can just breathe. If my chest will stop feeling so tight and just let me breathe.

I keep waiting to feel scared and so far, it hasn't happened. I don't know why but I really, really feel like I accept it. And then I wonder if I'm INSANE because how can anyone be accepting that they have cancer? So I figure I must just still be in some kind of shock or something because not feeling afraid for yourself when you find out you have cancer is just like... deep detachment on some kind of insane level. It has to be.