Being a burden - (repost from FB)
I was asked yesterday by a fellow terminal patient how I coped with the feeling of being a burden. This is a very big heavy box to unload, and it’s one I struggle with everyday.
In the earlier days of diagnosis, I hated seeing what MY cancer was doing to my family. Everyone was stressed, on edge, not sleeping well etc... it was MY fault because it was MY cancer.
After talking it out with them, I have to just trust in their words that this is happening to us all. That cancer happened to me. It’s not me. It’s not mine. It doesn’t define me.
And yet, I still feel like a burden. I try to be independent when I can, and I choose the worst times to be it - vomiting in the middle of the night, struggling to sleep because my stomach feels like it’s poking out of my ribs, sternum on fire from acid reflux.... it’s a fucking lonely business.
It’s like I purposely give the easier tasks to my loved ones and then suffer through the harder ones alone. Like it’s a fair trade off for dying.
I keep looking for comfort, for answers... I don’t know what I’m looking for. It’s really hard living with dying. Every fucking second of discomfort reminds me of it. And if I’m not in pain, I feel like a fraud. Like I need to suffer to deserve support.
Again, in the earlier days of diagnosis, support came out in droves. Visits, care packages, gifts, donations, estranged friends reconnecting.... and now there is radio silence.
I’m so lonely. I just wish people would talk to me but I know they don’t because they don’t know what to say. So I talk to my cancer buddies, but because everyone is different, our cancer journeys have us at different points and different mental well-being.
Ironically, the people I would have benefitted most from talking to, have already died. I speak to their widows now, and try to comfort them from a patient’s point of view.
In many ways, anti depressants working make me feel worse - because I want to live so badly now. I don’t want to kill myself anymore. But when I’m waking up choking on vomit, all I wish is for me to die in my sleep.
Tell me, how can I “cheer up” about it when it’s never going to GET better? There is no getting better from here. Only alleviating symptoms. And that’s what this chemo break has taught me in some ways.
The cancer is aggressive, and chemo is my only hope at keeping it at bay. So please, miracle cure, show up soon. Otherwise, I’m just another fucking statistic in a sea of dead young people.
In the earlier days of diagnosis, I hated seeing what MY cancer was doing to my family. Everyone was stressed, on edge, not sleeping well etc... it was MY fault because it was MY cancer.
After talking it out with them, I have to just trust in their words that this is happening to us all. That cancer happened to me. It’s not me. It’s not mine. It doesn’t define me.
And yet, I still feel like a burden. I try to be independent when I can, and I choose the worst times to be it - vomiting in the middle of the night, struggling to sleep because my stomach feels like it’s poking out of my ribs, sternum on fire from acid reflux.... it’s a fucking lonely business.
It’s like I purposely give the easier tasks to my loved ones and then suffer through the harder ones alone. Like it’s a fair trade off for dying.
I keep looking for comfort, for answers... I don’t know what I’m looking for. It’s really hard living with dying. Every fucking second of discomfort reminds me of it. And if I’m not in pain, I feel like a fraud. Like I need to suffer to deserve support.
Again, in the earlier days of diagnosis, support came out in droves. Visits, care packages, gifts, donations, estranged friends reconnecting.... and now there is radio silence.
I’m so lonely. I just wish people would talk to me but I know they don’t because they don’t know what to say. So I talk to my cancer buddies, but because everyone is different, our cancer journeys have us at different points and different mental well-being.
Ironically, the people I would have benefitted most from talking to, have already died. I speak to their widows now, and try to comfort them from a patient’s point of view.
In many ways, anti depressants working make me feel worse - because I want to live so badly now. I don’t want to kill myself anymore. But when I’m waking up choking on vomit, all I wish is for me to die in my sleep.
Tell me, how can I “cheer up” about it when it’s never going to GET better? There is no getting better from here. Only alleviating symptoms. And that’s what this chemo break has taught me in some ways.
The cancer is aggressive, and chemo is my only hope at keeping it at bay. So please, miracle cure, show up soon. Otherwise, I’m just another fucking statistic in a sea of dead young people.
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