Starting Fresh

"She's doing the disabled thing again"

I've been working a lot lot, even when I probably shouldn't be. I say yes a lot even when I know it might knock me flat. I like to at least try.

The last few weeks at work (job #1) I've been covering for someone that has left even though I know I can't keep doing it, as well as working job #2. I've also been to a few outrageous parties (whole other story) when I probably should have stayed in bed. The only problem is that missing out on life isn't worth it so I try to mitigate the suffering that will follow. My days have been like this, work-work-work-work-rest/suffer-work-party-suffer-rest-work-work-work-work-work-suffer-party-suffer-suffer -work etc. I'm not complaining, this is the best things have been for years.

Yesterday one of my best friend's flew the coop. She has run off to Tokyo for a couple of years and we had a send off party for her. It's also my birthday this week. I've been slooowing down as the days go by.

So just now I went to wash my socks for work tomorrow. I found myself staring into a washing machine full of unclean towels. Then I looked into the dryer and there is a load of clean and dried boys things. I couldn't find the energy to switch them so I called both of my sons. They usually ignore me these days, now that my needs aren't so acute. They used to help me around when I was ill.

There must have been some sort of tone in my voice that they remembered because they both came running. They found me on the floor of the laundry room where I had sunk from exhaustion. Now that I'm working, the laundry has piled up to epic proportions. I just don't have the energy for it but I need clean socks for tomorrow so I don't repel my coworkers.

As I lay there concealed in mountains of bluejeans and T-shirts mumbling that I need clean socks, I heard my youngest say, "She's doing the disabled thing again."

They snickered at me, rolled me out into the hallway and switched the laundry.

Work Update

Things are moving so quickly. I have been getting habituated at work. It's been hard and hard on my body but I love it. I love being needed again. I love that I fit in.

I figured out the source of my extreme anxiety and stress. There had been an accident with a tiny neighbor child weeks ago and I was the first one one the scene. I was quick, calm and efficient but I did not know if the child was alive. I had just gotten ready for work and was boiling some water for tea when it happend and I heard the screams from the mother.

I ran out side with my phone and called 911. I attended the scene and helped as much as I could. Then when the paramedics came I went to work. It all spiralled down for me from there. Miracle upon miracles, the baby is okay. I have seen her smiling little face since and cannot believe she was alright. She had fallen on a spike that went 3cm into her little head right next to her eye. It somehow just punctured her nasal cavity and when she gets a little older there may hardly be a scar.

As for me my memory tanked and I couldn't concentrate at work enough to remember anything. I began making mistakes and feeling like I was going to be fired. Anxiety took me right over and I didn't want my kids to be out. My heart has been quickly pounding over next to nothing. It's unbearable at times.

Well, I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The recent accident wasn't the cause it was just the trigger. The original trauma came when I was a girl. When I realized what was happening to me I felt a little better but it still continues. I'm hoping there's something that can be done.

As for work I'm glad to know it wasn't the reason I've been faltering so badly.

I do know that I need to build confidence at work and probably in life in general. Being unable to work for 5 years really affects your psyche. I often find myself second guessing my own judgment. I ask a lot of questions but now I realize I need to work things out for myself and know that I can come to the answer on my own. It's so weird. I feel like I'm reliving a part of my less secure life. I had times when I was young and made mistakes but grew into an intelligent woman who knows how to take care of things.

Feeling insecure is not something that I want to continue. As a person I am very confident and I know soon I will feel that in regards to work too.

"Just a bump in the road" is what a friend would say. My cancer would be just a bump in the road. Some bump.

Adjusting

Thank you to everyone who has been giving me tips on where to find info and support on working again.

I've been having a lot of anxiety lately. I'm hoping it's just a phase that I will work through. I have had a good talk with a friend of mine and just being able to talk about it has improved things. Sometimes all it takes is the presence of someone you feel close to.

This experience has also made me realize it would be nice to have someone in my life. That thought pops up now and again. I'm not really sure how to reenter the world of dating but I know that I'd like to at least try. I'm sure there is someone who is a little like me, being busy with life wondering when I will show up in their world. That's what I like to think anyway.

Who Do I Call?

I'm sitting here wondering who to call. I want to tell someone what a hard time I'm having adjusting to work. There's no one to tell, I guess. At times like this I feel like I'm the one in slow motion in a scene where people in the background speed by. People have lives, they do things when they get off of work and on the weekends. They get together, go camping, have drinks and do other things I'm not a part of. When I am able to make it I'm only half there.

Where I used to live with occasional nausea, hip pain from my bursitis, joint stiffness/pain and getting through my day, I'm now trying to manage all that while getting a lot of things done at work. I'm putting everything into being precise, effective and as productive as possible while having the uncomfortable feeling of failing at all. I ignore my pain. I wish to do better and put all my effort into doing so. Then I find I've forgotten something and stress wells up inside of me. It's okay but as each and every little minor mistake builds onto my psyche I wear it as a backpack. It gets heavier and heavier as the days goes by.

Friends have said, "Oh that's normal", or "Now you know what it's like for everyone else", when I talk about my failings. My memory was very much above average before, not so much now. The frustration I feel over it is completely overwhelming.

I try and tell myself it's okay, that not being perfect is okay. I've never believed that of myself. I have no problem accepting others as humanly flawed but cannot even conceive of it being me. I don't think I'm perfect, I just actively do everything within my power to minimize the imperfectness ( <---like in that sentence structure). I often make up the gap of normalcy and excellence with sheer will power and stubbornly refusing to stop until I've done %110. Always %110. That was always my mantra through simultaneously single parenting, working and completing my degree.

I thought I had learned something since almost biting the big one. I thought I had become easier on myself and learned how to be gentle. How can I still feel that way? I never used to dispair about it, I just worked harder. Maybe I should be in some sort of 12 step program for perfectionists anonymous. I'd probably try to be the best recovering perfectionist there, I'd actually kick everyone's asses in anti perfectionism. I don't know where this high achieving streak comes from....

Or maybe I do. I didn't have the kindest of childhoods. And I remember in elementary school, the boys chasing me with worms by shoving the worm directly in my face screaming that I was scared because I was a girl. I taught them a lesson by tackling them, taking the worm from them and then chasing THEM around with it. They screamed their sissy little heads off. They never did that to me again. I always had to climb higher, run faster and be tougher. So much for being non competitive. The problem with being competitive with yourself is that you're always the loser.

I just want to do well at work work and be valuable again. I feel like every little mistake or being a little bit slower than I would have been before, is me failing. Failing to be of any good to anyone.

I really used to struggle hard with this. Am I no different than I was before pre cancer?

Work

I know I've disappeared from the blog front. I wish I could say I was out having great summer adventures and I am in a way. It's been taking everything I have to work at my new jobs. Jobs plural. I never ever do things halfway, I'm in a %125 or I'm out.

I'm so ecstatically, over the top happy to be employable again, you have no idea. Five years off for a naturally ambitious person like me is a slow painful experience. I felt irrelevant, unneeded, incapable and useless. I spent each and every day pinning about the day I would be well enough again for life. Five years is a hell of a long time to be trapped inside your own house with your personal demons (and I don't mean my sons).

I found that it was like a slow motion life-passing-in-front-of-your-eyes kind of gig. Every moment of my life, often painful ones, bubbled up to the surface. Truthfully they were things I had blocked from my mind with work. Keeping busy was like a drug to me before and this post existence is like being strapped to a chair forced to watch movies of my life, highlighting the mistakes, the losses and all that. Painful. I've made mistakes. It's hard to know what the worst ones may have been.

I've also done some things damn well.

I always seem to be going farther than my own capacity. Therefore one job turns into two. After the hellish first couple of months where I was in complete pain until I scraped myself out of bed to go back the next day, I've continued to go too far. I'm only working 3 shortish days a week and I have shifts of my other job tucked here and there. I decided to forego my summer for this grand experience and I'm mostly happy with it, except for the fact that I haven't gotten to enjoy any summer!

That and I felt so confident like I was getting my feet again, that I booked the first two weeks of August working. I worked almost every day. Near the end of the two weeks I felt myself melting and my functioning took a nosedive. It was even noticed by my boss which felt like a real kick in the gut. I go to work and while I'm there I swing between, "I can do this! I can do this!", to, "Oh my god, they are going to fire me" I seem to even manage to tell myself they are going to fire me when I'm doing good job.

I have such high standards for myself that I do things well, but I drive myself to the brink of insanity. I guess I'm never quite good enough for myself. Anyway, I just got carried off on a tangent. I'm tired. I worked myself to the point on non functioning (did I say that already?) and it's been hard. Too tired to eat, too tired to drink, I crave goodies when I'm laid out like this. I have completely crashed. My house of cards has come down.

What did I expect?

I had my three days off hoping to recuperate and I went back to work in the same state. I managed to get through another week and am trying my best to recoup before going back again. I am on my third consecutive pajamas day. I even had a shower yesterday just to put them right back on again. If my other job calls I will have to say no, I'm kind of scared.

I need to get back to it and keep going, not just lay on the floor and become useless again. I've been too tired to even sit at my computer and respond to emails. The lousy thing is I didn't even make it a financially worthwhile compared to pacing myself through the month. I'm nowhere. Well, I'm not nowhere, I'm employed.

I love being employed. I know my limits now and won't push them again.




Well heck, who am I kidding.

Love

Love has begun to be a thing that's simply a curiosity to me. Something that seems such a stranger that it's like an object I'd like to poke with a stick. I don't know if I'd even know how to do it anymore.

I see others in their relationships and it seems artificial to me. I see very authentic love and but it's like learning how to speak another language only from learning by a textbook but never hearing it. Or like having the wind brushing against your skin described to you without ever having felt it.

It's just been a damn long time, survival has been my only agenda for 5 years. I've noticed that people like to refer to someone single as being, 'desperate'. I've heard that many times but it doesn't make real sense. I like being on my own. Being single doesn't make one desperate.

I have thought about love and dating over the years. I've contemplated making a date to start caring about it, like maybe next year? or maybe in the summer or maybe in 3 months, yet those dates never seem to arise. Life has been so incredibly painful since cancer, why would I want to share that? I still end up having days of excruciating pain from graft vs host and I like to hide when I'm not well. I don't like anyone to know about it, I don't like anyone seeing it. I feel like and animal that crawls into it's den when it's ill, I'm not all that into sharesies.

I don't share communal food (like at parties), I don't want to share germs by being so close to anyone. The last few years has had my life on the line and I won't take chances being exposed to strangers. I was barred by my doctors from going on busses, movie theatres, airplanes etc for that exact reason. I don't want to have to explain what's happend to me, why I get so tired, explain what my limitations are or open up to anyone about having to have surgery on my vagina. It sounds like a complete nightmare.

It doesn't help that my previous loves left me hanging. I've never had someone that is by my side for me, would stand up for me, choose me over others or give me some emotional safety. I have learned through trial and error that the only one I can count on in life is myself. I can count on me, I will never betray myself or abandon myself. I believe in me. I can show myself kindness. I can get myself the things that I need.

I never want to be sitting in a hospital again clinging to life wondering, watching the door for him to walk in. Realizing that the person I had loved isn't bothered that I may die.