I wrote the below passage when I got to my desk this morning because on the drive to work I had been thinking about my uncle who doesn’t have long left with us, and that made me think about my brother and all the things I don’t know and don’t dare ask about his passing, and naturally my thoughts turned to myself, so here we are. And I hesitated before sharing this because even though I have been writing this stuff here for a while now, it still seems like maybe it’s weird or oversharing, but above all I feel like it is important and we should talk about mental and emotional health after cancer, even if people don’t want us to, even if nobody else is, even if nobody is listening. So here we are.

Can’t help but feel like this whole cancer thing has really fucked me over. Like it’s made me a different person but I don’t know how. I can’t put my finger on what has changed. It wasn’t something that happened straight away. I feel like I was okay maybe four years ago. I’ve thought about counselling but I don’t know how a stranger would help me get my old self back when they don’t know who that was and I can’t describe it either. And the people who I’ve met in the time since I’ve “changed”, well it’s not like I think they don’t know the real me. They pretty much do. I don’t know, it’s difficult to breathe thinking about it so I thought I’d write it down and then try to forget about it.

It was just a passing thing and I have been distracted with work since. I don’t feel like that all the time, which is another reason why I haven’t pursued counselling. I just feel like I have changed and I can’t figure out how or why. Maybe the cancer thing isn’t even to blame. But I mean, it might be. It is a big deal. It changes everything. So, I don’t really know what to do about this or how to figure it out. But I guess writing it down is a start.