demons

I often peruse other cancer blogs, and go on breast cancer message boards to see how people are doing, how they cope, how they write about cancer, etc. I like seeing other people doing well, I like when they write interesting things about their battle with this disease, I admire people who can see it as "the enemy", whose subjugation will enable them to go back to "normal" life. I read, but truth told, I don't really relate. I seem to be very different from most cancer survivors. I'm not sure why, but I suspect that I've always battled demons, and cancer is just another one of them.

I also am not exactly what i show to the blogosphere (well, who is?) I mean I rarely blog about cancer. Does this mean I'm in denial about it? If I am, I'm glad. Unfortunately, I'm not equipped for denial. My mind collects, records, renders in full color and obsesses over any minute negative possibility. I cannot even leave the house without unplugging every light from every wall socket and knowing in great detail exactly where i'm going. I cannot hear the word "scan" without practically vomiting in fear. Hence, I do not do denial, try as i may.

Also, i'm rarely (present post excepted), introspective in my blogs. I guess I don't find the contents of my obsessive mad little mind all that interesting, and prefer to write bad puns and self-deprecating athletical stories.

I'm not, however, a fun individual. I'm not funny, I'm not strong, I'm not focused, warm or particularly good. I'm a woman who's got demons after her, and always has. I've always been outside, I've always been alone. This is not new. This was not brought on by cancer. Cancer did not suddenly change a healthy, well-adjusted, kind woman into a haunted, curse-obsessed ghost running for her life. Cancer grrl has always been haunted, always been chased here and there by obsessions, has been trying to flail her way blindly out of dark places for as long as she can remember. Cancer did nothing more than take some of the demons out of her head, and put them into her body.

And even though the cancer's gone... the demons aren't.

Maybe that's the difference.