It's not you, it's me

Well it's time. It's done. We had it great but...it's really just time to see other people. This blog has been a source of sanity for me during the darkest moments of my life. I am grateful for the ability to live out loud and explore some parts of my brain that really should just be left for science. I used it to escape, to cope, to share and to motivate myself to get out of the darkness...but I'm out and it's all sparkly and shiny again. When I look back over my life - yeah it's going in the book, I don't really see survival. I don't want my legacy to be simply survival. I lived strong and well and endured some bullshit like any of us. Cancer? Well hell. I am not a breast cancer "survivor" - just the term gives me chest pains; pardon the pun. When I think of surviving, I think of grabbing a branch over a raging river and clinging for life with a helicopter flying overhead and young Navy Seals dropping in on a line and the news circling near by, storms coming in...but I digress. I didn't cling to anything. I endured, I scrapped, I fought, I begged and reasoned and sobbed and in the end, I burned it, poisoned it and cut it out. And if it comes back, I will beat it again. There was no dangling over the river, I went right through the middle. Cancer survived me and that's my legacy. I am considerably different than I was before. You will never hear me say Cancer was a gift but it was a game changer. There is really nothing I can't do. Once you have delivered babies you aren't bringing home, there really isn't anything else - not even Cancer that can top that so maybe I started with my gloves on. Nowadays, I'm a little less sensitive, maybe some more emotional scar tissue, maybe I'm a little less patient for bullshit and a lot more capable of letting the toxicity go...I watched my older girls grow up faster than they should have but I fell more in love with my husband than I thought I ever could. I still mourn the breasts but find the ability to work out without a bra liberating. I put a hat on my head and break out into a PTSD cold sweat but love my softer red hair that grew back in. I hate fitting into bathing suits with high necks but love being healthy enough to run on the beach. I hate feeling unsexy to my husband but love feeling more loved than the day I married him. I hate that Cancer makes my little girl cry but love that she has me to hold. I hate the memories of being sick but I love the sisters I gained who put their own lives second to help a busy mom cope with the hardest three years of her life...at the time, they barely knew me; now, they are my best friends. The pain list is long but the gain list is longer. Guess what Cancer? I beat you again. So thank you...thank you for reading, for letting me grieve and grow and live. Thank you for the posts that I read and reread and reread. It's been four years and I am done. I'm not living post Cancer, I'm living without Cancer and it's time to do that.