It's been months and months since I finished my cancer treatment. I've been off work for almost a year now and I ended my radiation torture months and months ago. How naive I was thinking that I'd be back to work in November. Or January. Even though I couldn't eat or drink, I wanted to get back to Normal so badly and figured that if it could get that bad that fast it could get better just as quick.
Now I wonder and worry if Normal is slipping away from me. The physical scars are fading, the abuse heaped on those poor mouth and throat tissues is pretty well healed and I'm adjusted to my new normal. Coca Cola still taste like sewage, I'd just as soon drink battery acid as have a glass of orange juice, but I'm pretty much put back together again. Except this little Humpty Dumpty seems to have lost her head.
It's so hard to explain, even to myself, what it's like to lose that edge that you had, that glimmer of brightness or quickness in your thinking. Ideas would link for me, I'd see connections and I took my mind for granted. I'd write, just for me, I loved to pour my heart out through my fingertips... and the words came easily. The grammar, not so much, but the words would just flow.
Now... now each word is stuck in molasses. Thoughts don't run together, they slowly seep through a fog and get lost and swirled with other thoughts. Reading has become a chore. Instead of losing myself in a book, I labour through.
I so remember that tired working mommy feeling, that overwhelmed feeling of being ON, tired, on edge and ON all the time. Having that rolodex in my head of every appointment, every schedule, every deadline, every colleague that needed a push, every relationship to nurture. I'd love to have the capacity, the endurance, the brain power to feel that again. What I feel now is different, so very different. It's a heaviness in my head and a tired that won't go. A tired that makes you slow and stupid ... that pounds at the back of your head and sits in your bones. I don't know where my synapses went, and what's worse, I worry that they are gone for good. The Doctors say vaguely reassuring words, but they don't know why this happens to some people or what causes it.
For me, because I'm a complicated girl, and nothing can be simple, it's even less clear because there are three pieces to my confusion puzzle. Is it from the radiation treatment? Or is it that plus stress from my husband moving out due to his struggles with the ugly black dog in his head? Or, just to kick a girl when she is down, is it the conveniently timed menopause?
So I try and build around the edges of this foggy, grey puzzle. Right now, this blog post is one piece of this puzzle. If I can just put together one little corner of the puzzle, just a few pieces that would click together then maybe I'll start to believe that I can get myself put back together again...