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How do we do that to live through our fears???
Disclaimer--- While this is sarcasm I think the understanding of the fear is real.
So my eyelash is really bad, I mean BAD! It has been bugging me for awhile now and I am just so scared to address it. It is significantly longer than the rest and rather misshapen. I feel like it is causing my eye pain and its so itchy. I asked my dad to please look at it, he blew in it and said it was just dust. UGH no it isn't. I swear there is something more. I know it is eyelash cancer, I just know it. OMG what if they have to take all the lashes, I have great lashes. ANOTHER surgery, chemo?? How do they do radiation on your eyelashes?? Will I go blind? Will I be able to drive? Although I do hear that eyelash cancer is the easiest or is it the hardest I forget.
While the above it a joke the reality is in there. After the friends leave with their casserole dishes, the family goes home with their mops and you try to find a "new normal" you have a certain paranoia over head. Like you are standing under the ball at Times Square on New Year's waiting for it to drop, ON YOU. You feel every ache different than before, every mark on your body is some sort of made up or real cancer and you have to find a way to balance being that crazy cupcake cancer person to being a responsible healthy chick. The truth is we do not know if cancer will come back and I will tell you that living in this world I see it too much but I do not want every ache to be eyelash cancer. Yet at the same time between the doctor appointments, blood work, scans and aches how do we not?? Is there really a balance?? I know for a fact that a headache is just a headache and sometimes means nothing. I know that sometimes i just have a back ache. I know that sometimes it is just scar tissue buildup and not a lump. I know that sometimes it is my lymphedema acting up. But sometimes it is not just those things. Having cancer isn't like having the flu and being stuck in bed for a few weeks and regaining strength to recover. It is mind altering, body changing, life threatening. It shakes and rattles you and not in a rock n' roll way. You have to find a way to push these new fears aside live this life you have.
How do we do that to live through our fears??? I guess the only way to do that is to put life in our life. So screw the cupcake cancer (no joke my breastie may have this so don't laugh, ahahah), the eyelash cancer can bite me, the toenail cancer can have my sweaty feet I am going to get on my life on. Right after my doctor appointment next week and I wait for the results after that OY VEY!!
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I think you are right on with your view of dealing with fear. Fear seems to built into our DNA and evolution, so we cannot get rid f it, but we can choose to not make our decisions in life based on fear. This takes lot of work. For me, daily meditation, surrender of my will to my Higher Power (HP) since mine did not get me anywhere I wish to be again, and reaching out to ask for help with my fears through professional therapy, working with my sponsor, and communicating honestly and openly with my fellows in reocvery. I hope some of this might be helpful or offer an "ah-ha" moment.