The Hard Stuff

When I started writing this blog, I did so for me, so that I would have a place to write my feelings. Secondly, I did it for other survivors. I have spent my life on the cutting edge of survivorship, and there have not been many resources to let me know how other survivors feel, and so I wanted to offer this as one of those resources. I am finding that it is hard to write about the really difficult things, though. Just as in my life, I often put out a front of "I'm good," as to avoid the difficult explanations and possible hurt that goes with saying how I really feel. I ask myself over and over: is it worth it to say how I really feel? Or will it be another way I might cause pain in my family. The answer is, I don't know. But I do know that the really hard stuff is usually what needs to be let out. It is what eats us up inside and causes us to hold back on our dreams.

I am realizing in my counseling that much of what I do in my life is driven by one single factor: an attempt to make up or make right the pain that was caused to my family, especially my siblings, by my years and years of being sick. Always, always, always in the back of my mind - and sometimes in the front of my mind - is the notion that I've caused so much pain. I know my parents missed really, really, really important moments in the lives of my siblings because they were caring for me. I know that my parents, especially my mom, have to live with knowing that, too. How we interact, the habits we have as a family seem to be colored so much by this fact. And the more and more I try to make it right, the worse I feel - it is a a vicious cycle.

I try and appear totally okay when I am around my siblings - it's not fair to be any other way - since they've already been through so much. I try and do and say things that will be somehow representative of the pain and guilt I feel without letting them know my motives. I try and say and do things that might keep them from worrying about me.

This is the thing - it's never enough. It will never be enough. Nothing I say or do will ever take away what happened. I tell myself over and over that I did not bring on Ewings Sarcoma - it was nothing I did to make it happen. It is not my fault. We all did the best we could do. Over and over I tell myself this, and still it is there - the guilt. What a useless but gripping emotion. 

I am learning that what is inside me comes out in anger, annoyance, and bitterness. I do not want every time I get together with my siblings to be a counseling session, I'm not saying that. I guess I just want to be real. And maybe in the end that won't look much different than I am right now. I don't know. I just want to worry less about what my life has done to them.  And maybe saying these things out loud - or at least on the screen - will free me from some of this. That is something I am working on with my counselor - it is on me to get through this. It is nothing my siblings have done to make me feel this way. I am realizing, though, that my reactions to situations are colored so much by this ever present guilt, frustration, ughhhhhhhh feeling I continue to harbor.

So there it is....the truth. The hard stuff. There it is. I put it out there for me. For other survivors who, too, might know the grip of guilt. Let it go....let it go...I am pushing publish before I chicken out.