LABEL MAKER

I’m a writer. I’ve always been a writer. Once upon a time I even did it professionally. But right now, I don’t know what to write. I love all of you for loving my blog and supporting me and I know you’re waiting for more. Me, too. But nothing is happening right now, cancer-wise, so I don’t know what to say. My dear, sweet best friend, Susan, who’s a fabulous writer, tells me to just start and see where it goes. So, if this goes to shit, you now have a link to Susan’s feed and you can heckle her there. 😉

I’m fortunate that nothing is happening right now, cancer-wise, but it doesn’t feel like it’s far enough behind me yet to claim success. I feel label-less, undefined.

Has enough time passed since my mastectomy with the pathology report that came back and said I’m in the all-clear to call myself a ‘cancer survivor’? Do I have to hold off until the end of the five year “Will it come back?” period before I can safely say that I’m a survivor? I guess, technically, I’ve survived, although my cancer was never in a position to kill me, so there’s also that. It would be like saying I survived driving home from my conference earlier this week on I95. Sure, lots of people die in car crashes on I95 but that doesn’t really make me a ‘survivor’, does it? Maybe I’m being to hard on myself. A win is a win. Perhaps I should feel more of a sense of survivor-hood. After all, I make it successfully through each and every one of my days.

I also don’t feel like ‘cancer victim’ is appropriate as a label for me. I don’t feel victimized by it, I never did. And I don’t, on principal, allow myself to recognize victim-ness. It’s just not a place I want to be. I’m a dust myself off by the seat of my pants, pick myself up again, and move on kinda gal. So ‘cancer victim’? Just no.

And I’m not really a cancer patient any longer. Yes, I have check ups now to make sure I’m still cancer-less, but other than having to take a pill for the next five years, my cancer-related appointments are over, thank you very much!

So, what does that make me, cancer-wise? I have no idea. And why am I spending so much time trying to figure it out? That’s the bigger mystery. This terrible thing happened to me, I dealt with it, I got through it and now I’m on the other side wondering what I call that time in my life and worried that if I call it anything I’m tempting fate. But I can’t just ignore it, pretend it never happened. Can I? I’d like to. But it’s not realistic, especially every time I get undressed. Or any time something brushes against the left side of my chest and I remember that I used to be able to feel things like that.

I can come up with a thousand labels for myself: woman, mother, daughter, single, professional, analytical…but nothing that seems to appropriately sum up my time with cancer.

And before you tell me how unimportant labels are, I disagree. Labels help us understand, connect, find common ground, and more. I like my labels, as long as they’re accurate. But this one eludes me. I feel like I’m betwixt and between on the cancer labels. So maybe that’s just it, we’ll call it ‘cancer-pending’.