Thoughts. Some are angry.

Thoughts start popping into my head around this time. November.  The days are getting shorter.  The weather is getting colder.  My birthday is on the horizon.  My cancerversary is around the corner.  I remember my 22^nd birthday and Christmas clearly.  My last cancer free ones.  Or rather, before I knew it was there.

I was never fussed about my birthday and in some ways I still aren’t. But.  Niggling thoughts have started.  To get one thing clear before I go any further.  I don’t by any means feel old.  I know I am not old.  I am not bothered by the grey hair that I have, in fact, I really rather like it.  This may be because most people think I’m in my mid 20s, not nearly 32.  The one thing that bothers me is that I’m nearly 32.

32 is no great age I know.  And in some ways I am lucky to have reached this age and will continue to get old.  My cancer diagnosis has never meant that I have had to question my mortality or plan my funeral or wonder what life will be like without me.  Or wonder how it feels to have limited time to try and do everything.  And not get angry that it will be taken away from me.  Death, from my cancer diagnosis, was never an option really.  Not once I started responding to the oral chemo I take daily and a bone marrow transplant was taken off my check list of things to do.  But I feel that my diagnosis has in some ways taken things away from me.

Maybe my life would have been like this anyways, I don’t know though, so I do wonder.  My parallel universe.  Flat owned, married, baby or pregnant.  These are thing things I thought I would have by now.  Things that so many of my friends have.  Things that my sibling have, or at least tick one or two of those boxes.  These are the things that really matter to me.  And they are the things I don’t have.

I think it’s because of my diagnosis and because I don’t drink.  Friends say I’m mental to think that.  If it isn’t those two things it means it’s simply me that isn’t attractive.  It’s me that boys don’t want to be with.  It’s me that isn’t the one that someone wants to spend the rest of their life with.  And well.  That’s fucking shitty in all honesty.  So I think it’s my cancer and being sober.

And I know, I know, the right one is just around the corner…..and has been for years now so if they could hurry the fuck up that would be nice.  The clock is ticking.  My baby clock.  Not that I could have one now.  No way can I have a year off treatment at the moment. Cancer has taken that away from me.  I hope to god and the universe that it hasn’t taken my baby/babies away from me forever.  That would be devastating.

And the one.  I think I’ve met them, I know I have.  But not for me.  Not in this life, and that’s so hard to deal with.

All these thoughts around this time.  Melancholy and it’s not just winter arriving.

My parallel universe.  I wonder if that Katie is happy there.  Does she like her job?  Is her relationship happy?  Is the flat nice?  Do these things matter? Should they matter?

I don’t know.

And then it’s Movember and October was breast cancer awareness month.  Like testicular cancer and breast cancer need any more advertising and awareness.

Do you know what Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia is?  Well you should do because it’s what I have.

Do you know what non-Hodgkin lymphoma is?

Do you know what myeloma is?  And no.  It’s not skin cancer.

Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia?

These are all blood cancers.  The 5^th most diagnosed and 3^rd biggest killer.

And a friend of mine has lung cancer.  The biggest killer, 10% survive and it has the least funding.  And this.  Well it makes me angry.

And I know it’s all tied up to me and my shit and my diagnosis of a ‘lucky’ cancer that ‘doesn’t impact’ and I look fine and I’m not going to die so I’m not allowed to have the same opinion as others, and I can’t get upset that others who were older than me at diagnosis feel aggrieved that they were the age they were even though by that point I had been living with it for years.  It fucks me off I have to defend my opinion and feelings on what it’s life for ME LIVING WITH CANCER EVERY FUCKING DAY OF MY LIFE.

And I will be able to cope with this if I don’t end up childless and on my own. If cancer does that to me.  Well.  At this point I have no words.