Fun House Mirror Reflection

Imagine waking up in a foreign place. Sounds like it could be a dream right?? Except you didn't plan this trip, you don't know the language and you don't have a return ticket booked. Now it's starting to become a nightmare. To make matters worse, everything looks familiar but your feelings regarding them are different, things that gave you joy make you feel scared or sad.

Betrayed by my best friend, I feel like I can't trust myself anymore. Anytime I think something is serious it's not, and when it is, I have no idea! It's almost too painful to process, so true to my nature, I try to hide from it, I pretend it's not there. If I don't confront it I can't be disappointed by the answer. Recently a friend/trainer posted a simple meditation video, Peace Within. It caught my attention so I gave it a go. It sparked this internal journey again. She asked us to look inside and see what we need to find peace, to clear out our mental space to allow for the good things. With the new year almost on us, we all make resolutions but do we make space for them to manifest?

I've turned away from yoga and meditation during this ordeal when I thought I'd be turning towards it. I'm ashamed to admit that, since I so often profess my love of yoga, its healing nature and the strength I've found in it.

The inner journey is a scary one. I don't want to even think about my true fears because by imagining them I might bring them into reality. This is a very distorted sense of power I have but too many times I feel I've manifested what I wanted. Law of attraction. Thoughts become words, words become actions...

I feel I've given so much control away. I don't question the doctors when they want yet another scan, even though 6 months ago I would have. I don't even question where people put things in my house because I think its ungrateful when they are trying to help me. But the me I was, the one in control, the one who planned and produced....I don't feel like her anymore. I see myself letting others make plans for me and I barely bat an eye now. My expectations for myself are so low and everyone around me seems to expect so little as well, I feel like a ghost.

There was a gentleman in chemo this last time that I spoke to a lot. I mentioned my blog and how I started it as a way to mentally dump my emotions and when encouraged to share it, it reached many people for different reasons. He told me he was proud of me for sharing without ever reading it because he felt for him its been so hard to wrap his head around everything, the medications, the side effects and the general mental overload. It's a steep learning curve. Like you passed through a portal into a different dimension. Where everything looks the same but is just a bit left off centre and you need to adapt. He told me, "after a lifetime of travelling the continent for work I always felt that I would be comfortable anywhere with a cup of coffee" but since his diagnosis its been like walking into a different dimension where you don't understand the language and everything is just a bit different and it takes a while to get your sea legs. We said it's like you're looking in a fun house mirror where only you see something different and even though so many people are trying to help, only in talking with someone who has experienced something similar will have any idea what it means. There's a camaraderie in cancer that I'm grateful for. This empowers me to continue this writing journey. I've often questioned the why behind it, but it's encounters like today that I think I was meant to do this.