The abyss

I shouldn't be surprised really because it was the same when I finished chemo. A grand sense of anticlimax and total exhaustion. You think you are going to feel so elated that another chapter has passed, but it's only when it comes to an end you realise how tightly you've been holding on.

I finished radiotherapy on Tuesday and went out that night to meet some of the year 7 Mums in the pub - most of whom I'd never seen before in my life. It was weird introducing myself to strangers who know nothing about my life over the last few months, one of whom I've actually met twice but didn't recognise me at all. That sense of disassociation - as if I'm on the outside looking in - barely left me. I am not the same person I was and it will take time for me to work out who I am now, how to represent myself in the world. Soon my hair will be back and from the outside I will pass as normal; the same as all the others with their everyday anxieties and ultimately carefree existence. But I am not the same. I cannot go back to being carefree - I now have to manage each day, being careful not to tread on the cracks, trying to make sense of what has happened and what might happen again. There are times right now when I feel almost euphoric at the realisation that each day is a blessing, and that I am alive, and others when the loss of my old self seems too much to bear. The night in the pub made me want to run back to the comfort of my bed with its new white pillows and soft feather duvet and lie there forever. Which is basically where I've been ever since. Just me, my painfully burnt boob, and Super Mario.