Coping

I received an email from a friend the other day, asking how I am able to cope with the bad days. Since I'm not getting any medical help for the feelings of depression, she wondered about my strategies for dealing with the overwhelming emotions.

She shared she uses exercise and food for days when she's not on top of her game, but realized those options aren't available to me right now; at least, not to the same extent. Exercising is difficult and I'm so out of shape. We got Wii Fit on the weekend at a garage sale and I've been playing a few of the games. But I'm so out of shape I feel the exercises in my shredded stomach muscles and some of the actions make my healing port site ache. (But to be fair, Michael feels some of the exercises in his body too so perhaps I'm not as wrecked as I believe.)

Then yesterday, my worst depressive day, I didn't even have the energy nor inclination to attempt any of the fun exercise games. I complained of the soreness I felt in my body from the day before's activities and avoided the calls of the little green wii fit board.

So how do I cope? I realized yesterday, not very well. Yesterday was a bad day - one I would have liked to have simply slept through. I did little activities like sew Tara's Girl Guide badges on her sash, watched an episode of The Good Wife on Rogers on Demand and finished a book. But by the afternoon, I was beside myself with bad feelings and I was crying about the unfairness of this whole situation, how terrible I felt and lamenting the need to continue to experience this over and over again while allowing the chemotherapy to attack the cancer.

I don't feel strong. I don't feel happy. I don't feel like I can cope. I'm a bit of a mess, really.

I want to scream, "I can't do this!" But of course, I have to. I have no choice. I want to live.

Then I tell myself, it's really only one day that's really, really bad (I hope today is better), and that I can suck it up and be strong. But on that one day, the badness feels eternal.

It's so hard to explain the overwhelming emotional garbage that swirls around my body and mind. It's a feeling, not a physical symptom, and it's impossible to describe. It's almost unbelievable a feeling can affect me so profoundly that I feel like all hope has been sucked out of my world. Then this feeling becomes physical because it's so heavy. Like I said, hard to describe. And I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

Today, I have to take my darling daughter to the dentist and our house is woefully short on groceries, so I have things to do. I haven't been able to fully assess my state of mind quite yet - the coffee is still trying to chug its way through my system - but hopefully I'm climbing out of the cold, dark basement to a sunnier place.

Tina