I’ll tell you a secret.  About 3 months ago, 1 month into being stuck on the floor in excruciating pain, something happened to me that has never happened before. 

I’m no stranger to pain.  My vault of coping mechanisms is big.  But when I went to do what I always do… think of the future that I want, not the reality I have right now, something was different.

Everything was grey.

I’ve always been a visual person.  I spend a lot of time envisioning things, imagining myself in the situations that I want.  And all of a sudden, I couldn’t.  When I tried to see beyond where I was, it was all grey.  I couldn’t imagine myself feeling better, I couldn’t find something to look forward to. 

I couldn’t see myself in the future… at all. 

This was a first for me.  And not one that I enjoyed very much.  Without the ability to see myself as anything other than what I was in that moment meant there was no escape from the pain.  And for the first time, not being able to see a future for myself, I genuinely thought that meant I was going to die. 

I couldn’t see my future, because it didn’t exist.

And that made me really fucking sad.  And really fucking angry.  Because I’d worked so hard to create a beautiful life and felt that I wasn’t going to be able enjoy it.  It felt pretty fucked up.  It also felt very much like old Trish thinking “figures that now that you’ve got something great you won’t get to have it”.  And that was thinking that I’d been trying to change for a while.

The next couple of months I was not only wrought with physical pain, but, for the first time in my life, I was terrified of dying.  And that seemed odd to me because I’d had cancer, already, 3 times.  I’ve faced my mortality, repeatedly.  But I realized that in all those other times, I COULD NOT DIE.  I could not leave my kids to deal with the life we had at that time.  I had to live for their sake and so I don’t think I ever even allowed myself to be scared. 

When I tell you I was in hell… that’s no lie.  The only thing I could liken the pain to was transition in birth.  I remember, distinctly, my transition contractions from my youngest’s birth and I remember thinking to myself… if I have another one of those, I’ll die.

It was that level of pain, only, it didn’t come in waves.  It was constant.  And unbearable. I did have some days where it acted like it might be getting better, but it would come back with a vengeance, and through all of it… all I could see for myself was grey.  And as I went for treatment, though the intensity of pain decreased, it was replaced with a sickness in my soul that made me wonder if maybe I should stop fighting the inevitable.

A couple of weeks ago, I’d say maybe 4 weeks post radiation treatment, I started to be able to see myself going for a walk in the neighborhood.  And as the days went on, I was able to see myself going out of the house and seeing people.  Every day seems to have allowed me a little bit more of seeing myself well again.  Doing normal things again. 

So what the fuck was that grey?  What the hell was all that? 

Well, I think it actually was death.  A death of the version of Trish that thought I didn’t deserve this beautiful life.  A death of the Trish that had to hold all of the fear and all of the pain inside because she needed to make sure her kids would be okay.  A death of the Trish I’ve been, to make way for the Trish I’ve become. 

And the similarity of my pain to transition in birth… well maybe that was for a reason.  For me to realize that this whole process was a rebirth into the version of me I’ve been working towards.  And maybe it was all grey for a while because there was no future as that previous version of me.  I couldn’t take the red pill and the blue pill. 

I had to make a choice.  I had to let go of all of that pain.  I had to feel it and release it, because otherwise, it would have killed me.  And this time, I wasn’t doing it for my kids.  I was doing it because I, Trish, love this life and want to have many more adventures.  I want to continue to build beautiful things with my wife and see the world.  I want to watch the difference my kids make as they find their own inner peace.  And I want to continue my path of helping others who are struggling through what my family went through,

And now, just like a baby, I've been learning to walk again.  And learning how to interact with this world as this new version of myself.  And it’s taking time.  A lot of time.  But I feel fundamentally different.  Not in a way that I can explain.  But I do know that gentle is a big part of how I envision my future, which is very new.

But more importantly, I can envision my future again.  And for that, I am grateful.