Six years.

I feel like I have lived an entire other life since the cancer was cut out…six years ago today.

I have avoided writing this post all day.  And now as I sit in the quiet of the place I call home listening to Shawn Colvin,

In tears.

Quietly.

By myself.

Like I have done every June 1st since the first June 1st.

Six years ago today at this time I was still pretty much out of it. I was a haze of pain meds and anesthesia.  My one thought was that the tumor was out and I wanted clear margins.

Breast cancer was the monkey wrench threw in my life six years ago. It has kept life interesting, when it hasn’t scared the crap out of me.

When I was diagnosed, I had just fallen deeply and truly in love for the first time in my adult life.  I thought God had a hell of a nerve when I was diagnosed.  Here I was finally emerging on the other side of a very bad relationship into the one I was destined for that had me feeling something new: hopeful.

Wham! Like I got the breath knocked out of me was how the news felt.  I can still remember the way I felt sitting in my office that day when Dr. Sataloff called to tell me late one April afternoon from a conference all the way across the country that my tumor was a tumor and it was malignant.

From that day in April I felt I was on this crazy race against time. Like playing beat the clock meets Russian Roulette. Then on June 1st….I exhaled.

Life has taken me on many journeys including emotional since my breast cancer diagnosis, treatment, and surgery.  I have said it many times before but I will say it again, the weird thing about breast cancer is it actually gave me myself back.

It’s not all unicorns and rainbows, though.  Every once in a while usually in the deep darkness of night my fears of recurrence are the worst type of night terrors ever imagined. And I can tell you I have a hard time attending funerals, especially if someone dies of breast cancer.  A lot of the time, I just can’t do it.

I also can’t spend a lot of time in my breast cancer group.  It sounds selfish but sometimes I just can’t do it.  Especially when I hear what some survivors are put through by their families and loved ones.

But then the clouds lift and I am back.  I am very grateful to be alive.

While I was writing I heard a Shawn Colvin song I never heard before (and it is not new) . I will leave you with it – it’s beautiful.