If I Could Press a Button

I still can't say that I'm happy I had the surgery. Not with my whole heart, anyway. Even when I say it out loud, inwardly I wince. Because yes, it's nice to not have to bother and it's also nice not to be diseased. Yet, when my therapist asks me if I ever wish I could go back to Before, my answer is, "All the time!"

Prior to the surgery, I was despairing. DESPAIRING. Life felt hopeless. It seemed an endless round of bleeding, feeling weak, not doing the things that bring me joy. I had started a new heavy period just days before surgery, and if I'd had to endure yet another round, I don't know how I would have survived. I was DESPAIRING. For months. Surgery alone doesn't just fix that kind of emotional turmoil. I claim that I never had to deal with the emotional fallout after learning I had cancer, but Charlie and Beth say I still suffered from cancer. I still suffered from the heavy and constant bleeding. I was always under such emotional and physical strain from it. It was hard to watch people swim and exercise and just walk around and go to sleep when they felt like it. I wouldn't say that I'd been depressed, but maybe on my way towards that door.

It might be confusing to some why I would choose to go back to that endless misery-- a misery that prevented me from engaging in the life I saw for myself. Why would I possibly choose that depressing existence over the one I have now? To understand that, I guess, you'd need to know that my surgery stirred up some shit. Physical pain and discomfort, I expected. I know how to handle that kind of thing. I can handle pain. The hormonal stuff, though, blindsided me. For at least three weeks, I woke up each morning with a weight on my chest. A dread. I felt isolated and confused much of the time. I traded one sadness for another, but at least the older sadness was familiar.

I don’t know why I assumed things would just improve After the hysterectomy, though I wonder if I wasn’t the only one to think so. Even people who have never had surgery assume that surgery changes shit. And while I’m always thinking about how my life has changed post-op, I rarely remember that I’d already been feeling shitty pre-op. You can’t just turn that off on a whim or because you want to or because you get your uterus cut out of your body. I’m no doctor, but it seems like It would take some time no matter what to recover from what I was feeling Before.

Now, let’s talk about After. Not even going to talk about the physical recovery because that was easy peasy in comparison. I'd just been through this major thing, both physically and especially (and unexpectedly) emotionally, and now I was just supposed to forget about it and get over it. My feelings and my pain were meaningless. Short-term. An aberrant blip on the radar. For the first time in a long time, I felt sad. I felt uncomfortable. I felt like I was going crazy. I felt unequal to the task and I needed help. And I was spending so much of my time ALONE. Actually, physically alone. And then I started feeling like I was being a burden to the people around me with my sadness and confusion and isolation. I started feeling like I should be hiding my feelings because I was being selfish and unreasonable.

I should be able to cry and moan. I should be focused on what I need to feel good, to improve my disposition, to come to terms with the huge change I just experienced. I should be allowed time. Loads of time. All the time I need, in fact, to come to terms with everything. I went through some shit. The bleeding, anemia, the restricted activities, the despair, the surgery, the pain, the hormonal imbalance, the feelings of isolation and sadness, and then now this feeling that I’m selfish and mean because I’m still not better. I’m still not over it. And you could say I’m whining or weak, and you could go fuck yourself for writing me off, for explaining away my experience. Yes, I’m whining and perhaps I’m weak. It doesn’t mean I don’t deserve to work through this, to be allowed to be not okay. I can take some time to focus on me.

Anger is a shy friend of mine. She is a friend, no doubt, but she is hesitant and flees quickly and easily. I wish she would stick around more. I wish she were more of a bad influence on me. Maybe I would be better at standing up for myself. Maybe I wouldn't feel like I was being an asshole for trying to process this last year. Maybe I wouldn't feel like an asshole for paying more attention to my own troubles. Maybe I wouldn’t feel like I have to mask my feelings and deal with this myself.

The kicker, of course, is that on the outside, my life doesn’t look much different, does it? I go to work, I buy bananas, I drink coffee, I laugh, I joke, I do considerate things for other people. I still often consider other people’s needs before my own. I still do my utmost to keep my mouth shut. I still do what I can to please other people. Despite my therapist’s good advice, I still don’t do what I should do as often as is good for me. And my lack of diligence shouldn’t at all reflect on the quality of her services, it’s just hard (and by hard, I mean hard for me). Challenging. It makes me unbelievably uncomfortable, and it forces me to face situations I’d rather avoid.

People who have gone through the same or similar experiences say that it took them a long time to process and deal with what comes after surgery. It doesn't make sense. Why should surgery—why should improving your life through surgery actually complicate your life, especially after you’ve recovered? Why shouldn’t I just feel healed and happy about it? It’s so confusing. But, okay. Long time to process. Long journey toward healing. I can do that. I have to do that. It's not like I have a choice. I can’t stay where I am right now, and I can’t go back to where I was. There’s only forward progress.

Don't you think that if I could only press a button to fix things, I would? Don't you think if I could manage to keep my shit to myself, I would? Don't you think I'd rather be happy and satisfied than confused and struggling? Why would I choose this? Why would I intentionally put myself in this position over and over again to be hurt, to come up with no answers only questions, to make myself so disgustingly uncomfortable that I wish I could just float away? I would press that button a thousand times. I would cross that street in a heartbeat. I would jaywalk, even. I would run across the five-lane highway against the light even if a cop was watching, and I am not a rule breaker. Because dealing with this in my own head is not fun. It's the least amount of fun I've had in a long time. I have cried more post-op than during the entire year of bleeding. I just want to be okay. I just want to feel grateful for having the hysterectomy and for being disease-free. I just want to be okay. 

And if I could just press that stupid fucking button, I would.