Finding the Lost Woman

I have the most amazing friends. That really struck me the other day when I received another remarkable card of support. When I needed it the most, this card was there, encouraging me, cheering me on, helping to lift my head up out of the darkness. And the darkness is where I feel I have been.

Cancer takes me into this terrible dismal place where there is no joy, no laughter, no sound at all. It is not only the silence that surrounds me, but it is the total absence of light. Not even a pinprick in the distance. Absolute utter darkness. All that is good and right and joyful has been sucked out of the room leaving me in a place I no longer recognize as home with a person I no longer recognize as me. I looked at myself and realized that I don’t know that person looking back at me in the mirror. The person that I know is loud and gregarious and loves to talk and visit with her friends for hours on end. The woman that stares back at me is solemn and serious, preferring to remain alone in a solitary existence. She is tired and irritable, short tempered and sad, and yet her friends still loved her and support her, lifting her up, knowing that person that they love is still inside there somewhere, trapped in the bleak underpinnings of cancer.

My friends remember the person that I was before the cancer took it toll on not only my body, but my mind, my life, my essence as a woman, and they love me in spite of the person that I have become. They are kind enough to not ask where she is, or when she’ll be back, but soldier on with me secure in the knowledge that she is in there somewhere, lost and lonely, screaming to come back to her life. I realize how much I miss that woman, that girl, that smiling, laughing, loud mouthed, talk-incessantly without stopping person. I realize how much I want her back. And I look into the eyes of my friends, and I see her reflected back at me and know that she is still here; she is just trapped in the shadows of the disease and imprisoned in a jail of hopelessness and despair.

So I reach deep inside, beyond the darkness, the silence, the desolation and isolation and I see her. She is not lost, she is there, simply waiting to be set free again. Waiting for the opportunity to step forth and become the lead actor in this play called my life. My friends, the salt of the earth and the keepers of my smile, knew all along that she was still there, and yet they patiently await her return.

I am committed to return her to me and to you. I realize that I have not been the person that I want to be, and I desperately want that woman back. Only I can coax her back into existence. So, I am putting a smile on my face, laughter in my heart and words of joy on my lips. She is coming back, hold on to your hats!