As I start my last full year of college, I am startled by how much I still think about cancer. On a good day, it might just be a small reminder: my short hair, a leg cramp. On a bad day, which thankfully happen less and less often, I am assaulted by past feelings and can become bitter and angry in a flash for things that happened to me years ago.
But not all memories tied to that time are bad. For the first time in my life, I really do feel like I am picking up and moving on. I am known by many people at college not because of cancer, but because of my major, or where I live, or what I am interested in. They know and like me for me, not for what I have been. I am leaving that chapter behind me once and for all.
Not for good, though. I could never completely rid myself of that as that time is as much a part of who I am as any other time. Nor do I want to forget what happened to me for that was when I found my strength. I am leaving behind the bad, and I am applying the good.
And my word does it feel freeing.
With cancer comes so much emotional baggage. With that baggage comes a unique perspective. No matter what I am facing I remind myself of this truth: I have already done the hardest thing I will ever do. If I can do cancer, I can do anything.
Tonight we were talking in class about what will happen after graduation. I have wanted to be a teacher for so long that I have been secretly afraid that I might not be good enough and then I won't know what to do. All the education classes in the world can't make you a good teacher or else we would have no bad ones. What if I don't have the knack for it? What if I am just not made to be a teacher?
My professor eased some of my fears when she said that the job I get after college will probably not be the job I have for the rest of my life. And I may not even end up working in the field I think I will. Maybe I will end up somewhere using my degree in ways I never thought I could. And that is okay. That doesn't make my degree any less important because I didn't get my "dream job."
If I can do cancer, I can do anything.
Maybe on my way to that dream I will get lost and find a new one. A better one. A dream with a job and a place I didn't even know was real.
The future isn't set in stone, I should know this better than most.
My new normal is teaching me that new dreams are found around every corner. And that picking up and moving on is okay so long as I don't forget the strength I have found along the way.
––Rachael
