Guilt

I think the most burdensome emotion that having cancer made me feel was in fact guilt. This seemed like a perfectly normal thing to me, and it was only when in therapy that I was made to realise I shouldn't feel that way. I feel guilty because I feel like I bought so much pain and sadness to everyone around me. Destructive thoughts swirl around in my mind that I ruined my parents' and my sister's lives, and my whole family felt sad because of me. These thoughts are very strongly linked to memories of family members crying when they saw me in hospital/when my hair fell out.
I find it difficult to separate myself from the cancer, because I see it as being a part of me. What I need to realise is that it was cancer that made everyone sad, and not me. It's like in The Fault In Our Stars, which is my favorite book due to it's perfection, where Hazel Grace describes herself as a grenade. I was that grenade. When I was diagnosed it exploded and sent out ripples of sadness and pain to everyone involved in my life. I felt like I was the stone that dropped into the water and sent out these huge waves of sadness, affecting my immediate family most, then my extended family, then everyone else around me. The most gratifying moment of therapy for me was when my psychiatrist explained that the stone was cancer, and I was overcome by the first wave, I was affected the most. This really helped me to visualise the fact that cancer and I are separate entities.
However, I still have some toxic thoughts centred around the reasoning that if I had never been born, no one would have had their lives ruined, and everyone would be happier/better off. If any of you also feel this way, please please please remember that it is cancer that caused the destruction; cancer is the grenade, not you.

Sophie xo