Who Am I?

When you have a disability like hearing loss or when your sick in a bad way like when your diagnosed with Cancer, suddenly you find that you define your life by your illness or your disability. It becomes a part of your personality, a part of who you are on a deeper level. The challenge really comes when you find yourself either cured of the disease or no longer disabled. Suddenly, all the things you thought you were are no longer relevant and you need to reinvent yourself.

This is the challenge I have been working through as of late and my reading from the LAF support materials tells me that this depression I seem to have hit is both normal and expected. You see, when you think you know your life and your situation and you spend a lot of time mentally accepting and preparing yourself for what you think is going to happen, you almost reach a sense of peace with where you are. Then suddenly someone picks up the snow globe that is your life and gives it a good shake and suddenly all the little flakes are no longer settled.

I once defined my life by my deafness. I became fully embedded in the deaf community and almost all my friends were deaf. I accepted that I was deaf and built my life around being a deaf male. Then I was told that I was a CI candidate and that changed everything. My life as I knew it was about to change in a HUGE way. We have already looked at that a while ago and so there is no need to rehash all that. Fact is, I had to change and the way I lived my life and the person I was had to change with it. I could deal with that and although I did have challenges both socially and personally with it, I managed.

The next thing I know I am being told I have Cancer of the brain stem and that I am not likely going to live beyond two years unless medical treatment is successful. We have all traveled through that part of my life and needless to say I prepared myself for what I thought was an unavoidable early exit from life. Fate once again intervened and things were once again turned on their ear. I had accepted what I thought was my fate and was fully prepared and at peace with death only to find out that things were going a very different direction.

So here I am. I have twice tried to build a life, a personality, a sense of self being only to have the proverbial carpet pulled out from underneath me. Now I find that I spend most of my days suffering from a sense of anxiety and panic, depression, and fear of what could happen next. Its weird, I am a very easy going and relaxed kind of person and lately a lot of little things have been setting me off, making me very angry in ways I never thought possible and I find it harder and harder to control that anger. I dont want to be angry, depressed, anxious, or paniced and yet I cant seem to stop it. Thank god for Caleb who seems to be my raft in this sea of madness but for how long can I expect him to be able to handle this? The only thing I know for sure is that I love him but the rest of my life is in total flux and in a sick and twisted way, I almost mourn the loss of being sick with Cancer because at least then I knew what to expect...I knew who I was.

I guess in some respects I just want to finally have peace in terms of defining who I am and where I fit into this world. Until I reach that point I think I am going to ask myself over and over again...Who Am I?

LiveSTRONG!