I am not a lazy person, I never have been. It's not in my nature to be still for long. My preference has always been to keep moving, doing and achieving. Constantly writing page long lists and furiously crossing items off one after another after another. The more items crossed off, the better the day. My natural inclination is to be busy and to fill every moment in a day until it's time to sleep. And having moved, done and achieved a lot then to sleep soundly before waking up the next morning ready to do it all again. That was what a good day looked like to me.
But that was then. That was before anxiety and depression. Before chronic insomnia. That was before the ongoing fall-out from intensive cancer treatment. Before adrenal fatigue and chronic pain. That was before.
Now a good day looks very different to me. A good day is one that doesn't involve taking pain medication simply to be able to get out of bed. On a good day I feed my family and my animals, get my son to and from the school bus and maybe cross one additional thing off my list. That list, that page of writing, covers a span of a week or more now, not just a single day. Now a good day is one without tears of anger or frustration and without anxiety.
I understand that it could be easy for someone else to see my stillness, my lack of activity or achievement, and assume that I'm a lazy person. Even those closest to me don't see the real struggle, because I always try to stay positive and keep smiling. I don't complain often, at least I try my best not to, because I know how lucky I am to still be here, sleepless nights and chronic pain aside. It's a huge mental shift to go from "Wonder Woman" constantly achieving to "Mrs Average"(or is that "Mrs Below Average"?) just getting through the day. To go from over-achiever to barely-achiever.
The best piece of advice I was given when I started my cancer journey was to "learn to embrace the new you". Simple huh? It really is great advice and although it sounds simple it's actually incredibly difficult to do. What it comes down to, I think, is finding peace with those limitations I can't remove. It's about accepting that I can no longer do all the things I was used to doing myself and most importantly accepting help from others so those things can still get done even if not by me. It is incredibly difficult to do but very slowly I am beginning to understand my limitations. I think I get better at it every year.
I'm not a lazy person. What I am is a survivor finding and trying to accept "the new me". Finding isn't so hard, it's accepting that's still a work in progress.
