Today I was thinking about taking a break from my cancer journey blog posts and writing about something different. But what? I had the thought pop in my head about how difficult it has been for me to be able to think due to the sheer overload of thoughts in my head these days. It’s like part of my brain that had been in stasis for so long that I had forgotten it existed has started waking up. The increased flow of thought has felt like trying to keep up and understand the DNA strand scene on Jurassic Park. It’s just this constant streaming flow of thoughts rushing through my mind on fast forward.
Thinking about the sheer overload of thoughts in my head made me think of this day last week. I had come down with whatever nasty little bug is going around right now. The first full day I was just a hot mess. Literally. I felt like my body was on fire from the shoulders up. (Which was super weird because my entire household got it and I was the only one with that specific symptom.) Super bad headache, achy throat, swollen, sneezing, draining, just a bunch of yuck. But the second day, the fire feeling had gone away. The headache was still there but not as severe and the swollen achy throat was less achy and a little less swollen. That day I had the thought run through my head that that was the closest to ‘normal’ I had felt in a while. The overflow of thoughts was muffled and stifled by the blah in my head. Immediately following that thought was this wave of repulsion. ‘Where did that thought even come from?! If that is normal is, I don’t want any part of it?!’ I was still feeling TERRIBLE. My head hurt and was stuffed up, I was sneezing frequently and dripping snot all over the place. It was crazy to think that this was comparable to how I used to feel. All. Of. The. Time. This was what my brain had been conditioned to think was NORMAL! Well, if that is what my brains thinks normal should look like, than normal is clearly, highly overrated.
Looking back on these thoughts today, now that I am over this bug and back to the steady overflow of thoughts in my head, I came to some conclusions. For one, I would much rather feel the way I do today, and learn to deal with the overflow of thoughts in my head, than ever feel like that again. But also, that there are times in our lives where we maybe need to rewrite our narrative. We need to challenge and redefine what we call ‘normal’ or comfortable in our lives. Just because something ‘feels’ normal or ‘comfortable’(loosely speaking in this case of course), that doesn’t mean that it is healthy or helpful to us. Just because feeling sick felt normal to me, certainly didn’t mean that I should stay that way. Being sick is literally the opposite of being healthy. However, there might be other things in our lives that might FEEL normal, but are actually harmful and/or unhealthy for us. Someone living with verbal abuse might feel like being put down or spoken to harshly is ‘normal’. But it’s not healthy. Sometimes we have to step out of what feels ‘normal’ or ‘comfortable’ in order to live a better, healthier life. Sometimes, it takes stepping into what is uncomfortable to live our best lives.
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