Survivor's guilt

Surviving.

What does this mean for most people? Does it mean going to work and paying the bills and just getting through the day? For some of us it means beating death to the punch line because he was knocking on our very door. I have also noticed a difference between people who've suffered from a long term illness and people who had a brush with death in something like a car accident. By all means they are both traumatic, but one leaves a bigger stain than the other. To battle with a disease and win, when you were so sure you were going to lose, is to find yourself forever locked in a reality different than those people around you. Much like other groups of people only those who have shared this experience could truly understand the depth of which I speak. I mean no malcontent towards others, but it's a fact that unless you've walked a mile in someone's shoes you don't feel their situation, you may logically understand it but you don't feel it. The caretakers of those with terminal illnesses go through their own personal hell and the person with the disease can't feel their pain either.

Survivor's guilt. This is the topic of which I am talking about. How do you go on day after day, trying to make a living when you feel guilty for simply existing? It seems that since you've existed you should do something fantastic and fabulous with your life. Learn how to cure cancer, save the hungry, cure the common cold, I don't know what, but somehow it feels like I have to make a difference. A big difference in order to justify the reason that I lived when so many others died. In the 3 years following my diagnosis of remission I lost 3 people to cancer and worked for the hospital in which I had been treated. I routinely had to call my own oncologist (cancer doctor) and have her come to the office where I worked because we handled all the death certificates. Calling her to come sign a death certificate on a patient that could have been me was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life. It helped me to get back on my feet a bit, sort of like tottering on my toes in 6 inch stiletto heels. I wouldn't say I was on my feet, but I was getting there. Unfortunately, I don't know as I've progressed much past that point in the years following. The year I worked for Evanston Hospital (the hospital I was in treatment) was 2 years or so post active chemotherapy. It's now 16 years since my diagnosis and I'm still chasing some unbeknownst dragon, something that I have to do or be or feel in order for me to feel as though I've made the difference that was needed to justify my life. I recently got married, we're looking at adopting, I own a house. I am struggling with money and my parents have had to help me, but who hasn't struggled in this economic climate of 2008.

So moving on, how does one do this emotionally? How do you stop caring about being a survivor? How do you stop looking into the eyes of those that pass you and wondering what is their difficulty in life? When does the "pull" stop and you're able to just sit back and relax like so many other people around you?

I have come to the conclusion that maybe we never stop worrying, stop caring, stop wondering. I think that we all have to find our own niche in this world and fulfill that to the best of our knowledge or to the best of our emotional pull. Maybe working at soup kitchens is the way to go, maybe knitting a scarf for someone is the best way to fulfill the desire, maybe just living is the ultimate. Just continuing on in the name of those who could not; just putting that one foot in front of the other, taking each step, each day. Struggling to pay the bills, fighting with your spouse over money, being imperfect at something but continuing anyway. Maybe that's how we live for all those who didn't make it. One day at a time, one step at a time, heck sometimes it's one minute at a time, but it's that next minute that we're taking for all those who didn't get a next minute!

(image from katu.com)