Two years ago yesterday I had my internal hemi-pelvectomy with limb sparring surgery, throughout this blog I have given updates and kept a running theme about my recovery and my journey to become healthier and more functional. The last two years have certainly brought their triumphs and their defeats and through it all I have had a wonderful cheering section and an expectation that I will overcome all of this. But there is another side of this, a side I try very hard to keep hidden, the side that after some therapy and some medications I am realizing I should not have done this.

I have been hiding a deep secret, one that through the eyes of hindsight I know now has hindered my recovery.

I am angry at myself, I am angry that I am in this situation, I am angry that I am not completely healed, I am angry that I am no longer “enough”.

From a young age I had to be self sufficient, my father had a terrible accident when I was 8 and much of my world shifted to having to take care of my family, and this instilled in me the stereotypical self reliant attitude of the American Cowboy, the problem is that this made it very difficult for me in later years to understand why I couldn’t do something, literally I had the mentality that nothing was impossible for me.

I have been carrying a great deal of self loathing and shame since my surgery, truly for the first time in my life I wasn’t able to meet my own standards. Factor into this is my shame at not re-connecting with my mother sooner, I had less than 2 weeks to connect with her before she passed away from a stroke. as well as the disorientation I was feeling while in the hospital after waking up from my coma and the subsequent weeks of bed rest and feeling helpless because i would throw up whenever I sat up.

Things Mrs. ZM doesn’t know is that I went into this surgery as if it wasn’t a big deal, so what if they are going to take out a major chunk of my pelvis and do a hip replacement, ill rock this like a bad ass and move through rehab and get back to work. That didn’t work out in anyway shape or form how I wanted it to work out and that rattled me.    Now as you can imagine, you take an emotionally vulnerable person with some serious issues add in a lot of drugs and those seeds of not being worthwhile anymore begin to grow.

Little phrases that were uttered during that time have stuck with me to this day, things that to this day still hurt and have caused me many hours of loathing for my situation and in many ways have driven a wedge between myself and my family, which of course made me feel even worse. Because of this feeling of being less than I made some decisions that to this day I regret and wish I could take back, because I wanted to make people happy, because I was no longer worthy, or so I was telling myself.

My friends were recognizing my self destructive path and tried to intervene but I was to wrapped up in my own self hate, why would anyone ever care about me when I was so useless, depression and my own internal demons were in full control, I look back on pictures from that time and although I am smiling with my mouth I see that there is no joy in my eyes, the thousand yard stare is prevalent those eyes had seen to much,

I mistakenly thought that this was to be my life, to always be the one left behind, the one that was simply in the way, the burden. I stopped taking care of myself like I should, I gained a lot of weight, and I lost interest in all of things that made me happy and fulfilled. Literally I had convinced myself that I was  not me anymore and I had to figure out who I was.

My god I was in a bad place.

Then in April I did three important things, first I went to see a counselor, on the surface it was a useless en devour as he wasn’t the best fit for me, I got on to some anti-depressants, and I began to push myself to move around without my crutches which I think helped me a lot to realize although I wasn’t the same physically, I was the same spiritually, that a physical infirmity wasn’t the end of all things, it was simply the next chapter in the book of my life.

But what changed?

I forgave myself.
I forgave myself for being weak when I was hurt,
I forgave myself for the times that I lost faith,
I forgave myself for not living up to my own expectations,
I forgave myself for the times I was angry without cause,

Simply put I looked at myself in the mirror and said “you aren’t responsible for a cruel twist of fate, you didn’t give yourself cancer, and you most certainly are good enough. So get up you son of a bitch and face the day anew”

So here I go, going to start again, yesterday is passed, today I will do what I can to move forward, I will look back on the trials of the last two years and say “well here I am, battered, bruised, and full of holes, but I am still me.” I am still the kid who wanted to ride in the ambulance, the young man who wanted to learn to sword fight, the man who would make himself a shield to protect those weaker than him, the fury and the rage that earned the name of a rabid dog and not just because of his initials, cancer cant beat me, self doubt can’t beat me, those who would dare to doubt me will learn to their sorrow that I will suffer their presence no longer. I am back.