God has given you one face...

Hey guys!

Cancer is the hardest thing I've ever personally had to fight. And I have learned that it is a fight in so many different aspects. The physical is just the tip of the iceberg my friends. But let's start there... and before I do, I have a confession to make. I had a couple of trusted people in my life come to me these past weeks and ask me if I wanted to truly tell my story or not. I believe it was suggested by one of them that if I continued the blog with writing the way I was that I should just write a journal for myself. Wow. That really had me thinking hard and realizing that, even though I was technically saying what was going on, I was sugar-coating things, and if I really want to reach out to people that are going through what I am and possibly help them feel not as alone, then I need to strip down and be brutally honest.

And that is what I want. I want you to know you're not alone, we can be here for each other.

These are different pictures of me in the morning over the past 7 months, and of my leg and arm wounds healing. It's hard to share these, I am definitely self conscious about them. I've struggled my entire life with body image, so the fact that this cancer, this tumor chose my face to be in, man, really makes me so mad. It could've been anywhere else, and it chose my face! That was the one thing about myself that I was always at peace with. I knew that no matter what my size, even if I were overweight, at least I had a pretty face. But man, this chose my face and went right for it. Like it attacked and attacked with fervor! So having my face ripped apart and patched back together was just about the worst thing I could think of. I've had to pray really hard about that. In some ways, the way we look is part of who we are, and since the surgery, I just do not feel like myself. My surgeon and his team are AWESOME and did better than I imagined, but I just do not feel like myself. It's like imposter syndrome or something. I know it's me, but I just don't feel it. And it's so hard because it's the one thing that I never worried about! And I love to talk, and my speech is so stunted and warbled. And everyone tells me how great I'm doing and sounding, and I want to believe them, but I hear it too and it's so messed up still. What makes this so hard is that I AM SO THANKFUL TO EVEN BE ALIVE SO I FEEL SO GUILTY FOR HAVING THESE THOUGHTS! And I have these thoughts and feelings daily.

I am pretty obsessed with films and everything that goes into making them (I want to be a Screenwriter), so I follow lots of movie and entertainment accounts on Instagram. I found a quote from Quentin Tarantino on there that said, "Make it personal enough so you feel embarrassed to share it." So that is what I am going to try to do. Open myself up so we can truly help each other. I'm working on it, I promise! This week I did it more through pictures, next post I will work on expressing myself through prose better! I'll be back by the end of the week with more. Until then, stay strong!

And this is a picture of my son and me last week because I love him and isn't he a cutie?! ;)