My anger after cancer.

These past few weeks, months maybe, I’ve found myself getting angry at the smallest things. Not the angry I feel when I’m hungry (just ask Jim about having to keep me fed!) but an angry that doesn’t make much sense to me a lot of the time. I know that some of this anger might be the tamoxifen messing with my emotions, but there is also an underlying anger I can’t shake.

I get angry when I have to caveat a comment about cancer with ‘I know I am lucky’ because if there is one thing I’ve not felt this last year, it’s lucky to have cancer. Yes, I know I am alive and so many people aren’t, but even more people didn’t have to have the year I just had. Yes I have hair when so many people lose theirs, but I worked bloody hard for it and quite frankly, it’s pretty shit hair compared to what it was, so it’s not to be celebrated. Yes, I kept my boobs, but they’re full of scars and they aren’t the same.

I feel angry when I get messages and see posts about how you can cure cancer with a vegan diet, or by cutting out alcohol, or when the man, unsolicited, in the post office starts telling everyone that sugary drinks are the reason people get cancer. Let me tell you now, that man felt my wrath!

I feel angry when people tell me they thought I’d have done more with having cancer. Then they point out people who run cancer blogs or accounts and have become ‘insta famous’ out of their diagnosis as if it’s a competition, when one of the things I tried really hard to do was not become purely a cancer blogger, mostly for my own sanity.

I feel angry at my reflection because this chubby, bloated person, is not who I want to have staring back at me!

And I feel angry when people complain about having a cold, or not having slept or that they have a headache, which is ridiculous because just because it doesn’t seem like a big deal to me, it is a big deal to them, it’s a big think in their life right now.

And I feel angry that people don’t understand that having cancer has affected me more than I could imagine and I’m not the same person any more. Sometimes I feel like I’m supposed to have been ‘over it’ since I finished treatment, like I’m not allowed to be tired any more, I’m not allowed to still feel side effects. 

Sometimes it all boils up in me and makes me so angry. Sometimes it just makes me so weary. Sometime it just makes me need a large G&T. Please tell me it's normal to feel this way?