How I Learned Breaking Is An Option
I was standing at my desk when my body decided it was done pretending.
Most people think cancer ends when active treatment stops. They imagine a sigh of relief, a bell ringing at the hospital, and a return to stability.
My wife Ariana had just finished a year of treatment for her terminal cancer. We'd done everything right. We moved the kids back home, bought a house near my parents, and built the perfect support system.
My remote job became more than income.
It was life support.
Not for her. For me.
You don't slowly burn out being a caregiver. You don't gracefully decline. One day, you're managing everything perfectly, and the next, you're on your office floor wailing and screaming in fetal position.
The Perfect Storm
Three things happened in one week:
My uncle was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer
Ariana needed another surgery; her "final" one
I realized there would never be a finish line
It was the third one that broke me. Her finish line was not life. It was death.
I convinced myself that if I just made it through her treatment, if I just got us to the other side, I could exhale.
But I lied.
Cancer doesn’t give you an other side.
It gives you a permanent state of maybe.
And I built hope around a finish line that didn't exist.
The Break
Standing at my desk that Tuesday morning, I noticed my vision tunneled. The room tilted. My hands started shaking. And then my legs gave out from an unbearable weight pressing in on me.
I folded to the floor in fetal position.
My body finally honest about what my mind had been denying.
A deep physical pain worked through my body, starting at my head and moving downward. I felt my heart constrict. My arms were frozen in twisted shapes, my face contorting, my eyes flooded with water.
The words sputtered out, "I can't. I can't do this. I can't."
The Choice
At 2:47 PM, I had two options laying there on the floor:
End the pain
Stand up
I couldn't do either.
So I did something else. I let myself break completely. I wailed. I screamed. I shook. Alone in that house, I made sounds I didn't know humans could make.
And then it stopped.
The Truth About Strength
At 3:15 PM, I stood up.
At 3:16 PM, I put my hands on the keyboard.
At 3:30 PM, my kids came home from school.
At 3:45 PM, Ariana returned from errands.
At 3:46 PM, I pretended nothing had happened.
We don't hide our pain because we're strong. We hide it because we think our pain is destructive. We believe that showing it would steal resources, attention, and support from the people who "really" need it.
The ones who are actually dying.
But pain unexpressed doesn't disappear.
It metastasizes, just as my wife’s cancer had metastasized through her body.
It becomes a weight and hidden secret. It becomes the isolation that no amount of human interaction can cure. It becomes the prison that looks, from the outside, exactly like strength.
The Hamster Wheel
You exist on an invisible hamster wheel.
If you don’t stop running, then maybe them, maybe you, or maybe both will die. You run because the wheel is the only thing you can control. You run because you are convinced that everyone is counting on you to run.
And on that Tuesday, on that floor, I finally understood why caregivers lose themselves. It is not from the weight of caring, but from the weight of carrying it alone.
We become so good at being the lifeline that we ignore that we're drowning too.
The Lesson Nobody Wants to Hear
Your strength is killing you.
We cannot move forward or be of help to anyone around us if we aren’t willing to accept our struggle.
The bravest thing I ever did wasn't caring for my wife through cancer. It was admitting that I couldn’t. I broke on that office floor. I saw myself make the choice to keep living for her, the kids and for myself.
Sometimes the most life-saving thing you can do is break.
Sometimes falling apart IS the plan.
Sometimes admitting, “I can't do this”, is the beginning of finally learning how.
So, text one person today. Say “I need help.”
Nothing more.
Just start there.
Because the only thing worse than breaking is breaking alone.
- CJ
If you are still on the floor, reply and tell me.
If you enjoyed this read, the best compliment I could receive would be if you shared it with one person or restacked it.
Amplifying