It’s been several months since I last posted. So, before I get into today’s short but awesome topic, I wanted to give you the general overview of why it has been so long. 

First and foremost, to put it lightly, my health has not been fantastic since the start of 2020. This year has been full of seemingly unending problems around the globe, and I guess my body just decided to join the party. 

This newest health crisis on my LONG timeline of health crises, (without considering the frustrations of COVID-19) led to a lot of mental and emotional anguish, PTSD, depression, hopelessness, frustration, etc… All the good stuff, right? 

I’ve learned that you never really get “used” to the continual loss of health when you are not expecting it to be lost. Each new loss is almost more insulting and painful than the last because you worked so hard to recover. All you can really do is take each blow, accept it the best you can, and try to move forward.

It’s hard for me to give a lot of specific details at this time about what has been wrong with my body and my life. Here are the reasons. 

1) Because my condition of health is complicated and deserves its own long and complicated post.

2) Because my condition is connected to OTHER health problems and surgeries that took place during my treatment or in the last several years I have not yet had the time to write about.

AND

3) I’m waiting until I can write about it without crying and completely falling apart.  I’ve only recently gotten into a place where I am not feeling in despair most days. 

All fantastic reasons, I know. 

For the time being, just know that my current health issues mostly revolve around everything in my gastrointestinal tract being REALLY screwed up after two past surgeries, three years on round-the-clock antibiotics and chemo (causing problems with my ability to eat or regulate hormones and leaving me feeling quite sick most of the time).

Naturally, because my body is apparently a stickler for tradition, most of my doctors and specialists are confused about why everything is happening with my body, and I am locked in a position of taking three steps forward and two back with my health. But we will keep working at it. 

I will expand all of this in a later post after I am able to write a few other stories that will set the foundation for me to fully explain what is happening now. Until then, just bear with me. Anyone who is reading this with even the slightest investment in what I have to say is incredible in my opinion. 

Anyways! It’s time to get to business.

This post is about another strange (but ultimately meaningful and epic) word. 

My life since I finished my chemotherapy treatment and earned the title “leukemia survivor” has been quite the…. What’s a good word? I’ve got one:

Metanoia. 

Don’t freak out! If you don’t know me already, I just enjoy—and have a deep appreciation for—uncommon words with abstract meanings. And this harmless little noun simply means “A journey of changing one’s mind, heart, self, or way of life.”

It sounds peaceful, doesn’t it? This word Metanoia seems to naturally evoke thoughts of rivers flowing gently through peaceful valleys… Maybe a few songbirds and butterflies flitting through the air.

My life after cancer has definitely been a journey, but you can forget the illusion of tranquil nature scenes and pretty, little flying creatures.

No, thoughts of my Metanoia conjure images of the desecrated and burning depths of hell where the very environment serves to evoke pain and suffering on every level. The closest thing to songbirds in the sky were the fires that occasionally rained down.

Yes, this may seem like an exaggerated analogy. But in all honesty, going through chemo and dealing with how it ruined my body was the closest thing I have experienced to hell on earth. When I finished my chemotherapy, it felt like my treatment had left me standing in hell, and I had to make my way back out again. If you are interested in more details about that time, I encourage you to check that out here.

There has been nothing inherently “peaceful” about my journey to recovery after years of intensive chemotherapy, but it was still my path to walk.

That’s what I want to talk about today. 

My Metanoia changed my perspectives and my life in just about every sense. It introduced me to many difficult physical, emotional, or mental challenges and forced me to deal with a LOT of terrible things that were well out of my control to avoid. 

Yet, regardless of how good or bad the circumstances of my journey were, I still had control over the most important thing: 

I had control over becoming the person I wanted to be. 

Experiences can have a hefty influence on who someone becomes. This is more or less common knowledge. The things you experience when you are a child–when your brain is still in its formative years—are often the most impactful. 

I got cancer when I was 12 years old, well before I knew who I was or who I really wanted to be.

Then, I was essentially tortured for three years by the side effects of chemo and prescription drugs that were ultimately saving my life. During this time, my father and most friends left me, and I lost my ability to do all the things that I loved. I was just sick and suffering.

My circumstances were cruel. There is no denying that. 

It would have been easy, or even more natural, to let those circumstances ruin me. It would have been easy to become bitter, vengeful, selfish, and cruel myself. 

But circumstances and events DON’T automatically determine who you are.

What defines you is what you choose to do and who you choose to be after terrible things happen to you. Circumstances give you a choice about who you want to be.

Some choices are just a lot more difficult to make than others.

I have always had (and still have) the ultimate control over HOW I let my experiences change me as a person. That is one bit of control I have never lost, regardless of what was happening. That is the control I’ve had over the last several months when my health and other things that mattered were crumbling around me for the umpteenth time. 

I am the one who gets the final say in how any uncontrollable events change my heart, mind, or soul.

In other words, who I am is my choice. 

I can’t always control my body. Hell, I can’t even control my mind sometimes; my traumatized brain likes to panic when it is faced with stressful medical events or is under the influence of different medicines I have to take. Sometimes, I can’t convince my anxious or depressed brain that things are okay because it is getting so many mixed messages from my sick body or the surrounding environment that are signaling that everything is wrong.

But I am NOT my body, and I am NOT my physical brain.

I am Aspen; I’m the one who has to fight her body and brain or the circumstances a lot and does her best to control those two things. I’m the one who still has some say in how I treat the people around me or if I am a decent, compassionate, kind-hearted, open-minded, caring human being or not. 

That is the kind of person I always strive to be.

Yes, I will fail sometimes because I am human and this life can be incredibly shitty sometimes, but I WILL keep doing my best to be that person. 

I can’t always control or fix a lot of the bad things that happen to me; I can’t always decide where my Metonia will take me or be able to escape from certain places it leads me, but I am the ultimate author of my story. 

I choose not only to remake myself;

I also choose to shape myself into the person I want to be.

That means I write my story around whatever obstacles I face or walls I run into.

Sometimes, it feels as if I am trapped by my circumstances, surrounded by impassable boundaries that prevent me from moving forward, backward, or to the left or the right. Sometimes, I don’t see a way to have any control amidst my circumstances, no matter how much I search, and I feel who I am slipping away or being eroded by the pain of what I’m going through. 

But even when I feel completely trapped and completely hopeless because I can’t find an escape, I can still sit down, accept the walls around me for the time being, and be the person I want to be within the space I am in.

Even if I am in despair, crying my eyes out one minute, and then smiling and being kind to a stranger the next, it’s a huge victory. 

And it is me telling the world:

“You don’t get to define who I am. You don’t get to destroy me. Not today. Not ever”.