It's ok to let go...

Photo by Yoann Boyer on Unsplash

I never understood the meaning of letting it go. I think part of the issue was I equated letting go to not caring. Something that I’m inherently unable to do -  good and bad. But as Brynn and I settle into the rhythm of things, I’m realizing letting it go really means to stop the push and pull that we do in our daily lives with everything from with in and out of our control.  

I’ve never been accused of being a control freak. I’ve certainly been accused of wanting to control more or less the direction where I want things to go. I just tell myself I am “influencing.” This was never so evident in my battle with Brynn on nutrition. Too many times our arguments got heated that it crossed into not helping territory. I would go through the cycle of begging and pleading for her to eat, then get angry, and then pull out the “do whatever you want to do” gem. The cycle continued for some time. The justification I would make to myself was that she needed to feed herself and cancer’s metabolism in order to survive. What is the point of all these treatments, side effects, and lack of quality of life if you end up suffering from malnutrition in the end? I did not want it to be for nothing. What was causing my sense of urgency and desperation was the experience we had late May when Brynn was hospitalized for 18 days. It was also the visual changes I was witnessing as she kept on losing weight. It’s not simply because of the weight loss, but because of it being a constant reminder of her cancer. In my mind she was looking and behaving like a cancer patient vs. being someone with cancer. You learn those are two very different things. 

As time goes by, what I’m discovering is letting go also means trusting the process and trusting Brynn that she is going to do everything in her power to survive this. I have realized her battle will evolve as she goes through the various phases. It’s hard to understand it, of course, in the moment when you’re terrified that her kidneys are about to fail and are forced to have uncomfortable conversations with her medical team, or frightened watching the neurological side effects that froze her movements. I had to learn from the reflections along the way to evolve my approach as a caregiver. 

Part of letting go also meant reorienting my mind about marriage. The reality is that the nature of our marriage has changed and the current experience is not a parallel, but part of it. Many times, I’ve caught myself saying I want our marriage back, as if marriage is a steady and rigid relationship state. I’ve been reminded many times that this is our marriage. Of course, it is easy to miss the walks, date nights, not having our lives and my emotions be so public, traveling, sex – yes, I said it -, and simply enjoying the things that made our marriage, well, ours… But the current day-to-day is still very valid, just different. Understanding this has been helpful for me to adjust my disposition. 

People ask me how I’m dealing with it all, particularly the daily grind of having to balance caregiver duties with my own life. What I can honestly say is that you just do it. You end up living in a very reflexive state, similar to perhaps being a new parent, I would suppose. I have been quite sad, and not the type of sadness that is a fleeting emotion. It stays with you and you learn to live with it. But I don’t confuse that with being negative about the situation. Positivity and hope are truly the only feelings you can have thinking about the future, even though you live very much in the present. The folks at the pharmacy, who I’ve come to know well given the inordinate amount of time I spend picking up Brynn’s medications, recently commented on my positive nature. I simply responded that I could be angry about things, but only to be exactly where we are today. So, I made a conscious decision as I have awareness of where my emotional state can sink to if I fed the sadness, and the fact that it would not change a damn thing. 

I do believe Brynn’s cancer battle will be a moment in time, and that we will have learned and grown from the experience, individually and as a couple. We will have to be highly adaptable and fluid along the way. Perhaps that is what letting go really means. 

-Troy