I worry that I see the world through rose-colored glasses, that I’m detached from reality and am living in some alternative universe where cancer doesn’t suck and death isn’t scary. Is this worry legitimate? (Just know that the answer to this rhetorical question should be answered by the fact that my wife would be laughing right now)

In general as a person I tend to minimize the bad and play up the good*…which sounds like a swell thing until you realize that at time it edges on deceitfulness and it also has cultivated in myself a lack of awareness to reality as it truly exists. For example, I’ve had to re-learn, to recognize the symptoms in my body because for most of my life I’ve downplayed any potential ache and pain and written it off as nothing. I honestly don’t notice when somethings wrong with me because I’ve trained myself to ignore everything.

“Ryan, you look sick. Are you feeling ok?” “Nah, I feel fine” (I ALWAYS feel fine)

In many of my blog posts I try to be honest about the reality of life as we’ve been experiencing it, the good with the bad, the positive with the negative, the ups and downs. But to be quite honest my baggage is such that I’ve trained myself to glaze over the bad and emphasize the good. I’m not lying, I’m not fooling anybody, I’m sharing what I am really feeling and thinking…but is what I’m feeling and thinking the reality?!

And so I find myself struggling through this journey of not only fighting cancer but trying to rediscover myself, rediscover my emotions, rediscover reality as it is. The goal isn’t to pout more or to become more pessimistic–no, the goal, I think, is awareness. It is to be present–present in my surroundings, present in my suffering, present in my body, present in my emotions…to be present.

* This is what an Enneagram 9 does!