Julieann Selden
They said to go home.
They said the scans look fine, your body will recover, you don’t need to be here anymore.
They said to go home.
They said, “we don’t know if it will come back, but it very well might. Until then there’s not much we can do.”
They said, “go on and live your life.” Take a breath, take a nap, maybe even take a vacation. Go back to your jobs, back to your hobbies, back to laundry, dishes, and paying the bills. Spend time with your family, meet a friend for lunch, catch a movie with your loved ones. Take a day to do absolutely nothing.
It sounded nice when they said to go home.
So we went home.
But the home we went back to wasn’t as familiar as we thought.
The paint was the same color and the furniture was in place, but it didn’t feel like the same home. Our thoughts, feelings, and interests had all changed. Our relationships, jobs, and bodies felt so much different.
They said to go home, so we tried to go home, but it didn’t feel like home.
We felt lost. It was as if we had been on a path, kidnapped somewhere in the middle, turned around 20 times, and set off in a new direction. We didn’t know which way was up or down, left or right. We were in a new place, stranded in the desert- abandoned, desolate and lonely.
They said to go home.
But home was out of reach. The home we knew didn’t exist anymore. We wandered around for awhile before trying to build a new home. But the new home crumbled and cracked, forcing us to repair, rebuild, or start completely over.
They said to go home.
But they didn’t understand. After seeing thousands of patients in this position, they still didn’t understand. It looked so simple from their perspective. Go home, go back to your life, pretend that cancer never came.
But we couldn’t go home.
Our souls were altered on the deepest level. Our hearts were shattered, our minds were chaos, and our bodies hurt. They couldn’t see it.
But then we saw others. “Do you know where you are going?” we asked.
“No, I feel rather lost,” they would say. “But you are welcome to join, and we can pave a new path together.”
In that moment, though we were all still lost, we felt a glimpse of home. Our hearts connected and friendships formed on the simplest notion of being aimless wanderers together.
“Your thoughts and feelings make sense given all that you’ve been through. Others may not understand, but I can see, because I’ve walked a similar path.”
“You belong here.”
Our hearts began to relax. We took a deep breath of fresh air.
They said to come home.
This poem is copyrighted by the poet and is included in the Healing Circles Global poetry wiki because it provides insight, nourishment, and inspiration to the hosts and participants of healing circles. We request that hosts and participants honor the poet’s copyright by not printing or sharing it in any other way. In fact, please support the poet’s work by purchasing the book or going to the website in which this poem was originally published: Facebook page: Contemplating Cancer
