Yesterday I cried because I couldn’t open a jar.
Not because of the jar specifically. I’m aware that sounds insane.
It was just one of those moments where everything piled on top of each other at once.
My joints hurt lately. My head has felt full of pressure again. My thyroid labs keep creeping further in the wrong direction because apparently my body looked at stage four cancer and said you know what would make this even more fun? Hormone problems.
So there I was in my kitchen fighting for my life with a pasta sauce jar while Mojo watched me like I was the least capable adult he’s ever met.
Eventually Pete opened it in two seconds, obviously.
And I immediately got annoyed at myself for being upset about something so stupid.
But I don’t think it was actually about the jar.
I think it was one of those moments where you realize how exhausting it is to constantly wonder what version of your body you’re waking up in every day.
Because lately I genuinely don’t know which symptom belongs to what anymore.
I don’t know if I’m tired because my thyroid is struggling or because cancer is exhausting or because my brain is involved or because my body has been through so much treatment it barely remembers how to act normal anymore.
Maybe all of the above.
Sometimes my eyes hurt and I convince myself I’m being paranoid.
Sometimes I lose a word halfway through a sentence and act like I meant to stop talking.
Sometimes I get pressure in my skull that makes me quiet for a while because I start mentally sorting through whether it feels “normal bad” or “call the doctor bad.”
And if you live with metastatic cancer long enough, you start creating categories like that.
Normal bad.
Concerning bad.
ER bad.
Wait and see bad.
That probably sounds ridiculous to healthy people, but I know some of you reading this immediately understood exactly what I meant.
The weirdest part is how ordinary life still feels around all of it.
I still order stupid things online at 1 a.m.
I still argue with Pete about where we should eat.
I still have laundry piled on the chair in my room right now.
Mojo still follows me into the bathroom like a tiny bald security guard.
Meanwhile in the background, my brain is constantly running diagnostics on my own body.
Why am I dizzy?
Why does my neck hurt today?
Why do my hands feel weak?
Why am I THIS tired after doing almost nothing?
And honestly? I’m tired of thinking about myself this much.
That’s something nobody really talks about either.
People think being sick makes you deeply connected to your body in some beautiful healing journey kind of way. Meanwhile I would actually love to stop analyzing every headache like I’m solving a murder case.
I miss being casual.
I miss having a headache and just… having a headache.
Now everything feels loaded.
And the thyroid stuff has added this whole extra layer where some days I don’t even feel like myself. Not emotionally exactly. Just slower. Heavier. Like somebody quietly lowered the battery percentage in my body overnight.
It’s frustrating because from the outside I probably still look mostly normal.
I can take pictures.
I can answer texts.
I can write blogs.
I can sit at dinner laughing while internally wondering why my skull hurts behind my eyes again.
That’s the messy part of all this.
Not every hard moment looks tragic.
Sometimes it just looks like me standing in the kitchen trying not to cry over a pasta sauce jar while my dog judges me from across the room.
If you’ve been living inside your own version of this lately, quietly trying to figure out which symptoms are treatment, hormones, stress, progression, exhaustion, or all of it tangled together at once, I hope this blog made you feel a little less alone in it.
Thank you for being here with me through all the messy parts.
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