Mojo and the Mess

I started going to the gym because I don’t feel good in my body anymore.

That probably isn’t the answer people expect from someone with stage four cancer. I’m supposed to say I’m doing it to feel stronger or to take care of the body that has carried me through so much. And yes, that is part of it. But the more honest answer is that I look in the mirror and don’t recognize myself.

I don’t like how my clothes fit. I don’t like the weight sitting around my stomach and hips. I don’t like feeling weak or getting winded doing things that used to take no effort. I don’t like how completely out of my control my own body has become.

And I feel guilty even saying that.

When you’re in treatment, everyone is just happy you’re alive. Your body becomes this amazing, brave thing because it keeps surviving. You’re told to give yourself grace, be proud of your scars, and appreciate everything your body has gotten you through.

I do appreciate it.

I’m also pissed at it.

I’m pissed that cancer got to move in and change everything. I’m pissed that chemo, steroids, surgeries, radiation, medications, and being thrown into menopause in my twenties all left something behind. I’m pissed that I can do everything right and still wake up swollen, exhausted, hurting, or looking completely different than I did the day before.

I know none of this is my body’s fault. I know it has been trying to keep me here. But knowing that doesn’t always make it easier to live in.

There is a weird pressure to pretend body image stops mattering when you are sick. Like once you have cancer, you should be above caring about your weight, your clothes, or whether you feel pretty. There are bigger things happening, so you’re supposed to stop caring about the smaller ones.

But I still have to get dressed every day. I still see myself in the mirror. I still take pictures. I still want to feel attractive. I still want to put on a pair of jeans without immediately changing into something that hides me.

Cancer didn’t remove that part of me. It just made me feel guilty for having it.

So I joined a gym.

Not because treatment is over and I’m ready for some big comeback. Treatment isn’t over. I don’t get a clean ending where I ring a bell, go home, rebuild my strength, and slowly return to normal. I am trying to work out while my body is still actively being put through it, and that makes everything harder.

I can make a plan the night before and wake up feeling like I have been hit by a truck. I can feel okay when I leave the house and suddenly have nothing left by the time I get there. Some days my body can handle more than I expected. Other days the warm-up feels like the entire workout.

It’s frustrating because I want consistency, but cancer does not care about consistency.

Neither does chemo. Neither do pain, nausea, bone pain, weakness, or the kind of exhaustion that sleep does not fix. I can’t follow a perfect gym schedule when I don’t know how I’ll feel from one hour to the next. I can’t always push through, because pushing through in a body with cancer is not the same as pushing through when you’re simply tired.

Sometimes pushing through means I pay for it for the rest of the day. Sometimes I lose the next day too.

I’m trying to learn when I can give myself a little push and when I need to stop. I’m not very good at it yet. I either want to do more than I should, or I get angry that I can’t do what I think I should be able to do.

It’s hard to celebrate a small workout when you remember what your body used to be capable of. It’s hard not to compare, and not just to other people at the gym. I compare myself to every previous version of me. The version before cancer. The version before menopause. The version before my body became covered in scars, bruises, medical tape, swelling, and reminders of everything that has happened to it.

But I’m starting to realize I’m not going to find that body waiting for me at the end of a workout plan.

She is gone.

I don’t mean that in a sad or hopeless way. Too much has happened for me to ever be exactly who I was before. My body has changed, but so have I. I don’t actually want to erase everything and go backward.

I just want to feel like I belong in my own skin again.

I want my body to feel like mine instead of something cancer, doctors, treatments, and medications are constantly making decisions about. I want to choose how I move it. I want to feel my muscles working instead of only noticing what hurts. I want to do something with my body that has nothing to do with treating it, scanning it, sticking a needle in it, or waiting to find out what it will do next.

For a little while at the gym, my body is not just a sick body.

It is still a tired body. Sometimes it is an angry body. Sometimes it is a body that does half of what I wanted and makes me sit down before I’m ready. But it is doing something I chose.

Going to the gym has not suddenly made me love everything I see in the mirror. I still have days when I pull at my clothes, stare at my stomach, and feel completely defeated. I still want to lose weight. I still want to change things. I don’t think admitting that means I hate myself, and I don’t think cancer should force me to pretend those feelings disappeared.

I just don’t want those feelings to become another way of punishing a body that is already going through enough.

That is the part I’m working on.

I can want to change my body without hating it the entire way there. I can be frustrated and still be gentle with myself. I can care about losing weight while understanding that my progress may be slower, messier, or interrupted by treatment. I can leave the gym after twenty minutes and let that be enough, even when I wanted to do more.

Some days, showing up will be the accomplishment. Some days, resting will have to count too.

I don’t know what progress is going to look like for me. Maybe I will lose the weight. Maybe I will get stronger. Maybe treatment will knock me backward right when I start feeling like I’m getting somewhere. That is the reality of trying to build something in a body that is still being torn down in other ways.

But I need something that feels like it belongs to me.

Cancer has taken enough ownership of my body. It has decided what I lose, what hurts, what changes, and what I have to learn to live with. Going to the gym does not undo any of that, but it gives me one small place where I get to make the decisions.

I don’t need to become the person I was before cancer. I just want to feel like the person living inside this body is me again.

If you’re trying to find your way back to a body changed by cancer, treatment, illness, medication, or survival, you’re not shallow for struggling with what you see. You’re not ungrateful for missing who you used to be, and you don’t have to love every change just because your body kept you alive.

If this is the kind of truth you’ve been looking for, subscribe to Mojo & The Mess. I write about cancer as it actually feels, including the parts we’re often made to feel guilty for admitting out loud.