Instagram Stories are fast becoming my favorite thing to do and post—if you are not already following me on Instagram, please do.

I have been living on the edge since cancer. I was someone who experienced things on an extreme level for many years. I lived in fear and anxiety. I would imagine myself in a situation and feel such fear that I would not be able to actually even consider being in said situation.

I had a phobia of traffic—of being stuck in traffic or being away from home too long. It was a lot for me to work around but I would force myself to do certain things and force myself NOT to do a lot of things. I definitely was experiencing the world of mental illness. I let my world shrink—it did not happen overnight. One day, I was flying around the world for work and fun and then all of a sudden, I did less and less. I stayed closer and closer to home when I was always meant to fly.

Sharing this is hard. It is embarrassing to think about all of the opportunities I missed, of all of the things I was not comfortable doing. Of how much I was not happy and comfortable in my skin, with my life and now I realize damn, I had it all. I did not have “cancer,” I was truly free but in the disease of my own mind so not that free.

Now, I have no such fears. I refuse them, I refute them. I laugh at them. This week alone I have driven myself into the city for two different things. I have been focused on maybe being an entrepreneur again and building something exclusively mine. It is a lot to handle. In the midst, I have had meet ups with folks who I never would have met if not for this big c word.

It is hard to believe that I am still so close to my BD time (before diagnosis). It has only been a year and 2 months since I was diagnosed. In this time I have had to learn quickly how to retrain my brain, how to let go and be me, how to deal with the fear in a constructive way that maybe some day I could die from this disease. Instead, I refute that possibility and instead focus on LIFE on what I can do right now, here, today instead of worrying about my tomorrows.

It is one hell of a way to live and maybe someday I will forgive myself for not living this way BD—ah, frig it, I already have.

This is what I do in the time between…