I hate passwords

I hate passwords and sites that seem to just decide that your password is no longer valid.  I've just spent five minutes trying to log back in to this blog and I was seriously thinking on strangling the mouse!  It's ok mouse, it wasn't your fault, I know that, but you were just the first thing to hand at the time.  I don't want to be told that my password was changed 17 days ago, when I know that it wasn't, so do this and then do that and set a new password (and you are NOT allowed to use a previous password) which has to be longer that this, but shorter than that ... blah.

Mind you, wouldn't it be great if we could have a password to life that we could just reset every now and then and then carry on?  Could we do that with cancer?  Find out where things went wrong and then just change the password that was used at that point and continue on?

I have, however, reached a point where I don't think that I can imagine my life without cancer and this is partly because I didn't have much of a life before cancer.  Not a life that meant anything anyway.  I really do appreciate life far more these days, and I feel far more connected to society and the world around me.  My life has changed a lot in the last 10 years, but especially in the last 5 years.  I think I have come to value myself much more than I ever used to.  I think of myself as having a positive contribution to make, even if it is just to show that you can live with incurable cancer.

The key word there for me is with.  I probably will never get rid of the little beastie but I have learned to co-exist with it by putting it in its place which is in my life, but not at the centre of my life.  That area of my life is reserved for doing things that have meaning to me, if no one else.  The centre of my life has become about fulfilment, meaning, contributing and enjoying just being alive.  It isn't about the grand things in life, about having my photo taken in front of the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids or the Grand Canyon but it is about photos of my family and people that I meet, about places that I visit, of things that I want to do.  I no longer try to be perfect.  I no longer try to be someone that is 'acceptable' to others.  I am someone who is acceptable to me.