come indoors

Yesterday Jason and I watched a movie where one of the characters died of cancer. This set my emotions into overdrive because my biggest struggle since getting diagnosed is my certainty that this is how I will die, and worse, that it will happen relatively early in my life.
I am two days short of my one-year anniversary of completing chemotherapy and, like I explained to Jason, I feel no comfort as the treatment recedes into the past. Instead, I feel uneasiness, like I am on a conveyor belt moving slowly closer to the ten-year mark where the data stops offering predictions about my health. That's a scary point to be headed for. And now, instead of being ten years away, it is only nine years away. I want to go back, to the security of chemotherapy, to the security of using the most aggressive tools we have to stop myself from dying. But that is impossible for two reasons: 1. Physics, 2. I'm pretty sure the doctors won't just keep giving me chemo because I'm having a hard moving on. Maybe it's worth asking? I kid.
I was explaining this to Jason and he said, quite matter-of-factly, that he believed I was looking at it incorrectly. Not as in, "You need to be more positive in your thinking," but, "Your thinking is factually misguided." The logic behind his assessment is simple: ten years of continuing treatment is enough time to find out if anything new is growing.
That makes sense. It makes perfect sense. And I'd never thought of it that way.
Naturally, the alarm system in my bran started ringing, an army of neurotic overseers, jumping up and down, waving their hands wildly overhead, screaming their protestations in desperate hopes of keeping me frightened and as such, vigilant--"But it could start growing at the 7 or 8 year mark, and then you might not know! There is never any certainty! That may not be a totally accurate interpretation of those numbers which are a report on the likelihood of recurrence within ten years of finishing chemo, and not of years eleven through forever!" But a tightness released in my chest and I thought that maybe, just maybe, Jason's logic was a perfectly reasonable one that I could get behind.
Most of the time I'm just scared to relax, as though by staying fearful I am on high alert and therefore won't let anything slip by. I realize that this is impossible, that there is even a line of reasoning that says that keeping said vigilance is stressful and filling me up with inflammation that is a boon to growing cancers. The fight or flight part of my brain is working its magic, convincing the rational bits that staying in the terrifying wilderness with the sense that the beast might always be there is better because then at least it won't be such a fucking shock. But it doesn't do any good to wait for the beast. No amount of panicked searching over my shoulder will force it to reveal itself any sooner than the medical measures already in place. I feel like my frightened, quivering self has been invited indoors, and maybe here I can sit, and breathe a little more slowly.