I am a survivor.

That moment when you remember how your professors radically changed your life...

That moment when you're reminded of the vision you held for your future...

That moment when you realize you're a survivor.

Today is the 16-week anniversary of my total thyroidectomy, and thus my 112th day of being cancer-free.  These anniversaries are largely non-monumentous.  Every few weeks, I take a photo of my scar and post it on Facebook with a caption about which anniversary I've reached.  The photos always garner "likes" and comments, and they're a small and simple way for me to celebrate.  I have also been turning these photos into "covers" for my Facebook profile, after I add to them the statement "I am a survivor."

The fact that I'm a survivor has been a conscious reality since the day I was diagnosed with cancer.  But I have given the title (survivor) little meaningful thought in the past few weeks.  I don't know that I really considered what the word meant beyond the fact that it made a statement about my having battled cancer.  However, something in me shifted tonight as I read those words.

I've been struggling a lot lately with trying to figure out the future.  I realize that working in retail is unsatisfying and impractical for the long-haul.  I want to contribute something to the greater good of mankind--research, teaching, love.  I want to make a difference in the world.  As an INFJ, my heartstrings are always pulled in so many directions.  I read an article recently that said that career options for INFJs are always simultaneously exciting and heartbreaking.  As idealists, the world of possibility is thrilling and produces in us all sorts of fantasies about the future.  However, all of those possibilities are also crippling, because we come to realize that to pursue one pathway is to sacrifice another.  We can't do everything.  And so at once none of the options are appealing any longer because we can't do all of them in one self-designed career (wouldn't that be nice?).  It's frustrating.

So, I've been dealing with all of that INFJ confusion--the appeal and drawbacks of every job out there.  Add on top of this the fact that INFJs often feel misunderstood (and often are misunderstood) when sharing their intuitive insights, so people write off this deep analysis of future options as crazed neuroticism.  The INFJ then packs up all this thought and places it back into the very personal introverted intuitive luggage, and once again starts mulling over the more "conventional" options, because those aren't considered "crazy."

And then I get to throw an autoimmune disease, endocrine disease, MTHFR gene mutation, and histamine intolerance into the mix of my endless thought processes, which does result in a certain amount of crazy as I try to create a game-plan for my future.

The past few weeks I've been revisiting the idea of pursuing a Ph.D., as I think it may be one of the only career paths that affords me the level of freedom and time for contemplation that I'm seeking.  The struggle I have been facing with this idea is what kind of research agenda I would propose in my personal statement.  I want to write something honest and compelling, but to be honest would be to say that I really don't know what I want to do doctoral level research on.  Earlier tonight I read through old personal statements and academic essays, and then found a letter I wrote to my professors when I graduated from Cal Poly.  The letter mostly talks about how their mentorship and guidance is what made me want to become a professor in the first place (over eight years ago), and how I wanted to inspire my future students in the same ways my teachers inspired me.

When I finished reading the letter and closed it on my desktop, the first thing I saw was the cover photo I had posted on my Facebook profile earlier today.  It felt like the "I am a survivor" statement was boring a hole into my heart.  For the first time, those words made me want to cry.  They no longer just meant that I battled cancer, but that who I am in my very essence is a culmination of every event that has ever happened to me, both in the past and moving into the future.  I could easily say "I have hope" or "I have a future," and they would mean the same thing as telling people that I'm a survivor.

Writing this now brings to mind the verse that was a favorite for years and years--the one that all my friends knew I loved, and that caused them to give me knowing glances whenever we read or heard it.  It was my signature verse, for reasons that I won't outline in this post.  But, suffice it to say, the words still hold profound meaning in my heart, and are something I think I need a reminder of today.

Jeremiah 29:11

"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future'" (New International Version).

or

"I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the Lord; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope" (Common English Bible).

I take the GRE in one week.  My prayer is that during the test, these words will be my companion:

I am a survivor.

I have hope.

I have a future.