Emmett Corcoran and Larissa Corcoran with Theo. Summer, 2019.

Emmett Corcoran,is the editor of The Democrat, an independent local newspaper circulating in Roscommon, Longford and Leitrim since 2018.

In a personal capacity, Emmett writes:

A little over a year ago, I got the life-changing news that I had cancer. Since then, our lives have been turned upside down. I say our, because through-out this entire journey, my wife has been by my side every step of the way; and it has been every bit as hard on her as it has been on me. I will never be able to thank her enough for all she has done for me.

This last year has been the toughest year of my life, for more reasons than the fact I have been fighting cancer. I won’t lie, there have been times when I just wanted to, and there continues to be times when I just want to, curl-up and die; to give-up on it all.

I have not been dealing very well with life. My health continues to be poor, both physically and mentally, my career is in pieces, and my entire life seems like it is on pause, and I don’t feel like I have any control over it.

Being “me”

Despite all this, I am trying to stay strong; for my wife, my family, my friends, and myself. A friend told me recently, that what they’ve always admired about me is my “authenticity”. It was never a quality I tried to nurture, and I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?

Anyway, their words started me thinking. How can I reconnect with the “authentic me”? I’ve really struggled with this, because I feel like the last 15-months, or so, have stolen a ginormous piece of me. They have rendered me feeling useless, weak, and dependent. I’ve been living in a mentally and physically exhausting prison of my own discontent.

Things I used to be able do in a few hours can take me days and even weeks. I’m in constant pain. I’m always cranky, fatigued, and frustrated. I’m frustrated because I forget things, loads of things, there are days I feel like I am demented.

Every waking second is spent in a haze of depression, and the littlest things make me anxious in a big way. And all of this scares the life out of me. I’m not the person I was on the 24th of February 2019, the last day I felt “healthy”; the last day I felt like “me”.

Words

One thing I have been able to have some control over are my words. And although I cannot muster them in quite as fervent a way as I once could, I can still try.

As a journalist, words occupy a special place in my life. I love language and always have. When I was a child I would write short stories, just for fun. And as a teenager, I wrote plays and poems.

Recently, I decided to rekindle that love. Not in a professional capacity, as I had been doing before I got sick; but as a ‘born-again’ hobby. I decided to start writing ‘the book’. You know the one, the one we all have ‘in us’.

I’m not deluded enough to think anyone would ever want to read ‘the book’, but part of me feels as though I need to write it. I need to write it to come to terms with what I have experienced, who I have become, and ultimately to discover where I might be going. It’s the one therapy I feel might actually help me recover.

I have accepted that I am never going to be the person I was before getting cancer. I don’t know if this will be for the better or the worse, but it is the reality. I have to forge a new path in life, and this is a very intimidating prospect for me, right now, but I have to do it.

A few paragraphs

Below are the first few paragraphs I have been able to put together over the last few weeks. It’s not the finest bit of reflective writing that has ever been produced, nor does it have the best grammar, syntax, or spelling. But it is authentic, and most importantly, it’s a start.

In these few paragraphs, I detail the days that surrounded my cancer diagnosis. It wasn’t easy to relive it all, but it is something I have to do. I have to feel the pain, the fear, and do it anyway. It has helped me, at least a little bit, to come to terms with what has been a life-changing experience.

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