Thursday 3 October 2013

Survivor's Guilt




Guilt-ridden, that's how I feel. I feel guilty for being alive every time I hear a cancer fighter lost their life to this horrible disease. A beautiful soul died after fighting it and I feel guilty that she died when I survived.

Every survivor I know feels the same way, it's something imbedded in us, we survived, we're lucky, we've been through that hell, and we escaped it. But the lost souls didn't, by whatever logic or illogic we are at fault because we survived and they didn't.

What makes me so special? Why did I make it? Why couldn't she have made it instead of me? She has a child, that child will grow without a mother, doesn't she deserve to live more than I do?

I feel tainted with survival stench, I cheated death, I am alive, am I worth being given a second chance at life? Do I deserve it when so many fighters out their lose their lives to it on a daily basis?

I am guilty. Guilty to be lucky enough to have survived it..

4 comments:

AlabasterMuslim said...

Asalaamu Alaikum,
Don't feel guilty (easier said than done right). You cannot really cheat death, if you were meant to have died then Allah would have made you die. Those people might have otherwise simply died by another way decreed by Allah, if not by cancer. Alhamdullilah you are alive and I am so sorry you had to go through everythin you did, and be riddled by survivors guilt.

Anonymous said...

You may not connect the dots now, although you might be surprised when you look back at your life 10 years from now.

Unknown said...

I know that it seems to you that you cheated death, but you really didn't. you can no more cheat death than you can change the color of your eyes without using contacts. it is truly sad that a mother lost her life to cancer, but you should, and of course this is easier said than done, not feel guilty over surviving, GOD and GOD alone let you survive cancer. May God bless that mothers soul and send her daughter someone that will be good to her.

Om Saleh said...

I don't blame you for feeling that way. It happens to people even when they survive car accidents while others die and survive wars and imprisonment while others die and so on. But I hope you know that guilt is the most self-destructive human emotion, and it would be a real shame, that after you've beat cancer you would start eating yourself up and destroying yourself emotionally. Like the other two commenters implied, you had no control over your illness and you have no control over other people's health. It's the will of God and you're a believer and I know that deep inside of you, you know that.

Please, please love yourself a little more.