InsaneJournal

Current mood:	enraged
Entry tags:	poking the dead body with a stick, tv talk, you wouldn't like me when i'm angry

You Must Be This Tall To Ride This Ride
I posted this in my personal journal, but it's important and upsetting enough to me that I'm crossposting it here:

Currently, there's a contestant on Top Chef who is a cancer survivor. In the most recent episode, the contestants were asked to create a dish based on the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. In intro'ing her dish, Robin talks about her cancer and how her dish sprang from that.

Another contestant, Eli, commented about her "playing the cancer card" and that she only won the quickfire challenge because the judges felt sorry for her.

Right now, I'm watching Grey's Anatomy and I'm looking at Katherine Heigl in her headscarf and her cardigan sweater and remembering how it felt to be that cold and brittle-feeling all the time.

Earlier this week, I was watching Queer As Folk (US) and wondering if I'm ever going to be able to watch a TV show or movie with a cancer plotline and NOT taste chemo in the back of my throat.

EVERY DAMN DAY, I block on a word, or I misspell something that I never had a problem with before or I sit down in front of the computer and try to write with one-tenth the ease I had before I was sick and I wonder if I will ever have any of this back again or whether it's just gone forever. Every day. And possibly every day for the rest of my life.

And this is while I'm theoretically "well".

When I was actively sick (because you can be cured, but you're never REALLY cured), I didn't talk a lot about my cancer, not even here in the space that was devoted to my personal needs and ramblings. The reason for this was two-fold:

1. I LITERALLY COULDN'T TALK ABOUT IT. Cancer--and it's treatment--is hands down the worst thing to ever happen to me. It was 5 years of not feeling quite right and having doctors tell me it was my weight (even after I'd lost a hundred pounds) or my imagination. It was 9 months of distilled hell they call treatment which...I can't even describe how awful it was. How I had every piece of my life penetrated and taken over by this raping disease. How I lost every vestige of my privacy, because my every bowel movement might be relevant. How I lost control of my own body to the doctors and to the disease. How I had to shut down any rapport I had between body and mind because the body was SO SICK, ALL THE TIME that the mind couldn't take it and to survive, I had to burn that bridge and I'm STILL fucking rebuilding it. Every little thing about myself that I liked, that I thought was pretty, that I thought was intelligent or good, or whatever...gone. All gone. And there are no words for all of that. This here is the barest edge of it all. Going through it, experiencing it, trying to just...HANG ON until it was over... You don't get it unless you've been through it. No amount of empathy you can summon can even stand on the bare shores of that ocean of misery. YOU JUST DON'T KNOW. And if you're in it, if you're treading water in that ocean, a) you don't have the time to talk about it, because all your energy is pouring into holding on and b) you don't even know where to start explaining THAT shit to people.

2. The other reason that I didn't talk about it is the fear of people like fucking Eli on Top Chef, thinking that me talking about my cancer is some bid or plea for sympathy or attention, rather than something that TOOK OVER MY LIFE TO AN EXTENT THAT THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE TO TALK ABOUT. And that completely changed the life that came after it, so that no part of it is untouched by that cancer. There was the fear of becoming on of "those people" who is solely defined by her disease. Which, in retrospect, is laughable, because I WAS ALREADY BEING DEFINED BY IT. Against my will.

(The tangential aside that I want to point out about the Eli situation is that it is also entirely insulting to the two judges--both female--to suggest that they were not discerning enough to separate their appreciation of good food from any sympathy they might feel. And I wanted to get that out, but it's not the point)

But now it's not even 2 years cancerl free and mostly what I am is angry. I'm angry at the medical profession. I'm angry at the cancer itself. I'm angry at my parents, for passing on such cancerous genes. I'm angry at myself, for not being better, handling it better, for all those things I had to do, even knowing it was necessary. I'm angry at all the tears I shed, afraid to go outside and have people see me, puffy and pale and balding. I'm angry at the people who stood behind me on the BART escalators, fuming that I didn't walk up them, or that judged me for standing and waiting for the shuttle bus rather than walking the 2.5 blocks to my job. I'm angry at the people who "helped" me by piling on the lavishly detailed stories of their friends and relatives who had cancer and who forced their hugs on me whether I wanted them or not. I'm angry at all the people who patted me on the knee or shoulder and said, "Don't worry, you'll get through it," as if that was ANY CONSOLATION AT ALL.

And I'm mad at fuck heads for Eli for making sure that I could never talk about it, even if I was so inclined.

Fuck you, Eli and your "cards". Fuck you with a big splintery stick.