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My Actual Awesomeness Is Only Exceeded By My Cancer-Induced Pseudo-Awesomeness
Monday, June 18, 2007 
I am irked. Oh, so irked.
Since the cancer diagnosis business with the abnormal cells and the tumourful cervix and the let's scrape this here and the let's remove that, I have been a little testy with regard to the pressure I feel is put upon cancer patients to be saintly. Today, I am especially testy about it, because not only do I get to be a cancer patient, but I also get to have a wicked sinus infection that has gone so far as to become a seeping wound inside my left nostril and a pinched nerve in my neck resulting from stress tension pushing my vertebrae out of place.
I was listening to the news on television while I was cuddling with Oskar on the toilet, because that is his cuddle place, gawd knows why, and the newsperson was going on and on about this young woman with some unspecified kind of cancer who actually continued to go to ball games and swim at the local pool. She was just the awesomest person in their whole town, yessiree, because she always smiled, and three different people were called upon to confirm her complete lack of complaint since the cancer took hold. Hallelujah, didn't everyone want to be just like her?
I shoved the cat off my lap just as he was in the midst of some exaggerated form of kitty ecstasy which involved shoving his paws between my thighs, and rushed into the living room to catch sight of this wondrous marvel of humanity. I decided that the broad grin she wore in each and every shot just might be a result of the partial paralysis she now endured after three brain surgeries, and that three brain surgeries could render anyone less prone to attacks of the weight of reality that would make you appear unhappy in the face of near imminent death.
I was peeved by the story, because no one ever spoke to her or her father, even though both were present, and I am less likely to believe in someone's perpetual sunniness if the only attestants are three people at a small-town ball game who do not even state what their relationship is to this beatified soul.
My issue, though, is much less with disreputable news story and much more with the idyllic portrayal of the cancer victim. There was an incredible list of wonderful attributes associated with the cancerified young woman, and she could very well be an excellent example of humanity, but as I listened to the news story, she was also an example of just about every other account I have come across both socially and in the media. We becancered souls are strong, we are giving, we are grateful, we are on a journey, we are experiencing the best thing that has ever happened to us, we amaze the non-becancered with our ability to keep on keepin' on.
Bull. Shit.
I am tired of hearing people with cancer spoken about in the same glowing tones with which the freshly dead are spoken. Hello! Over here! See this? I am sooo not dead yet. People with cancer are not dead, nor are they necessarily terribly ill with it. You will not be cursed if you do not like someone with cancer. If you speak ill of a person with cancer, they will not zombify and stalk you in the night. People with cancer are just like the rest of living, except that we grow a lot more in places that you don't, which can sometimes bear complications both great and small.
I have been told by people that I am strong, but I will tell you where much of that appearance of strength comes from: there is nothing else I can do. If I hide in my apartment, I dwell mercilessly upon my mortality; if I cry, I don't stop; if I stay home from work to nurse a breakdown, I feel guilty and bored by my own eeyore-ish.
Being out in the world and continuing to live my life is the best defense mechanism I have, and I am sure that I am not the only one who employs this tactic. What else am I going to do with my time? Moon about the apartment and fret over the inevitable? I do that already in a thousand little moments throughout the day. Who wants to do only one thing ever all the time? That is boring, people. And lame. So, I am at work, I am out with friends, I go for walks, and the appearance of my bravery swells.
I guess that I should be looking at the bright side of this. When once not an eye was batted over my going out for coffee or volunteering my time, now many eyes bat, and the incidents are seen as signs of my inner fortitude. In the face of cancer, she went to a board meeting! Faith and begorrah!
But now I am just complaining, which means that I have gone off point. Here is the thing: when that newscast was featuring a story about that saintly young woman with cancer, a woman of such inner strength that she never once frowned or complained or became angry at the nastiness the disease can bring, I realized how suffocated I feel. A weird expectation has grown in our culture that cancer is The Worst Thing Ever That Can Ever Happen To A Person, and that anyone who comes down with the dreaded Worst Thing Ever is being awesome just by existing without bitching constantly. It is not as though I have known a great many people with cancer, but right now, I am being kept up to date about a few of them, and damned if each and every one of them has not been described as amazing and good and warm and thoughtful and strong.
It is a lot to live up to when you are in the midst of just trying to figure out what it means to have cancer in your life in the first place, let alone what it is going to mean when you are missing body parts afterward.
I mean, I am awesome; I am just not that awesome.
Reader Comments (19)
Okay, but I know someone with cancer who is a bit of a shit - so you can't be that either.
I revel in your awesomeness simply because of your blunt honesty. THAT's what makes you stand apart. All the rawness of your writing HAS to be helping you cope on a much better level than if you didn't.
I'm just at a loss because (a) I don't know you, (2) I have no words of wisdom, (3) I know that whatever I say, or anyone says, it will never fix it or change anything.
But, I can read (listen). But know that if there was anything that you needed any one of your readers would do their very best to help, just like I would.
You have been actually awesome ever since I started reading this blog. You might have been actually awesome before then, too, but I would have no way of knowing so I can’t attest to that.
You know what I think The Worst Thing Ever would be? Warts. Oozing genital warts. Now that has got to be worse than cancer. ;)
And yes, you are awesome. Even before this whole cancer brew-haha, you were awesome. Hehe.
well, you're certainly more awesome than me who shall complain about how loudly her co-worker talks. I shall have to buck up but sweet squeezy jesus that fucker talks LOUD. See? I've totally derailed this comment by complaining.
The Best Onion.com headline ever:
Loved Ones Recall Local Man's Cowardly Battle With Cancer
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29585.
It's just so wrong that it is right.
Hugs. We will love you no matter what your level of awesome is.
I love this post! I absolutely get where you are coming from. I was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago and people kept telling me (and still tell me) that I'm inspirational. I've always thought that was funny because I certainly don't FEEL inspirational and I'm certainly not TRYING to be inspirational. I just dealt with it the only way I knew how. For me that meant facing this thing head on, empowering myself with knowledge, actively participating in my treatment, and – quite literally – laughing in the face of cancer. I think the laughing in the face of cancer thing is what everyone thinks is so inspirational, but I wasn't any less crazy or goofy before cancer. Or as you so perfectly describe it, I wasn’t any less awesome. Cancer merely gave me a way to share my awesomeness with the world. So I roll with it. Hey, if people think I’m inspirational or awesome, then great! It makes me feel good to know that I made them feel good. Even if the only reason they feel good is because I got cancer and just kept acting like myself.
The Onion article Suebob shared is HILARIOUS. Maybe deep down people halfway expect that someone with cancer is going to be like Russ: completely fall apart and not be able to deal with it. Then when that doesn’t happen they become awed by your strength. I know the article is a joke, but there’s a very profound statement at the end: “in times of great trial a man's true colors show”.
Even though I don’t know you personally I’ve read enough of your blogs to know that you are, indeed, awesome. Obviously having cancer didn’t make you awesome, cancer is just making it that much more apparent to the world. So roll with it, girlfriend!
Fellow Cancer Survivor Extraordinaire,
Susan
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/lemonmargaritas/
Be weak. Be angry. Build forts with good books and flashlights.
In the late eighties I cared for AIDS patients. At that time all of our patients died, it was just a matter of time. One in particular taught me a lot. I was young and thought that dying people were somehow better, wiser, more spiritual, something. I don't know.
Robert Merry, I can still remember him was dying of AIDS and he was a troll, and his friends said he'd always been like that. And I was shocked because he wasn't what I thought he should be. He wasn't wise or dignified or accepting, he just was who he was. So he lived as a troll and he died as a troll and I realized that people don't change, just because they get sick or get cancer or even die, they're still who they always were.
So don't worry, you don't have to change:) Just be yourself, the rest of us will cope.
The deal is when you have cancer you are the same person you were before you had cancer and...guess what...you'll be the same person when the fucking cancer is gone (never to return) as you were before. Only difference? Life will seem a bit jollier because you do understand the difference between having cancer and not having cancer. Capiche?
I get that "so strong" comment a lot. Or I used to. Completely baffles me - what other option is there? And what, exactly entails not being strong? I get up every day, I put my clothes on and I go on with life. Sure I'd rather curl up in a corner and hide, but I'd have to come out eventually just to get nachos or something and there it would all still be, right? So... strong? Bullshit. It's just breathing in and out every day.
Yeah you're right, I've noticed this. That the portrayal of cancer has been about the positive attitudes of its victims, not the horrific way it destroys people, bodies, lives. You don't have to be a saint, you just be whatever it is you are. Or something like that.
I know exactly what you mean. The whole time I was living with cancer, having it cut out of my body, having reconstruction surgeries, and then grappling with the depression that accompanied a brand new disability...the whole time, everyone in my life expected me to remain the sunny personality I used to be.
Instead, I became a bitter bitch. I hated the world. I was suicidal every day for a good year, and let everyone know it.
I still resent that they expected me to be thankful it didn't kill me. For the longest time, I wished it had.
People are clueless. My heart goes out to you.
Megan - I agree with you. I had some pretty horrid stuff to deal with in my past and everyone was on the "you're so strong" bandwagon. But seriously should I go jump in a lake tied to a big rock or do I have to go to work?
Schmutz - I knew a woman with cancer who was a real bitch before during and after!
Schmutzie you do what you've got to do and no-one can tell you different. When I said 'how do you lend strenght to the mighty' it had nothing to do with how you are presently coping with this cancer, I have no idea how you are really coping. I ony meant that as long as I have known you (some 13 good years) you have shown me what a real (sorry to be cliche) strong independant woman is. I have been blessed to know so many awesome women that I never even noticed or appreciated what exactly this meant or was worth. Lately, though, after becoming a mother and learning all about a whole new mountain of societal pressures on us gals, I have been realizing just how much it takes to be true to your own heart and mind, and realizing that my own strenght has been so much easier because of women like you. When I was a 14 year old totally mixed up outcast you befriended me and set a precedence in my life. All I can say is thank you, and it scares the wit out of me to see you threatened by something your smart mouth can't get you out of. God this all sounds so played out but it's true.
I'm a fifteen year old girl, who just had a major surgery to (hopefully) make me amazingly cancer free. And you know what? I'm not that great of a person a lot of the time. In fact, I make mistakes, I am selfish and whiney, and I totally hate the fact that cancer happened to me (of all people! ME!).
But people choose to ignore that. A lot. According to them, I am inspirational, I am strong, I am amazing. And, you know what? Sometimes I am. I really am. As you said, most of the time I am strong because there is no other option. What else can you do? The cancer is there, and no amount of tears is going to make it go away (although, it is tempting to test that theory). I am strong, and stoic, because I'm used to this whole cancer thing by now.
And now that the cancer is out of my body, now that I'm tumor-less, does that make me less of a person than I was before? Am I less brave, now that I am healthy? Or has cancer rendered me permanantly inspirational? I sure hope not.
Thankyou schmutzie. So many times, cancer patients are portrayed in impossible ways -- no one is happy all the time, especially when they are sick. Cancer patients shouldn't have impossible expectations put on them. I always hate it when people act surprised when I go out and do something, but if I don't, they assume somethings weird or wrong.
I commend you. I've loved your blog for a long time, and know that I'm thinking of you, and sending you my good healing vibes your way.
You're pretty awesome, cancer or not. I know you know that. I'm pretty awesome too, and we'll always have exciting conversation starters.
You're awesome. Let's eat sushi. (Because you have "inspired" me to want to eat sushi. Look at you, being all inspiring and shit.) Seriously, you do rock. But you always did.
When I tell people I'm an alcoholic but that I quit drinking, they always say how great it is, and that I must be very strong. And I always say, "Well, it was quit or die, and I made the choice you would have made." And then they're all uncomfortable, and I enjoy that.
Do you know someone who makes short videos? I would love to see the following spoof of this kind of "human interest" story:
A person bravely pursuing her daily life despite having to cope with her unavoidable mortality.
"Stepping out, she knows the next stride could be her last, and yet she courageously crosses the road!"
"She is so brave, it's amazing. She'll even go to work with a cough despite the hazard of pneumonia!"
With utmost respect for what you who are living with cancer must cope with, by accident or disease, so we all go. Only TV pretends otherwise...
'Lena