In no particular order…
One thing no one has ever said directly to me, or about me insofar as I'm aware, is that I've brought the cancer on myself through my emotional or spiritual conduct. I've seen this claim made in other contexts. This sort of victim-blaming is one of the most pernicious, evil things I can imagine saying to a cancer patient. If anyone ever did say that to me, I would violate my policy of not trying to create Internet dogpiles and tear them a new one up, down and sideways, right out in public. First of all, it's silly magical thinking of the first water. Second of all, it's just an unspeakably vicious way to talk about the disease.
On a related note, something else I have not seen, to my mild surprise given some of my history with certain other people on the Internet, is any assertion that I would somehow deserve this for being who I am. Sort of a real life version of the "die in a fire" thing some people like to say about people they disagree with. Again, magical thinking; again, vicious. Again, very grateful I haven't run into it.
So, yeah, I'll cope with comments about my dramatic oversharing.
Speaking of comments,
![[info]](https://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=1){kind=small}
cathshafferFifty years ago, if you got a cancer diagnosis, you knew it was pretty much the end. Put your affairs in order, you are dying soon. Medical science has produced effective treatments that can prolong life significantly, and even cure the disease in some cases. Although on the face of it, that's a great thing, what has resulted is a uniquely tortuous liminal journal between terminality and life, one for which humans are in no way emotionally equipped. Are you equipped for a terminal diagnosis. By the grace of god, yes, you are. Are you equipped to spend five or ten years or your life *not knowing* at any given time whether you might be terminal? Absolutely not. Even the cure rates are cruel. In most cancers, it's a minority who are cured, and even the most dire-seeming cases have their rare cures. Is that a good thing? For the person getting cured, absolutely. For all of the rest of patients, who have been thrust into a Las Vegas slot machine situation, stuffing quarters in to save their lives, it becomes the highest stakes gamble of their entire lives.
If someone thinks you're being over dramatic, or over sharing, they better PRAY TO THE FUCKING ALMIGHTY that they never find out for themselves.
She reminds me of something I've said to my therapist a few times, that it would almost be a relief to have a terminal diagnosis. That's not suicidal ideation, and it's not a death wish in the more prosaic sense. It's my response to what Catherine so brilliantly refers to as "a uniquely tortuous liminal journal between terminality and life".
I really need to do some deep, patient thinking about that. Her words do a wonderful job of encapsulating so much of my personal anxiety and fear.
On a slightly related note, a friend of mine (unconnected to the writing community or my online community either one) died over the weekend very unexpectedly of heart failure. We weren't particularly close, but we've been on good terms for years as we crossed paths fairly often, and he had been very supportive of me in my cancer journey. His life was quite different from mine, and Jesus was very important to him, so perhaps that is some comfort to his wife and children. I am very saddened. I cannot imagine death is any easier when it comes swiftly as it did to him. I suppose he had less time to fear, but his family had less time to prepare. There are no good answers here.
Also, something I noted in my most recent re-read of Lois McMaster Bujold's Cryoburn (a novel that exists entirely for the purpose of setting up the last three words of the book, insofar as I'm concerned):
“All the worry people expend over not existing after they die, yet nary a one ever seems to spare a moment to worry about not having existed before they were conceived. Or at all.”
I like that a lot, though I can answer it well enough. Before I existed, there was no me to worry about being conceived or wonder what would happen next. Before I die, there is a me to worry about mortality, and wonder what will happen next. After I die, well, I'm just 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms looking for a place to go. My cadaver will be donated to the medical school associated with the hospital where I receive treatment, to help train future doctors. My memory will live on in the hearts and minds of everyone who knew me, whatever they think of me. And, for a while, my books and stories will yet stand on some people's literal and metaphorical shelves. I'll be a grace note in a few personal histories, and in two or three generations more, I'll be little more than an entry in some genealogical tables and a footnote in the history of science fiction and fantasy.
I'm okay with that. I mean, I won't be here (or anywhere else) to know the difference. Erase me from history, erect statues to me, it's all the same once I'm gone. That's atheism for you.
It's what I do while I'm here that matters.