Most days seem normal. I set my alarm for 5:10am and, if I don’t snooze it, I get up to ride my bike. Then, its making lunches, getting one kid up for middle school. Traffic is a nightmare. We live 0.9 miles away from school and I think I honk my horn at the rotaries almost every day. Then once I get home again, I get the other kid up and fed and we walk to school. By 8:50am, I am either off to work as a sub in schools or attacking my “to do” list of my volunteer jobs.
Its normal. Its busy.
Then it hits me. Randomly.
Scrolling through social media posts, I come across a high school friend who is raising money because her nephew has a type of brain cancer. I scroll through more posts and it’s the anniversary of a colleague who died over 10 years ago from a brain tumor he fought valiantly for many years.
It when I turn the page to a best-selling book and the mother has been diagnosed (or died from, depending on the book) with breast cancer. Or a movie on tv where the sister is going through chemotherapy because of lymphoma. Then, I hear a teacher at school is struggling with cancer. Again.
And yet, while I can stop scrolling on social media, put down the book and turn off the tv, in the past few months, I feel like my past with cancer has been thrown in my face. I was reminded that I had cancer by a friend who was not a friend (we were taking a break) at the time I was diagnosed and went through surgeries, etc. She commented, when questioning my attitude toward something, “It must have been the cancer.” She felt that cancer had changed me.
Well of course cancer changed me. But why is it that it is the REASON I am who I am today. I challenge anyone who has gone through any challenge to come out on the other side the same. That’s not what humans do. We change. We evolve. We choose different paths during our lifetimes, however long they are.
That statement– “it must have been the cancer” - has been hovering over me. It bothers me. Maybe I am being too defensive, but whether my behavior was due to going through a cancer journey or not, doesn’t matter much. It’s just my behavior now. I don’t use cancer as a scapegoat and don’t understand why anyone else would.
More recently, in a conversation with the same friend, she mentioned she “was upset that I couldn’t help you heal when you had cancer.” I was stunned. It was like cancer was being thrown in my face, as a way to manipulate me. That she thought she could heal me is delusional and likely speaks more to her needing to reflect on why she believes she could do that than anything to do with me. But her need to manipulate me is what I don’t understand.
Even more recently, she commented, “I mean I would guess that you’ve learned to shelter yourself from things since you were sick.” It is like a slap in the face. I would like to believe that I shelter myself in order to protect myself from toxic people and that I do that not because of my cancer journey.
Cancer doesn’t define me. It was a lump in the road.
I don’t need outside forces to remind me that I had cancer. While I tout that it was a lump in the road, it is still very much with me every day. I have PTSD when I wait for health-related test results. I panic when I think of the “what ifs” of even a minor health issue. When I am in a warm embrace with one of my kids, sometimes I flash right back to when I didn’t think I would survive, and I hug them tighter. These things happen to me in split seconds. The feelings come back and wash me over me. They root me to the ground. They remind me that challenges arise and that hard things can be overcome. Those memories remind me that I was lucky.
So, I don’t need another reminder. And I sure as hell don’t appreciate it being thrown in my face in random conversations as a way to manipulate me into doing something or feeling something that isn’t me.
I am still celebrating the anniversaries - even the hard ones. Because with each of those celebrations, someone in my life says, "Glad you are here." Well, frankly, me too. I am glad I am here. I am glad I can face the challenges. I am glad I can be upset when friends say things I don't agree with. I am glad I can have the glass of wine and reflect on the successes of my kids and the next steps of their lives. But when someone uses cancer as an excuse for behavior in my life, I say, "No thanks!"
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