Cancer Stories

“I am not a science project”

September 10th, 2006

This is a little different from the other cancer stories posted here…just something I’d written in my blog, I’m coming from a different place than most others so please bear with me.

 

---

   

I get frustrated by others’ inability to understand or empathize with what I’m going through…and frustrated more so when they even begin to try. I hate being viewed as “someone with cancer” and that being the be-all, end-all of who and what I am. That just isn’t so.

I hate that people feel as if they need to “learn” how to cope with this aspect of myself, like they need to do research, or buy books or find out all they can. I’m not something you can study, experiment with, what have you. I think those with serious illnesses probably detest being stereotyped or somehow branded, clumped together wholly as a demographic with no other common traits besides being ill, and then somehow analyzed. This isn’t a cattle call and I don’t want to be analyzed….I can’t be. I can’t be fit into some nice, neat package of how I’m going to act, respond, feel, think. It changes daily. And varies certainly from person to person.

Regardless, it bothers me that people even feel as though they need to learn how to “deal” with me. I don’t want to be dealt with or put up with, don’t write off my inconsistencies as a man, as a person, simply because I’m ill. I never asked anyone to deal with me, I never asked anyone for anything — expect simply to allow me to deal with MYSELF. I’m not like anyone else, so my journey, my struggles are altogether foreign to everyone - most of all to me.

This is all new, every day is new. A new battle, a new fight, a new Robert. I don’t see how it could be any other way.

I have to admit, I greatly admire those that can go through what I’m facing right now and feel completely positive about the outcome. The ones that don’t wake up bitter or angry — the ones who don’t allow fear to perpetuate. But that isn’t me. Most days, I’m petrified about what could happen to me, to my son. Other days, I’m angry. I mean, we all have those “Why me?” moments, right? So seriously…why me?

Sometimes I end up in this dark place where I begin to act cold and callous. Two things I know aren’t truly inside of me, but still manage to rear their ugly heads. I’ve never been so uptight, unhappy in my life. Ask Jess, I was always happy before - this. Probably happy to the point that it agitated others, but I didn’t care. That person is long gone, I‘m almost certain. Happy is now one of those transient, fleeting things that I try desperately to cling onto when it finds its way into my life. But it often leaves so quickly, leaving nothing more than a residue of its previous existence. An idea, a notion…simply a nod.

It shouldn’t be that way, right?

So then why is it?
 

 

Entry Filed under: General