A reluctant welcome

I feel like a complete ninny... a couple of days ago I found out one of my friends, a recent friend but someone I really like and know is a solid good guy, has been diagnosed with cancer and I find myself struggling to find something intelligent to say to him. I want so badly to reach out, find the right words and tell him that I know what he's going through but what makes me arrogant enough to be so sure that I do? He sounds like he's doing well with things and is just taking the steps he needs to take right now, what makes me so sure that he is feeling what I felt during my first days? what makes me assume that he even wants anyone to reach out to him? (Boy, hell of a cancer advocate I'm going to be...) I remember the numbness and the loneliness of when I was first diagnosed, I'm not so sure I would have reacted well to someone coming at me with empathy, because, really, is the empathy about trying to make the other person feel better? or about trying to make yourself feel better? is that where I am with this right now, I'm thinking about myself instead of thinking about my friend? I hope not. I don't want to rev up his worries by talking about my cancer, I don't want to be intrusive, I don't want to talk to him about the fact that his disease is highly curable and completely treatable and have that be taken as being dismissive, all I want to really do is help him be at peace with himself, and it sounds like he pretty much is.

But I also bet that I probably sounded like I was doing pretty well those first days too, and I was, given the situation, but I also found myself wanting to run away from my life, wanting to cry or be angry and not doing so because it would elicit more attention from my loved ones and I didn't really want it, I needed to be left alone a bit. I wasn't really ready to talk to other cancer survivors or read triumphant stories, I just needed to let things sink in for a while. But what was a comfort was knowing that if I did have questions or did want to hear someone's story they were there for me, so I suppose that's all I can do for my friend right now...

The minute I first heard the news about him my first instinct was to say "welcome to my Tribe", and I meant it, with all the bittersweet implications that comes with. I meant it as an embrace and I meant it as a message that it's not all that bad being in this Tribe. I do believe that, but at the same time I'd rather not have to welcome any more of the people that I love into it.

So they said it's supposed to be a "Wake Up Call", right?

I guess you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't... you try to look at your life BC and AD (Before Cancer and After Diagnosis, I just came up with that, hmm... not bad...), and you have all these constructs in your mind about how life is different now, and that excites you and scares you all at the same time, and then all of a sudden you come to the sobering realization that your life is exactly the same in too many ways. What happened to the wake up call thing? Last time I saw my oncologist he told me I dodged a bullet, and I know in my heart I did, right then I saw my treatment and prognosis for the gift that it is. I saw that I have been given a new chance at life and I know I will not squander it. The first impulse is to string together a long list of things you are going to do to change your life, things you are going to do differently, things you will NEVER again waste precious time on. And then you find yourself on a Tuesday morning at 11:00 a.m. dragging your butt into another boring day at work, having the same inane argument with someone that you have had 20 times over, speaking empty platitudes to get yourself out of a conversation you'd rather not be having, and giving in to something that is asked of you even though you don't want to do it, simply because it's easier to acquiesce than it is to fight it.

It's hard not to get into an uptight angry state with yourself, not to get all disappointed with how you are failing to make all those life shattering changes, how you're not focused on changing the world- dealing with cancer patients, ending poverty and hunger, educating women, traveling the world, working for women's rights, writing the great American novel, repairing the hole in the ozone layer, LOL... you know, all those things you omnipotently think you have the power to accomplish because you kicked cancer's ass. How could I possibly be wasting my time on all the mundane things in life? And then it hits you- that string of mundane things IS life, and the wake up call comes when you realize that, that being in the moment and living it fully, no matter how familiar or not, no matter how trivial it may seem, no matter whether it happens to be annoying or joyful, that that is precisely what respecting your life experience is about. And I can promise you one thing, if you awaken to the present moment and stop and feel it, it is always ultimately good if you stay with it long enough. I don't mean to sound like some hippy dippy love child or anything, and not to harp on cancer (even tho I guess that it ultimately is the subject of this blog...) but the most intense "in the moment" experience I have ever had was when I heard the words "it looks like cancer", I was swallowed up by the moment, and even if I had tried to escape the moment it was impossible. But conversely it also was the most alive moment I have ever felt because it came with the realization that there will be a time when I am no longer alive. I had no idea where this was going to unravel to, where it would end, but I stayed with it. I have often said that what got me thru things this year was this underlying trust that all is good, no matter what. And now what makes me feel most alive are those moments that I am able to plug into the present, and I have learned to do that more and more often, and it's especially good when you plug into a moment of "mental temper tantrum" and see it for what it is, because it just dissipates.

So, here I thought I was going to write a flip little paragraph on how my life hasn't changed as much as I wanted it to and I go and get all Eckhart Tolle on you. Wow, my life actually has changed, I guess even though I still spend time doing what I don't want to be doing at least now I'm aware that I'm frittering my time away, haha! It seems that a wake up call isn't just a one time deal, there is no before or after, there is only during.

Oh God, I've become the cancer Yoda :)