Cancer is Crap: Lumpy, Grumpy, Slumpy …and OK
October 23 2009, 4:24 PM
You know, it’s odd. In spite of the happy clarification on the grim statistics, I find I’m still feeling a little shaky.
I’m not lying prostrate on the kitchen floor, but neither am I just reeling with feisty optimism, just oozing determination. I’m kind of down, kind of growly at the cancer. I’m in a bit of a slump this week. I’m resenting the cancer cells and lumps in my body – they’re scaring me, chasing me, and I’m tired of it. I want a break, which of course just isn’t possible.
And yet, somehow I feel that this is OK, this not feeling OK that I’m feeling. It’s allowed. I don’t have to be “up” all the time.
Much as that would be nice for me and certainly make the people who love me feel more comfortable, it would be unrealistic. Not to mention a little annoying. It would lead to a place called Crazy, or Lance Armstrongville, and I’m no bike-riding, rubber-bracelet-hawking, cancer super-franchise.
At least not today. Today, I’m just a person who got hit with the cancer stick and isn’t too happy about it. And I think I have every right to be unhappy about it. Living with cancer can take a lot out of a girl. Sometimes you howl at the moon, sometimes you come at the cancer guns-a-blazing, and sometimes you hit the kitchen floor, or crawl under the duvet. Everything goes. Right now, it’s just not going so great.
And while I do truly appreciate the efforts of family and friends to cheer me up — especially just by letting me know that I’m loved – it’s also OK to let me be a little low. You are even entitled to roll your eyes and flash your middle finger at the surly grouch currently inhabiting my person. God knows I would. Just a word to the wise: whatever you do, do not (not ever, but especially not today) start with that schtick about cancer being a gift or a lesson or a resolution of some dark long-buried trauma, or I’ll sock you one, I swear, and then we’ll both be on the floor.
Misery loves company, after all.
