It sucks
People are scared of what they don’t know. The fear of the unknown causes normal people to act in peculiar ways, maybe an awkward date encounter or the thrill of a haunted house, it’s the unknown that causes people to act awkward and not know how to deal with an event, except maybe ignoring it.
I don’t know how many times while my dad was alive living with stage five stomach cancer or even after he passed people would ask that closed ended question that only needed one quick answer to make them feel more comfortable around you.
how are you?
That question plagues me to this day almost three years after my father’s death. To me that question makes me so angry and furious I want to be like the Hulk, and just smash things. That question is like asking a person who just won the lottery how they feel. Or asking a person whose dog just got hit by a car how they feel
Oh I feel great.
The worst part is when you reply with anything other than ‘I’m ok.’ people get nervous and don’t know how to react. When people ask that question to me, what I really want to do is grab them with all my might and slap them across their face and yell
“IT SUCKS”.
Two words. “IT SUCKS” that is the only way to describe being a victim of cancer. There are no intelligent words that can soften the experience. My experience with cancer is that when discussing it, simplicity is bliss. Let me explain what I mean by that….
SIMPLICTY is bliss
When discussing this ‘taboo’ topic of cancer around a person or persons currently or have experienced this pain on earth, the topic hits more close to home and is more painful than they may let on. The hardest part is acting ordinary, a word that loses its definition because after these experiences that word will only be another sensitive subject that floats in air around you like a bee, waiting to sting you when you are not expecting it. The problem with cancer is that for the victims there are little outlets that are acceptable for venting, maybe only paying a therapists to talk to, even then you feel like a nuance to them.
In today’s society the less you impose on peoples lives about this touchy subject the better, people will offer there services ‘call me if you need anything?’ or ‘what can I do for you?’ However the truth of the matter is that these are only words that make people feel like they are doing their part to help you recover. So these people will talk to you, which now is a chore because the whole time they are terrified that you will bring up the big C word, making them uncomfortable, but they talk to you because its like doing charity work and they just say ten hail marys a day and talk to you once a week and they get bragging rights that they are helping you recover all the while they think they just secured their place in heaven
In my own experience with this, I said little, more like next to nothing about my pains and heartaches that plagued my family and myself on a daily basis. Because I learned that the less I said the better it was.
