Someone told me recently that I could look at my life as though I'm living with a secret. My chemo so far doesn't make my hair fall out. I surprisingly do not look as though I'm dying, I look and feel healthy as of now. I posses the knowledge of my future and those who do not know me, do not. Walking around the cruise ship and looking at all the happy people on vacation was in a way a daunting experience. Why do all these people who love buffets and to sit in the sun get to live "forever"? But I always go back to, who knows what they've been through. They could have their own diagnosis that they aren't aware of or that they're not visually sharing.
One night we were at dinner on the ship and we were sitting right next to a woman who clearly was growing back in her head of hair. I immediately had this feeling, she has breast cancer. Sure enough she struck up a conversation with us and it turns out her and her husband were celebrating the end of chemo for her by going on a cruise. Now I don't ever see me being able to even celebrate that. I am jealous of my aunts chemo schedule because she can now go every 3 weeks, and I have to go every other week. How pathetic is that, I'm jealous of a chemo schedule, oh man what a life I now live.
This woman who was celebrating the end of her chemo was the only person on the boat that we shared my secret with. She didn't even acknowledge the information with any sort of response what so ever. I mean, she literally didn't respond, she didn't say anything at all. I don't know how someone who has been through something so similar as myself can just not even express any sort of understanding, empathic or sympathetic or anything at all. Telling elicited nothing from this woman. I know this is how many of you feel. You don't know what to say or do. I did a post a while back about this, about how doing something is better than nothing at all. But then what should that something be? I don't know that I have the answer to that, and I of all people should be able to give you some hint on that shouldn't I? I can say that the number one thing that makes me feel heard and understood is compassion, so if you could just show compassion I think that's enough.
I am not sure what we expected to hear from this woman on the ship, or what we expected her to say that would make us at least feel heard. I think the fact that she did nothing made me think well she could have at least aknowledged what we said to her. And I think in general thats what's helpful, is acknowledgement that you understand or at least try to understand what we're going through and again having compassion.
So as far as secrets go, this is not the one anyone would chose to want to live with, but the word live is the key. As long as I'm living I will have this secret and that is all I'm trying to do right now is stay alive.
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