So, like, is blogging even cool anymore? I am some outdated Gen Xer who hasn’t figured out that the best way to communicate is in a post with just three phrases? Does anyone even read this? [And, totally off topic, but who was Doogie Houser writing to?] I don’t know, but I do know that I spent my teenage to early adult years journaling and it was as therapeutic then in those pretty journals with certain pens as it is on the screen in front of me now with my chosen font and background colors. So, I don’t know, I guess I’m old. I’m 40, almost 41. I blog. I intermittently use 2 or 1 spaces after punctuation. I have breast cancer. I sometimes run to the store in purple sweatpants . . . and may or may not have on a bra [new, perky boobs, folks!]. And I keep finding myself realizing that I don’t really care what any of it looks like to others. I’ve always admired my “older” friends and colleagues for the wisdom and perspective they bring. Age and experience can make you wiser. (It can make you a lot of other things, too, along the way, but I’d like to believe that if you play life right, it really can just make you wiser.) This cancer has already changed me physically. It has changed me emotionally. And I can feel it changing me in. . . eh, I don’t have the word for exactly what it is . . . I can just feel it happening. It’s not just that I’d like to believe I will gain perspective from this experience, but that I already know I have.
But there are some days, when I’m down and out and damaged by this disease, and I’m just angry, that I find myself just being frustrated that I am so, medically speaking, “young” for this disease. Like, all the women in the cancer brochures have beautiful graying hair and husbands who belt and tuck in striped polo shirts. And I get angry because sometimes I just wish I had that age, that wisdom, that experience, to tell me that I know how to get through this, know how to be gentle with myself, know how to look back on my life and see how this experience will be one of all the other waves I’ve ridden. Instead, I’m 40, with a ten- and eight year-old, running from work to hockey practice to school events to scheduling a playdate to the bills to finding the Halloween costumes to when is that orthodontist appointment to when can I push my career to the next level to OMG! What is for dinner?! It’s just that I’m so in the thick of this “This is 40” period of my life with kids and family and a career, how in the world is there room for cancer in it. And really, forget about making room for the cancer treatment and surgeries and appointments. How do I make room for the emotional time-suck of this disease. I hadn’t figured out how to handle my emotional pre-cancer self. I was just barely finding myself more productively reacting to life’s situations with more grace and wisdom [lol, from my perspective, anyhow] before this cancer. Sometimes I’m just angry that this couldn’t have all come on in another ten years. Just ten more years of figuring myself out before having to figure this out.
But then again, I guess, who knows what the next ten years will bring. Maybe riding this wave now will make a future tsunami less overwhelming. Maybe everything really does happen for a reason.
Maybe it’s just a matter of looking at it right.
If You Look At It Right 