brunobaby

I've been taking a few days off from posting, because I've come to a crossroads in my life and was mulling over the best way to present it on the blog.

The crossroads have to do with dealing with my husband's battle with cancer. It was one thing when I first mentioned it here in passing in May 2005, framed as having "beat" cancer. Which is what we'd really thought at the time, cancer being the sneaky bastard that it is.

But when it returns and starts waging some new battles, then you have to watch out that your blog doesn't turn into "one of those cancer blogs." As in, "Hey! I thought this was gonna be one of those funny blogs. It's one of those cancer blogs."

Part of my reluctance in posting about it has had to do with protecting our privacy, but the other part is risking alienating people. Yeah, I sound wimpy but I've already alienated several people with this, a couple of whom I had considered trustworthy. You would think that Jim was a drunk who fell off the wagon instead of a guy whose cancer came back. In fact, some people would prefer the drunk, since he'd be more fun at parties.

I took a few days off from posting to deal with it in private e-mails with people, and in my head. I've realized I've been pushing very hard to have life go on ten times better than normal, to show the cancer that it wasn't going to get us down.

I went to the doctor last Wednesday with what's turned out to be a stress disorder. Long story short, I've been like a motorist stuck in traffic who keeps gunning the gas pedal, convinced that the resounding VROOOM! will show everybody that they mean business. I've been in a chronic state of VROOOM! since May 2004 and have flooded my engine.

(Oh sure, I was still going to work, still functioning, still getting everything done, but you see, the wall was very very bad and it actually needed to get a hole punched in it. So there.)

My choice has been to go on posting about whatever moves me, since I'm not getting paid for this anyway. If it's how aggravated I am about something having to do with living with cancer, without violating anyone's privacy, then I'll bring that in. (Some of the people I've met in the support community are just begging to be satirized.) If it's something in the papers that has nothing to do with cancer, that'll still be here.

Mostly I'm acknowledging that I'm not superwoman and haven't failed...this would affect anyone, including a normal person, if I ever meet one anywhere. Life isn't always pretty or zany, and increasingly, neither am I. People who know me well, know that I would rather staple-gun my tongue to my forehead than admit defeat. And in this city, in the kind of businesses I've let myself get into, defeat is always right under you ready to suck you in. Defeat is the default.

So maybe if enough of us admitted defeat once in a while, we would realize that none of us were losers. Okay, except the people who really, really are losers. But that's not you. Or me.