So what if I had Cancer?

I don’t quite remember the days when I suffered from cancer. I ended up romanticizing them as they brought the greater Good to my life. If optimism was my weapon then, I am left weaponless now. In introspection, I have now come to believe that the only reason that I lasted the crucial period of my chemotherapy was because for the most part I had doctors, nurses, sick people and more sick people around me. What I mean to say here is that, I had no or very few Normal people who cared for me enough to give me a list of do(s) and don’t(s) or lectures about self care.

When people ask, 'How are you?', they do not really want an answer. Well in my case, they simply seek for an opportunity to let me know how careless I am or have been. I feel bad that they use even an ounce of their energy to say things to me because by now I am skilled in the art of shutting my ears to people I don’t want to hear. People mean good, at the same time they mean nothing at all. The people I meet everyday ask about my health, maybe they care or maybe their parents taught them as a kid to be Polite when you meet a sick person. From where I see it, ‘How are you?’ is purely involuntary.

The best thing about cancer, if you ask me, is that people fear to talk about it. I wonder how it is such a widely spread notion that one should not make the sick person feel that s/he is sick. So obviously then, asking about health issues/life to the sick one is a Taboo. I encouraged every one; go on ask me about my leukemia and in the end everyone tagged me brave for having facing it and being able to talk about it in such a sportive manner. Well, they gave me my tiny little happy bubble.

The worst thing now is that I am sick and it’s not cancer. So people have their Social license to talk about me in my presence because obviously if it is not cancer- it’s not huge- it won’t hurt me- so let’s chat! Why don’t you take care of yourself, why are you sick all the time, drink milk, eat fruits, take your meals at time, so on and so forth. The mystery of people repeating the same things over and over again without any positive result is a big one. I don’t think I can unravel it. In fact, I think I don’t even want to unravel it.

I am an attention seeking child. I like being pampered all the time. I hate it when somebody apart from me is the centre of attention. But over the years I have wished for no attention at all. I won’t be happy but I won’t be mentally tortured either. To know that people are feeling helpless at a distance, they are taking errands to the hospital everyday makes me feel like a burden on them. They wouldn’t want me to feel so, I guess. They love and care, I understand. They have every right to get mad at me.

 

They say I am careless, I choose to ruin my life. If only they look back into the pages of past and realize that I was the person who Danced! Today I am a body whose soul is continuously sucked by the dementors but never completely out. In this world of never being happy again, I would appreciate people who do not continuously voice their concern but do whatever it is in their hands to help me. I would like to have a conversation without any hint of my health issues in it; I would like to talk about my life beyond my body, about my ideas and thoughts. I would like not to be reminded that I am after all a dysfunctional body, over and over again. This post might seem pessimistic to some and might offend numerous people. The anger, the helplessness, the frustration might have poisoned my mind unlike the sheer optimism that cancer brought in my life. Well, it is what it is!