{"id":249,"date":"2009-05-02T19:51:47","date_gmt":"2009-05-02T23:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=249"},"modified":"2009-05-02T20:01:43","modified_gmt":"2009-05-03T00:01:43","slug":"we-put-all-our-eggs-in-one-basket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=249","title":{"rendered":"We put all our eggs in one basket"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cancer\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We’re at the Planet Cancer young adult’s retreat in Ashland, MA and there’s cancer everywhere, even in my apple<\/a>.\u00a0 I’m supposed to be at the ‘romantic dinner’, where we will be encouraged to play dress-up with garish costumes, all in the name of good fun and support, but I’m in a foul mood and I think I just lost my appetite.\u00a0 The plan was to hang back for a few minutes and sort out my melancholy while munching the apple, but even that<\/em> simple plan has been thwarted.<\/p>\n

Look, we have to go to the dark places and we have to remember who we are and where we come from.\u00a0 This ‘couples’ retreat has put me into the company of some extraordinary people.\u00a0 There’s quite a range of diversity, but the sub-group of ‘cancer partners’ (of which I am a proud member) had little chat, maybe for less than an hour (not enough time), earlier today.\u00a0 We’d done our fun and games.\u00a0 We’d done our zip lines and a few folks showed depths of courage that they probably didn’t know they had within themselves.\u00a0 So now it was serious time, time to speak your mind.\u00a0 Often a dangerous moment for me.<\/p>\n

There was no surprise which two partners had the most to say.\u00a0 These women are dealing with a downward spiral that blocks out all hope.\u00a0 All the attention is focused on the condition of their sick significant others.\u00a0 There are little children to take care of.\u00a0 There is a home to tend to.\u00a0 People have (or had) jobs.\u00a0 It seems like there is no way out.\u00a0 That’s because there is no way out.\u00a0 We live with the guilt of being glad that we’re not sick.\u00a0 We pretend not to think this would all go away if our partner just died and go it over with already.\u00a0 And then we expend what small amounts of energy that are left over from taking care of the significant other, and we use it to beat back all these horrible feelings.\u00a0 Why did you have to get sick?\u00a0 This is all you fault.\u00a0 You ruined my life.<\/p>\n

If I never said it, I’d go mad.\u00a0 I couldn’t function.\u00a0 I’d be eaten alive by my own fear of admitting my feelings.\u00a0 But I think I had a glimpse of what happens when I start to decay, not from the affliction of a disease that is seeking to destroy my body and steal my young life, but of what happens when a self-destructive path leads to my own crumbling and compromise.\u00a0 That’s what happened during Emily’s treatment, and, in my excitement, at finding these kindred souls, I shared these thoughts.<\/p>\n

I know about caregivers maintaining a healthy distance from those whom they must protect and heal, but I often forget that I sometimes occupy both of those positions.\u00a0 I know I need to say these things in front of these people, but I jump right in.\u00a0 I fall in love too easy.\u00a0 My mistake was to not consider the consequences.\u00a0 I had thought that a fine afternoon run would do the trick and bring me back to a peaceful place, but that opportunity was lost to a foolish massage class, presented by a well-meaning new-ager with little or no understanding of his audience.\u00a0 Also, there were those for whom the peace and serenity that might come from putting your hands on a loved one was, I think, thrown off a bit by the public setting.\u00a0 The result was a lot of giggling and distraction.\u00a0 This proved to be a poor substitute for my run, despite the good intentions of all involved.<\/p>\n

We were then left with little or no time to relax before dress-up dinner and I became fuming and furious.\u00a0 I showered and sent Em up to the dining room on her own.\u00a0 She’s tuned-in enough to be OK with that.\u00a0 I know how lucky I am.<\/p>\n

So now, I take these moments to engage in some reflection to help snap me out of it.\u00a0 And all I can think of is a comment I made without thinking of it beforehand.\u00a0 I so often get excited and speak without thinking.\u00a0 Listeners get an unguarded honesty that wasn’t necessarily intended, and I think that is good.\u00a0 I’m right there, just being me<\/strong> without thinking of the consequences.\u00a0 In those moments, I am that confident.\u00a0 I don’t put on a show.\u00a0 And while others will (hopefully) react well, I have now gotten more than I bargained for.\u00a0 It’s not the effect of my words on them that I should worry about.\u00a0 It’s the effect on me.<\/p>\n

I said that we all had put all our eggs in one basket, and now the basket may have a whole in it.<\/p>\n

No one is talking about adoption.\u00a0 Everyone here is has kids or will (maybe) still be able to have kids.\u00a0 But not us.\u00a0 Even in this crowd, we’re still all alone.\u00a0 And in that break-out session, I<\/em> was all alone.\u00a0 I meant the comment to imply that someone may die, and wouldn’t that be terrible, but that’s not what I said.\u00a0 I talked about eggs and holes, like the holes in a person’s flesh that are used for chemo ports, or the holes that are cut in bellies to remove sex organs, or the hole that I now feel in myself, thanks to cancer.<\/p>\n

Maybe in a few days the difficulty of this weekend and my current anger will bear beautiful fruit.\u00a0 I will realize that I can put my cynicism aside and feel hope and strength.\u00a0 Right now, however, I’m miserable, I’m missing dinner and I’m thinking about a joke that was flippantly tossed around during our discussion – a joke that suggested the real reason we were all here was to make the facilitators feel better about their lives – and none of them have cancer or are a cancer partner.\u00a0 They’re good, but they’re other people.\u00a0 They’re not us, and I’m sick of them telling us what to do and when to do it.<\/p>\n

That concludes this report from Room CA<\/span>125.\u00a0 Let me go see if there is any dessert left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’re at the Planet Cancer young adult’s retreat in Ashland, MA and there’s cancer everywhere, even in my apple.\u00a0 I’m supposed to be at the ‘romantic dinner’, where we will be encouraged to play dress-up with garish costumes, all in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[1475,281,78,280],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":255,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions\/255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}