The computer gets turned on again tonight . . . . or rather, it’s morning of Tuesday, but it’s all night to me as it’s black outside and all is quiet inside the house. It took a long time for it to be quiet tonight. Our most difficult time with Nate is going to bed and lately, it’s been worse than ever. Tonight escalated and he screamed and raged as he hasn’t in I-don’t-know-how-long. I had lost my patience with his continual testing of me and I left his bedroom and he wailed for Mommy. I lay still, silent in my room, feeling paralyzed and once again, not knowing what to do.
So now I can’t sleep. I’m still feeling some kind of paralysis. The hours pass by and I maintain this odd exhausted/wide-awake feeling that keeps me up. I take a shower, ostensibly to calm me down but that doesn’t help. Instead, in the bathroom quietly but passionately I myself rage, but my rage is at God, wondering why I have this disease. So I ask The Question, the question that The Noble among US aren’t supposed to ask:
Why Me?
It’s not supposed to be “Why me?,” you see; it’s supposed to be “Why not me?” I understand the difference. I know that I’m not more special than anyone else with cancer, that I don’t get an immunity card from life’s trials just as others don’t, no matter how rich, famous, poor, starving, hurting, friendly, beautiful, etc. But I ask it; I ask it boldly over and over and over again, almost as a dare. Indeed, Why Me? Not a Why Me because I’m better than others. I would just as soon ask Why Anyone?, but I have a personal bone to pick with The Big Guy. Just when my life was on track — after years of wrong marriage, divorce, adjustments, my father’s death, re-marriage, work difficulties, infertility, miscarriages, and adoption (and that doesn’t include quite everything) — I finally get to where things are pretty much where I want them to be. Nothing is perfect, of course, but I’m a mom, I have a good enough job, I have a loving husband and a small little house with lots of problems but it provides us with a roof over our heads and sometimes we feel downright cozy in here. So WHY indeed? Why now, why at all, why when things are just going pretty well are they then threatened to be taken away from me? Are we not permitted to enjoy what we have, what we’ve accomplished?
And why, as I’ve said before, take me away from my son and my husband who both need me as much as I need them. If I’m being perfectly honest, I’ll say “maybe more.” I say that not to lift myself up, but to know our family would be to understand that dynamic of the wife who is the major breadwinner and has the medical insurance. Even more than that, however, is the dynamic that the husband relies too much on the wife. The wife is the center of this home. Those who know us well would agree. There is dependence, there is interdependence, as there is in all families, but Mom has been The Center, the decision-maker, the doer. It’s just the way it is. And Nate, oh Nate. Nate is growing, but he is still only 6-years-old and a 6-year-old, I believe, needs and wants his mother. Even if he does give her a hard time at bedtime.
So I rail. And rage. Quietly enough that nobody is disturbed. Why hide it? I’m angry, very angry that I have this cancer and somehow right now I’m emboldened enough to rage at God and ask the questions and say just how pissed off I am about this. Rage. Rage. Rage.
I am spent, almost, but not quite so I feel a need to write about it — I often wonder lately about the wisdom of writing all of this down, about keeping things going here and a few times a week I’m ever-so-tempted to go underground if at least for awhile. That is NOT to get people to ask me to stay (in fact, please don’t); that is just a fact. This blog is just as much a curse as it is a blessing these days, as I’m sure some others’ blogs are to them. Sometimes I feel like I can’t stand the “sound” of myself thinking. If only I could stop.
So why do I come and write at almost 3:00 in the morning? Just to get it out, to write it out, to remember and to try to stem the tide of anger, of rage at least a little bit.
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I must sleep. The rage needs to sleep with the rest of me, sparse hair, broken out scalp and now coming onto my face, bloated-weight-gained due to steroids, constant look of tiredness. My son can’t bear to see me without something on my head. He hides if I forget at any time, I guess that’s how horrid the image is to him.
He draws a stick figure portrait of our family and in it, I’m wearing a hat. He is too.
The many contradictions of cancer. Chemo is my friend yet it makes me sick so I start to turn against my friend. The many contradictions. You would think I would be more accustomed to contradictions in my life now.
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The rage, at least, is quiet . . . . for now. Tomorrow is treatment day and I hope it’s a fairly quiet day, with me watching one of my DVDs, wrapped in my prayer shawl, wearing some hat and some snarky t-shirt. No high neck shirts because I have to pull down the collar of my shirt so that the nurse can find the port with which to inject the drugs. The poison. The poison that I hope and pray will save me and give me yet another chance at that Almost Perfect Life but with enough problems that no one will ever be jealous of me. Just not the huge medical problems. We could do without those.
I asked.
WHY and WHY ME? I asked.
I’m not one of the noble ones, you see
because I asked.
