The facebook algorithm is interesting. Since I began cross posting from this “cancer blog”, my feed suddenly started showing posts from people whose posts never show up – and all of them working through cancer or other serious illnesses. One the one hand, this is good because I feel less alone – and it is humbling in a healthy way (as in “yeah, so, you and everyone else…”) – but on the other hand, I think: wow – I am putting a lot of “ick” out there that may be showing up in people’s feeds who don’t need to see it.

But then, isn’t that true of everything we put out there. Sometimes I am astonished by the amount of social regulating that we do online: Don’t whine/winge, Don’t flaunt, Don’t crow, Don’t overshare, Don’t be needy, Don’t be prescriptive.

“It’s not a good look” is my least favorite comment now. The irony of people using this to censure and censor other people: appearance being the gateway to authentic… anything? I don’t know if the phrase is “not a good look”, but I think it is a window into the authentic concerns of person who typed those words. I have even seen this phrase used by journalists on major news outlets. (Do we even call them that now? “Media outlets”.)

I am thinking that life is too short to spend so much of it sneering. And yep, I see that I am sneering when I write about the sneering. Vicious circle of social interactions?

I saw something this morning that (really) made me smile. In a video clip about the light beer controversy in Nashville, a woman with a sequined American flag cowboy hat said something to the effect of who cares what other people do. I have to admit, I saw that hat and expected something completely different from that woman’s mouth. There is one of my prejudices laid bare for me to look at and work to let go of.

There is a game that is used in the classroom often – where students stand in the middle of the room and each corner is designated as a particular “response” to a question. When the the question is asked, everyone has to run to a corner as fast as they can. There are almost always some students left bouncing on their toes in the center of the room, unable to decide.

I love those students. I cannot tell you how much I love those people. The students who probably take forever to fill in the bubbles on those standardized tests because they are thinking there is another option that should be there and it is just too painful to compromise. Too limiting with regard to their world view.

What does all this have to do with the breast cancer crap? I am not sure, because B.’s death is wrapped up in all this for me. Not being able to work is part of it. Feeling isolated is part of it. Being unable to really express my gratitude to and for Egil is part of it. Other – difficult – things I choose not to write about here because, as “open” as I am, I have never intentionally exposed my children or friends for online speculation. And some monsters you don’t poke when you’re alone.

I have always gotten comments about my online writing being self-absorbed – I just wrote a paragraph about this, and then deleted it. I am done defending myself.

I think actually, that is what all this has to do with the cancer crap. Letting go of defending myself to fit an expectation or a should. This includes the cancer patient bubble.

When you are a woman with no hair (not talking a sassy buzz cut here, and not talking having made the choice of a full Brazilian wax), no eyelashes, guaranteed to lose at least one nipple – and you basically don’t leave the house for weeks-on-end; when the adult person who has been there for you (continuously and without judgment) for the longest time in your life is gone, you might start looking at who you are, how you choose to present yourself, and what matters most.

The amount of energy thinking about “potentials” that would never be seriously pursued, much less come to fruition, is suddenly very obvious in terms of being a meaningless waste of energy. Everything from having the perfect body – career, social life, relationships, etc. – to defending yourself from unsolicited criticism.

I do know people who actually don’t do this kind of thing. They put zero energy into self-examination. I used to wonder at them, envy them. But now I think as often as that makes things better for them and the people they love, it might as easily make things worse. Easy is not necessarily better.

The opposite of complacent is not miserable. Even now. I am not and have not been existentially miserable because of my cancer diagnosis. But I digress. (And defend.)

There is that famous study about how having too many choices makes us less happy. I have no idea if it is junk science or good science, but I do know that there is a certain kind of satisfying simplicity that comes when some of our options are taken away and the consequential choices are clear and limited.

I no longer feel like an imposter when I say “I have cancer”. But that is because I am experiencing this situation as it butts up against my expectations. I’m not trying to choose the right bubble of what it is to “be” this person with cancer: alternately called “cancer warrior”, “pre-survivor”, “cancer patient” etc.

All of the other aspects of my life still factor into who I am.

I still need to deal with the highs and lows of bipolar disorder through this. The fact that my (estranged) mother died of breast cancer just a bit over a year from my own diagnosis. The fact that in way too many ways, no matter what I do, my life winds up nearly paralleling hers anyway. The fact that breast cancer touches on all the CSA issues I have. The fact that I am mourning.

There aren’t enough bubbles to describe the “dis – ease” I am experiencing.

I am brave to write this. I know that – and I mean “brave” with the cruel ambivalence that word encompasses in our vernacular use.

This week I have been beating myself up over every decision I ever made. It is interesting, because I have come close to death a couple of times in my life and had thought – yeah, I did the best I could. I forgave myself in the back of the ambulance. But having so many months to contemplate mortality and what you are doing with the rest of your life is a different experience.

B. knew she had a year or so. She didn’t make a bucket list. We talked about it. But what she did do was say “yes” to opportunities that came. I never heard her formulate that as a conscious decision, and I have no idea if it was, but to anyone who knew her could see how she just said “yes”, why not try this. It wasn’t different from her usual self, but it was a part of her amplified… because “why not?”.

Once, when she came down off a steroid mania, very near the end of her life, she asked me why I always “went into hiding” when I was sick – mixed state, manic or depressed. She asked if I hadn’t known all those years that she wouldn’t have judged me or thought less of me if I had let her in. I regret not letting her in. In hindsight, it would have been a kind of gift to have given her.

I was going to stop writing this blog. And shut down the blog on my website, too. Keep my “ick” to myself. But I am going to let other people decide what they want to read and what they want to block out. And I’m not going to take it personally. I am pretty sure at least two women on a facebook group blocked me for writing to another woman that I didn’t think she needed to worry about her negative attitude in terms of healing her cancer. I didn’t think cancer gives a damn whether we maintain a positive or negative attitude on any particular morning. We should allow ourselves to cry and feel bad without worrying that cancer’s course would be our own fault. (Sometimes I really wish I had embraced southern speech so I could write things like: We might-should allow ourselves… Maybe people would have been less offended.)

I have no idea if she “needed” to hear that. If anyone “needed to hear it”. No one “liked” it. Though I did get a kind email that I think might have been a response to this comment.

I will take advantage of the write-in option on the cancer attitude standardised form. It won’t mean a thing in terms of quantitative research, and my opinion will be a weird little dot marked far so off the clustered curve that it won’t be seen as meaningful. Might be a stray coffee ground or mite. But that is fine.

When I was a kid there was a television program where women competed to be “spokesmodels”. Yeah. I am not doing that. That’s not what this is about.

I am not presenting “a journey”. There’s no arc here. And this is not an attempt to use my “persuasive speech” skills I did or didn’t master in high school. I’ve got no brand to be on.

Here’s what I have at the moment. I need force myself to get up and go for a walk because the taboo-cloaked, surprise chemo-hemorrhoids are scary. And despite the stent in my pelvis, I need to take care not to get a blood clot. I still have a slight chlorine sensation in my sinuses and that means a slight headache and nausea. As I type, a hot flash is running up from my torso and causing me to whip off the cute chemo cap to expose my tender head with the off-center sebaceous cyst I didn’t have time to remove before treatment, that now looks like some kind of quirky, exposed factory-defect on a doll’s head.

So glamorous.

Not filter is gonna change the reality of this.

Nope. It’s “not a good look”, but I don’t owe anyone that.