Month: November 2016

Restraint

 

“OMG I’m gonna stick a sign saying ‘Oh yeah, when?’ on their marquee, because they are NEVER gonna open!”

What caused my childish outburst a few weeks ago? A fresh fish store that was supposed to (re?)open this summer, and failed. All summer long the owners put little phrases on the sign in their parking lot near RT 1. Stuff like “We swear we’re opening soon,” or “Summer 2016!” It was October and the new fish market was so NOT open.

Of course I was being silly–I work in a resort area, I was driving my Lyme patient to a medical appointment on RT 1 which runs parallel to the Atlantic, and there’s a fish market like every two minutes. In short, I got choices and NO reason to get so annoyed about one silly place—other than I saw the sign nearly every damn day.

It was just that the constant sign updates annoyed me. I wanted to challenge their little missives about opening soon. And I wanted to do it right on the lying signs rather than making a bitchy Facebook post that would not matter to the majority of my FB friends. My why-aren’t-you-open challenge needed to be right in their face, in everyone’s faces, as they motor down the highway!

My fuss about signs one sees while driving on the road triggered a mild discomfort in my Lyme patient. She’s a staunch anti-Trump liberal, as am I, though at that moment it wasn’t my big problem. With my crazed outburst we again, for like the millionth time, talked about how wrong and illegal it would be to mess with Trump/Pence signs in residents’ yards. And as I’ve stated many times, I live in a rural, red, area–so those signs were just everywhere. We talked about, again, how wrong it is to violate personal property or at least stuff on personal property.

All this made me have a small flashback to my early blogging/post-treatment days. I’m sure I’ve made some offhand remarks on my blog here (and elsewhere) about my desire to just either pull off or deface any of the pink ribbon/rah rah/find-the-cure ribbons I saw on cars. I thought it would be great if some covering/addendum sticker with a message would get created. Like a “what about the women’s lives” sticker I could stick next to those damn “Save the ta-tas” stickers. But duh, again, personal property. So I practiced, and still practice, restraint.

I am “mostly” beyond that now. I’ve written about the wince-inducing run-ins with the stickers tho’ (see 365). I still have to work at suppressing the urge to deface those stickers, but it is less difficult.

I’ve had to work harder at restraint to not deface the Trump/Pence signs, especially when I see that others have already done the work—rare in this rural red area in which live and work (the states in which I live and work, Maryland and Delaware respectively, were blue on the maps, but only because of the metro areas, not the Delmarva section where I am).

Yes, I’ve tried to restrain myself from talking politics on this blog (as mentioned in my first 15 Things). I will continue to do so, but it will be more difficult. You see, with my cancer, my health, and my economic situation—the personal, the cancer personal, has become political.

I’ve shared very little of my economic situation here because I don’t think it is anyone’s fucking business but mine. Suffice to say as a self-employed, VERY small-business woman, I don’t make a great deal of money and rely on those subsidies. I was happy when Trump was the candidate because I thought with his outrageousness, he would never be elected. Good, I did not want Republicans with their constant tries to repeal the ACA, in power. See, it isn’t just him that is scary; it’s Paul Ryan and all the other creeps.

And here we are, and ACA is likely on the chopping block. I’ve read all the think pieces, listened to all the whiny podcasts about “what went wrong” and “what can we expect”. I’ve no faith in the “replace” end of the headlines. I still have fear. I face financial disaster. If I experience recurrence, I cannot afford much; I am of the mind to just not try any treatment. Why leave my parents in a debt they could never re-pay? These are the terms in which I think now.

I’ve been depressed since the election. I can tell. I see something that would normally interest me and think, “WTF does it matter now?” I have no sense of humor or fun. I care about very little. Lately I’ve begun to force myself to engage a little, get out of my head. But my anger and hurt is still so, so great.

On November 9 I wrote a very awful post that obviously I did not publish. It was filled with the blackness that still threatens to fill my heart. Let’s just the say the calls for reconciliation of our nation, the calls to listen to each other rather than shout, that shit don’t reach me. I’ve lived my whole life among the type of voter that the liberal elites are trying to finally understand now and I know they won’t listen or care. Unless my kind of disaster happens to them, and even then, they might still not “get it”.  So my empathy is at an all-time low right now. Of course, as you can tell from that statement, I am just as unforgiving of the “liberal elite” as well. I wanted to spit nails at Garrison Keillor’s post-election WaPo essay with the “let them (the poor WWC in flyover country who voted against their interest and might not get what they bargained for here) lie in the bed they made” attitude (please tell me it was satire). I get the point, but I lie in the bed too—and the bed is not of my making.

Perhaps I was a fool—the personal was always political and I was silly for thinking I could keep it all separate. I don’t know. I will try to practice restraint when it comes to politics here on this blog and on other social media. But I make no promises.

 

 

 

A Cautionary Awareness Tale

On October 31, as I distracted myself with Halloween’s glory, I asked myself: “what do we become aware of this month?” Lots of Facebook posts ask that question, I asked it on Twitter I think. So much sound and fury in October, but does anyone learn anything? I think not.

I forced myself to remember the days before diagnosis. I know I never thought all the pink rah rah crap was great–that’s just a core trait of my personality. But what did I know about breast cancer, and the awareness push, before diagnoses?

This is a tough question to answer. I’m not sure I fully know the answer. I know I absorbed the “early diagnosis/screening” messages. I knew enough to ask for a mammogram earlier that the suggested age (40 at that time), but I still regarded breast cancer, any cancer, as an older person’s disease despite knowing actual patients my age. I asked for a mammogram because I knew I had a higher risk with family history-my aunt had just been diagnosed for heaven’s sake. I knew about ribbons, especially red ribbons (AIDS) and pink ribbons. Did I know October was “awareness” month? Maybe–but it did not “click” with me until the late 00’s.

The incident that made it click with me–well, I’d buried it. I was working in for a non-profit arts organization. Doing film exhibition with local community organizations. In the summer of 2008 or 2009 I began working with a women’s business group. My point collaboration person was suggesting topics for me to find films for our October event. I remember her telling me October was Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

I remember being surprised by that–what a dumb month for such a thing! Let me explain. As a lifelong resident of a beach town/resort area, with my first post-college job being in retail, I had a list of hard and fast rules and truths. Painting October Pink was stupid in my mind. Lots of local “runs” took place in April/May/June anyway–wasn’t spring better for Pink? I’ve lived my life by the ebb and flow of tourist traffic. Panel season, or off-season, events were in a strict path. There was the Greyhound rescue dog weekend, Jazzfest weekend, Seawitch, etc. in October. Where I worked, the annual film festival was the second weekend of November. I had no time for anything else–October was full of deadlines in preparation for this main event–a time of no sleep, no fun, no nothing. I measured these things in amounts of car traffic (for my work travel) and the likelihood of whether I could schedule an event and get any butts in seats during those event weekends (likely not). BCAM had maybe a marathon in one beach town–but there was always a marathon each weekend (bikes the worst, as they interrupted traffic the most, adding to my work travel time). I had no time for breast cancer, awareness, or a month of it . But sure, if I could find cheap film to exhibit about it, I’d see what I could do (this was before the release of Pink Ribbons, Inc.).

I don’t remember what films I exhibited–none about cancer I’m relatively certain. I moved on, forgot about this, got cancer, and now I remember it.

But here is the other thing I’d submerged, and am just now dredging up–a sort of painful memory.

I skipped the main event in 2010, having just been diagnosed, and preparing for the Red Devil. In 2011, I returned, managing over 1,000 volunteers for the annual festival, among other things. I had completed chemo in January of that year, radiation in the summer. I was still doing Herceptin every 3 weeks and my hair was curly and short–just returning. I was exhausted and felt horrible. I ran into the women I’d coordinated with for that event of a few years prior. She laughed and asked why I’d cut my hair so short (I’ve always worn it long). “I had cancer,” I replied curtly. She laughed for half a second then sobered up when she saw I was NOT laughing. “Breast cancer?” she asked. “Yeah,” I grunted.

So here was this person, so into “The Cause” but what did she really know about breast cancer? Breast cancer was a thing to worry about–but a thing that happened to other people–not ones we knew, not ourselves. Breast cancer was a thing to promote because an audience “cared” about it. But not “real”.

I realize now how much this informed my view of BCAM–this ignorance. It’s something to care about, to SHOW care about, but it always happens to someone else.

Until.

This is likely part of my disconnect with such hollow shows of “solidarity” of “Support”. Those things are meaningless to me.  The Pink events–they have little to do with What Really Happens.

I hold no ill will toward this woman–how could I? I was just as ignorant, just as “that won’t happen to me.” I don’t even remember her name, or the organization, and don’t feel motivated to research it. It doesn’t matter. It was just a memory that popped up Monday, unwanted, as I tried to get ready for tricks or treats.

My point is: October and BCAM, those are just “things to do”, the way we do other “holiday” things: buy candy for trick or treaters, buy a turkey and fret about ignorant relatives, succumb to shopping holiday madness, and make the obligatory weight loss New Year’s resolution.

And that is what I hate about October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month: it has become a rote obligatory motion we go through–not real.  Except to those of us who had the dumb fortune to get breast cancer.

And this is what needs to change.