''The girl who had cancer, I really like her. She's pretty cool''.
''The girl who had cancer likes you, too'', I replied, overhearing a comment made by the friend of a friend at her 4th of July party yesterday.
''Oh my God, I am so sorry. I didn't know you were right there'', she responded.
''Sorry about what? The part where you said that you like me, or the part or where you said I was pretty cool? Or the cancer part? It's okay, I mean I did have cancer...''.
It made me wonder how often I am privately referred to as ''The Girl Who Had Cancer.''
Like when I go into the diner, do they say, ''Oh yeah, she comes in all the time. She had cancer''.
Or at my kid's school, do they say, ''That's so-and so's mom. You know, the one who had cancer''.
I feel like a Scarlett letter has been placed upon me forever.
My new job doesn't know that I am a breast cancer survivor. In fact, I don't even like the word ''survivor''. They kept throwing that word around after reaching ''NED'' status last September, but I feel too modest to call myself that now. I guess ''The Girl Who Had Cancer'' is as good a label as any. My Principal asked about my two year work gap, and I said that I had a baby and was recovering from a health condition, which is now ''resolved''. I knew if I said the ''c'' word, he'd run a mile and hire the nearest straight-of-college 20-something. It's hard enough being a mother of 3 in your 30's competing for jobs with straight-out-of-college 20-somethings.
I also didn't want my new co-workers knowing and pitying me. Like when someone finds out that I had cancer and they say something like, ''Are you serious? But you look so healthy! How bad was it? Are you...okay now?''. Ugh. I hate it. I really do.
All the while, I have friends diagnosed stage 4 de-novo (Latin for from the beginning), or in ''remission'' like me (there's no such thing as real remission with breast cancer, only no evidence of disease) who find they have a recurrence or metastisis. So that's what I have to live with, survivor's guilt (why them and not me?) and trepidation, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Wondering if it will be me next. Wondering if that spinal pain is bone mets, or that headache is brain mets, or the little tickle in my throat is lung mets. Even though I have just had a PET scan giving me a clean bill of health, still, it isn't a nice reality to live in. You can never allow yourself to get too comfortable. In fact, your life depends on you not becoming too comfortable.
But unlike at parties, or diners, or bagel shops, or any other place, no one at my new school knows that I had cancer. It's a totally fresh start for me. As far they know, I am like everyone else in that regard. If it ever comes up in conversation I will mention it, but I won't just bring it up out of the clear blue. Like, ''Oh, yeah, how was your weekend? By the way, I had cancer. It sucked. Want to hear about the time I vomited so violently while attached to a chemo I.V. pole I couldn't make it to the bathroom in time so I simultaneously pissed myself?''.
It almost feels like I am embarrassed about having cancer, when I should feel some sense of, I don't know...pride? Is that the right word? I don't know. I suppose I should feel proud in some way because I faced the biggest challenge of my life, and gained a new wonderful perspective on everything that not many others ever possess, and have had my whole sense of being enriched in the process, and came out on the other end of a nightmare as a better version of myself.
Still, I feel ashamed that I haven't said anything. I feel like I am hiding something very important about myself. But also, I want to leave that part of my identity at the door. I want to, between 7:20 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., forget that I ever even had cancer. I want that time to be spent teaching and having my head filled with Asian philosophies and Pan Africanism and Mid-East peace talks and grading papers and having intellectual conversations with my students. I just don't want to think about cancer anymore. I just want that piece of my old life back.
With lots of changes on the horizon, I am feeling rather positive. I can start going in to my new school to set up my classroom on July 23rd, and my first official day is July 25th. The first day of school is on August 1st, and I think I have my outfit ready; navy trousers and a matching navy jacket with a white collared shirt. I need to buy some ballet flats or something to go with it.
At the same time, my 11th anniversary is on July 29th, which is around the same time my divorce should be finalized. The lawyer said since we filed the papers that we are already ''as good as divorced'', and this part is just waiting for the judge to sign off on it to make it official. I am taking the same approach as I did with my mastectomy, when I threw myself a party entitled, Thanks for the Mammories, a Farewell Party for my Breasts. I like to lighten the mood whenever possible. That party was a lot of fun, and we had breast cupcakes and jello shots and I wore my pink wig. Even my dentist and dental hygienist came and brought me a shot glass in the shape of a nipple! My best friend flew in from New York, too, and surprised me half way through the party. So instead of sitting around crying my eyes out about having a major surgery and losing my breasts and worrying if they'd get all of the cancer out, I celebrated the positives, like how I was about to get cancer excised from my body and get a second chance at my life. Life, I've learned, is all about perspective. It's all really just one big mind-fuck.
Anyway, back to my divorce. So as I said, I am taking the same approach. Last May, I was all set to go to this big event called The Great Gatsby Lawn Party, held annually at a big mansion in Atlanta called The Wren's Nest. Everyone gets dressed up in 1920s attire, and there are lawn games, live music, dancing, butlers serving champagne and mini quiches on silver trays under canopies. As Holden Caulfield would say, it's a ''very big deal''. Then I had stupid cancer and just buzzed my head and was healing from my port surgery and didn't particularly feel like seeing all of these beautiful ladies dressed up with their stupid hair and their stupid chests without a stupid port protruding out of them. So I resolved to go this Spring. I bought my tickets, made my flapper headpiece with a tall white feather, and got my pink dress and shoes ready. Then they canceled the event! Cancelled it!
I decided that one way or another I was going somewhere dressed as a flapper. I love dressing up in period attire. I found this speakeasy in Atlanta called The Blind Pig Parlour Bar, with a secret entrance and secret passcode to get in and everything, where ''period attire is strongly encouraged''. Perfect. Totally perfect. Rather than grovel about my life being in shambles, I am getting some girlfriends together and we are going the Saturday night after my divorce is final to celebrate my new chapter; starting my new job and as a strong, independent, newly-single woman.
When I think about it, I have never in my adult life been single. I had a serious boyfriend from 17-19. He was a lot older than me, and was eventually in Narcotics Anonymous and wanted to settle down and not go out anymore, due to his addiction issues. I, however, at 19, was not ready to settle down, and still wanted to go out sometimes with my friends, which drove him crazy. I had my own apartment from age 17, paid all my bills myself, worked two jobs and went to college at night, sometimes until midnight, so, yeah, on a Saturday night I wanted to go out for a few hours and have bit of fun. I wasn't ready to give that up yet. So our relationship wasn't working anymore. I am happy to report he went on to overcome his additions, graduate from Columbia, and is now a successful businessman in NYC. After that I started dating someone else, the older brother of the friend I visited in prison that I talked about in Jail Fridays. I worked in an office, and his older brother started working there and had the desk a few rows next to mine. So we started having lunch together once in a while, and that led to hanging out after work sometimes, and then progressed to a Friday night here or a Saturday night there. He eventually asked me to be his girlfriend, which I politely declined. A few months later, I asked him one night in the back of his band's van as we drove home from a gig in Brooklyn, ''If the offer still stands, can I be your girlfriend?''. You would have thought he won the damn lottery, he was so happy. After a year and half or so we moved in together, and lived with a bunch of his friends in the house I described in The Hackey Sack Days. After 3.5 years I realized as he turned 29 and I was 23 he was still very much a man-child, disregarding his English degree to work part time at 7-11 and play punk music and drink beers with his band. I was starting to want to settle down in the next few years, travel the world a bit, get established with my job, get married, buy a house, start a family. I didn't see it happening with him. He begged me to stay, promising he'd change. I told him I didn't want him to change, he was sweet and lovely the way he was. We had simply outgrown each other and wanted different things out of life. That's okay. I am a firm believer that no one should ever have to change for anyone. You are who you are. Soon after that, my ex-husband, whom I met online about 10 years earlier and kept in touch with as a friend only, had broken up with his longtime girlfriend around the same time. When he heard that I, too, had broken up with my longtime boyfriend, he was practically on the next flight from London to meet me. I picked him up at JFK and he stayed at my apartment (on the couch, mind you), and I brought him all around NYC and the Empire State Building and Times Square. Long story short, 6 months later he asked me to marry him, I said yes, and the rest is history.
So here I am, turning 35 in September, about to start my dream job, ''as good as divorced'', getting ready to look for a new house in the next 6 weeks, and will be arriving in Seattle for my highly-anticipated PNW trip in exactly 80 days (and yes, I am counting the days, and yes, my toiletry bag is packed already. I am type triple A, remember?). I have awesome friends waiting in the wings to help me move, children that are excited about having a new house and a puppy and a vegetable garden, and have already painted my new farm table pastel pink. I can already see a little jar of daisies on it, with the whistling tea kettle humming the background and cookies in the oven and the The Cure or Psychedelic Furs or something playing. I think it will be really, really nice.
Rather than dwell on the negatives, of which there are many, I am instead choosing to focus on the positives. Life is exciting right now. So exciting. And I have a feeling that instead of it being the end, it's actually the beginning, of the very best part of my life.
For those of you in the Atlanta area, I will let you know when in August we'll be at The Blind Pig Parlour Bar on the Facebook group pages. I would absolutely love for you to come out and celebrate with me!
Do you tell new people you meet that you had or have cancer? New co-workers? Prospective boyfriends/girlfriends? How do they respond? I would love to hear your experiences.
Much love from The Girl Who Had Cancer. XO
''You, soft and only, you, lost and lonely, you, strange as angels. Dancing in the deepest oceans, twisting in the water, you're just like a dream.''
Link below to a cover of The Cure's Just Like Heaven by The Big Bright that I love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox9T3p4b2BI
''The girl who had cancer likes you, too'', I replied, overhearing a comment made by the friend of a friend at her 4th of July party yesterday.
''Oh my God, I am so sorry. I didn't know you were right there'', she responded.
''Sorry about what? The part where you said that you like me, or the part or where you said I was pretty cool? Or the cancer part? It's okay, I mean I did have cancer...''.
It made me wonder how often I am privately referred to as ''The Girl Who Had Cancer.''
Like when I go into the diner, do they say, ''Oh yeah, she comes in all the time. She had cancer''.
Or at my kid's school, do they say, ''That's so-and so's mom. You know, the one who had cancer''.
I feel like a Scarlett letter has been placed upon me forever.
My new job doesn't know that I am a breast cancer survivor. In fact, I don't even like the word ''survivor''. They kept throwing that word around after reaching ''NED'' status last September, but I feel too modest to call myself that now. I guess ''The Girl Who Had Cancer'' is as good a label as any. My Principal asked about my two year work gap, and I said that I had a baby and was recovering from a health condition, which is now ''resolved''. I knew if I said the ''c'' word, he'd run a mile and hire the nearest straight-of-college 20-something. It's hard enough being a mother of 3 in your 30's competing for jobs with straight-out-of-college 20-somethings.
I also didn't want my new co-workers knowing and pitying me. Like when someone finds out that I had cancer and they say something like, ''Are you serious? But you look so healthy! How bad was it? Are you...okay now?''. Ugh. I hate it. I really do.
All the while, I have friends diagnosed stage 4 de-novo (Latin for from the beginning), or in ''remission'' like me (there's no such thing as real remission with breast cancer, only no evidence of disease) who find they have a recurrence or metastisis. So that's what I have to live with, survivor's guilt (why them and not me?) and trepidation, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Wondering if it will be me next. Wondering if that spinal pain is bone mets, or that headache is brain mets, or the little tickle in my throat is lung mets. Even though I have just had a PET scan giving me a clean bill of health, still, it isn't a nice reality to live in. You can never allow yourself to get too comfortable. In fact, your life depends on you not becoming too comfortable.
But unlike at parties, or diners, or bagel shops, or any other place, no one at my new school knows that I had cancer. It's a totally fresh start for me. As far they know, I am like everyone else in that regard. If it ever comes up in conversation I will mention it, but I won't just bring it up out of the clear blue. Like, ''Oh, yeah, how was your weekend? By the way, I had cancer. It sucked. Want to hear about the time I vomited so violently while attached to a chemo I.V. pole I couldn't make it to the bathroom in time so I simultaneously pissed myself?''.
It almost feels like I am embarrassed about having cancer, when I should feel some sense of, I don't know...pride? Is that the right word? I don't know. I suppose I should feel proud in some way because I faced the biggest challenge of my life, and gained a new wonderful perspective on everything that not many others ever possess, and have had my whole sense of being enriched in the process, and came out on the other end of a nightmare as a better version of myself.
Still, I feel ashamed that I haven't said anything. I feel like I am hiding something very important about myself. But also, I want to leave that part of my identity at the door. I want to, between 7:20 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., forget that I ever even had cancer. I want that time to be spent teaching and having my head filled with Asian philosophies and Pan Africanism and Mid-East peace talks and grading papers and having intellectual conversations with my students. I just don't want to think about cancer anymore. I just want that piece of my old life back.
With lots of changes on the horizon, I am feeling rather positive. I can start going in to my new school to set up my classroom on July 23rd, and my first official day is July 25th. The first day of school is on August 1st, and I think I have my outfit ready; navy trousers and a matching navy jacket with a white collared shirt. I need to buy some ballet flats or something to go with it.
At the same time, my 11th anniversary is on July 29th, which is around the same time my divorce should be finalized. The lawyer said since we filed the papers that we are already ''as good as divorced'', and this part is just waiting for the judge to sign off on it to make it official. I am taking the same approach as I did with my mastectomy, when I threw myself a party entitled, Thanks for the Mammories, a Farewell Party for my Breasts. I like to lighten the mood whenever possible. That party was a lot of fun, and we had breast cupcakes and jello shots and I wore my pink wig. Even my dentist and dental hygienist came and brought me a shot glass in the shape of a nipple! My best friend flew in from New York, too, and surprised me half way through the party. So instead of sitting around crying my eyes out about having a major surgery and losing my breasts and worrying if they'd get all of the cancer out, I celebrated the positives, like how I was about to get cancer excised from my body and get a second chance at my life. Life, I've learned, is all about perspective. It's all really just one big mind-fuck.
 |
| Pink wig, check. Breast cupcake, check. Nipple shot glass, also check. |
I decided that one way or another I was going somewhere dressed as a flapper. I love dressing up in period attire. I found this speakeasy in Atlanta called The Blind Pig Parlour Bar, with a secret entrance and secret passcode to get in and everything, where ''period attire is strongly encouraged''. Perfect. Totally perfect. Rather than grovel about my life being in shambles, I am getting some girlfriends together and we are going the Saturday night after my divorce is final to celebrate my new chapter; starting my new job and as a strong, independent, newly-single woman.
So here I am, turning 35 in September, about to start my dream job, ''as good as divorced'', getting ready to look for a new house in the next 6 weeks, and will be arriving in Seattle for my highly-anticipated PNW trip in exactly 80 days (and yes, I am counting the days, and yes, my toiletry bag is packed already. I am type triple A, remember?). I have awesome friends waiting in the wings to help me move, children that are excited about having a new house and a puppy and a vegetable garden, and have already painted my new farm table pastel pink. I can already see a little jar of daisies on it, with the whistling tea kettle humming the background and cookies in the oven and the The Cure or Psychedelic Furs or something playing. I think it will be really, really nice.
Rather than dwell on the negatives, of which there are many, I am instead choosing to focus on the positives. Life is exciting right now. So exciting. And I have a feeling that instead of it being the end, it's actually the beginning, of the very best part of my life.
For those of you in the Atlanta area, I will let you know when in August we'll be at The Blind Pig Parlour Bar on the Facebook group pages. I would absolutely love for you to come out and celebrate with me!
Do you tell new people you meet that you had or have cancer? New co-workers? Prospective boyfriends/girlfriends? How do they respond? I would love to hear your experiences.
Much love from The Girl Who Had Cancer. XO
''You, soft and only, you, lost and lonely, you, strange as angels. Dancing in the deepest oceans, twisting in the water, you're just like a dream.''
Link below to a cover of The Cure's Just Like Heaven by The Big Bright that I love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox9T3p4b2BI
Comments
Post a Comment