Washing Dishes

Washing Dishes - by Ginger Hamilton

I was drafted into a war I didn't want to fight. Conscientious objecting was not an option and I couldn't move to Canada to avoid it. I unknowingly stumbled into the front lines as I received my draft notice. "Your test was positive," translated into "You have breast cancer and it has spread." 

My mind further translated it into "You are going to die."

I hate the symbol for breast cancer – the pastel pink ribbon. The treatment for breast cancer tends to rob a woman of her outward signs of femininity. Every single hair on every part of my body fell out. 

My breast was markedly smaller, and had ugly red and purple tracks on it. Then third degree burns from radiation turned the already assaulted breast into a swollen, deep red, leathery lump.

Chemotherapy caused my periods to stop, ensuring I would never again give birth. 

No, the symbol for breast cancer should be a black ribbon or at the very least, a deep brown one. There's nothing girlie about breast cancer.

I was told by my oncologist that if I live long enough, complications from breast cancer will end my life. Of course, I may get lucky and be clobbered by a Mack truck or mugged or have a heart attack. But my chances of "dying peacefully" in my sleep of "natural causes" are slim to none.

I hate the term `survivor.' I hate the concept of obituaries which state someone succumbed "after a long courageous battle with cancer." Why don't they say "passed away after a long courageous battle with old age" for folks in their upper nineties and older? Who says they fought a courageous battle anyway? 

Personally, I am not fighting a battle with cancer, and I am not a survivor. Women are notably strong but I believe it's unnatural and unhealthy to maintain a battle-ready state of mind.

Cancer is part of my daily existence. Why should I engage my own body in a battle with itself? Positive imagery is a wonderful concept where folks picture their cancer cells and then picture themselves eliminating the cancer cells. 

Studies have shown that folks who picture battle themes such as shooting, bombing, and stabbing cancer cells have a shorter life expectancy than those who use less violent imagery.

Personally, I see my body as a plate and the cancer cells as leftover food on the plate. I scrape what I can off into the garbage. Then I use hot water and detergent to thoroughly clean the plate. I love the idea of throwing and washing away the cancer and leaving sparkling clean body cells. It is satisfying and something I can relate to in my external existence.

There are concentration camp survivors. Hopefully, they will never again be in a concentration camp. There are earthquake survivors and rattlesnake bite survivors – even bear and shark attack survivors. None of those folks ever have to go through their experience again. 

Breast cancer doesn't go away forever for those whose cancer has spread. We are not survivors. We are unwilling participants in a never-ending war where we remain on the front lines, ever attentive for enemy attack. 

If you'll excuse me, I have plates to wash. ~ GH

Love and Resilience

Had a long chat with the X2B on the phone. Wrote out my musings and decided now is not the appropriate time to share them publicly. Shorthand version: Let it suffice to say that he is doing some good psychological work and I am happy for him. He is making progress. And I feel oddly saddened by the fact that I didn't care on more than a superficial level. He has become an outsider to me.

So this blog post begins in media res -- in the middle of things.~~GH

Then I told him some things. I told him that I wanted him to know no matter how deceitful he had been, that I had felt protected and largely safe during most of our marriage. That this experience had not caused me to feel bitter or close my heart. That I was still able to allow myself to be tender and vulnerable and open and trusting. And he cried and said “That is your resilience.”

The word resilience stuck in my head, so I decided to look it up. Turns out it's not what I thought it meant. It isn't some magical quality I possess or can lay claim to as a character strength. It's a coping mechanism, a dynamic process of behavioral adaptation. I read through Wikipedia's page on resilience and at times wondered how in the hell I ever developed it considering the dearth of outside support I had as a child. I thought about it for a couple of minutes and came up with this idea:

I am able to continue through hardships because I really do believe I am loved. Dearly and deeply and fully and in a special way. I believe I am precious – to somebody. I am not even sure who. I don't want to think too long or too hard about it either. But in my darkest hours – well, maybe not the darkest ones but the dark ones – I know I am loved and cherished. In my darkest ones, I despair and feel abandoned and alone. But in just the awful hours, I still believe I am loved and not alone. And if I'm not alone, I can do anything.

Even though my parents did the horrific things they did to us, they sold me on the idea they loved me. I truly believed them. I felt loved. I felt angry and betrayed and confused and conflicted and wondered at times what the fuck love meant if it hurt so badly, but I still believed I was loved. And that was enough. And that was how I got through nineteen years (or however long it was) of living a total sham of a marriage: I believed I was loved.

Do not misunderstand me. Surviving is not thriving. Believing you are loved when you are not loved is like being on a ventilator. It will keep you alive but you can't really go anywhere. But you can get through the crisis until such time as you can move on and breathe on your own. I suspect that may be why religion was created. But that's another musing for a different day.

Know that I love you. I really do. I have such love for my brothers and sisters, every one of them. Call it resilience if you want to. I don't care. To me, it's Love.