12 - I Am Not At War

Well now! Hello there, all.

I will refrain from wasting too much of our precious time together by mouthing a bunch of empty observational platitudes and excuses for how terribly, terribly long it's been since my last post. The shortest version of the plain truth is just that for the majority of the latter of my chemo treatments, I didn't feel up writing at any length, and chose instead to rest as completely as possible and not to write lesser quality or quantity placeholders just to be posting things. But now we are back in step once again, and I am driven to use this opportunity to share with you guys some of my recent thoughts and feelings.

A fair warning and disclaimer, however: Some aspects of the following are most certainly going to qualify as a rant. The rest is undiluted personal philosophy. There are rough and unsanded edges to these emotions yet, and I am choosing to present them to you honestly-if-unvarnished, rather than polished-but-processed in form. Like most things to do with my core beliefs and the feelings stemming from them, there is fire in the sky above and steel in the earth below what I'm about to say, but please rest assured that neither is directed at anyone in particular. I have had months to turn these thoughts over but little time and less desire to actively drag them out into the light for deep-tissue examination... until today. Thus warned and armored (I sincerely hope) against taking offense, let us proceed steadily together into the present, and the future it promises.

To begin with, a bit of catchup and current events for those who haven't been following along with my personal page on Facebook and may not be aware of more recent developments during the long hiatus.

• Chemotherapy is completed! I have persevered through six full three-week cycles of chemo, and today marks three weeks to the day from my final infusion. I am officially done with chemo, and have begun to physically and mentally recover from its ill effects for the last time these past couple of days.
• I have one additional surgery upcoming, to have my surgical port removed from my chest now that I no longer need it to help infuse chemo drugs into my system. It looks like this:

• Oh, whoops. Sorry. Unrelated. I meant this:

• With chemo out of the way I have three weeks of radiation treatments to look forward to, which don't actually start for at least another week from tomorrow. So this isn't by any means the end of the road or its purpose-filled journey. We're getting there, though, steadily. Because we march without fear.

So! How I am feeling. This is the tricky part... because I have been having mixed feelings about the reactions of others as I have come closer and closer to what they (distinction deliberate) perceive as being the "end" of my treatment. I say tricky because... well, honestly, how does one justify criticizing caring support one is being freely given? I can think of few things more blatantly assholish in execution than a person who stiffly corrects another in the midst of being praised or wished well by that person. So I have not done so, fearing that my feelings on the matter were misdirected or refracted from some other stress... but as the time passes I have come to realize that the friction is coming from my never having made my own views and beliefs about my own situation fully and completely clear, and until I do I actually bear the responsibility for others not knowing them. And in lieu of knowing them, is it any wonder I am approached every day with the common views of cancer as an afflicting and malevolent force that strikes with ill luck and malicious intent? Yet these are not my views.

Let us start with a general overview of my present situation.

Between upcoming surgery, continuing to have to go into the hospital once every single day for a Lovenox injection, and the prospect of at least three additional weeks of treatment, I can't really afford to relax or celebrate just yet; I actually feel zero compulsion to do either, and would kindly prefer people stop pressuring me to (directly or indirectly). Trust me when I say nobody wants this all to be done with more than I do; this has been a long and difficult journey, and I will be quite relieved to remove my dust-choked boots at its properly earned, patiently sought-out end.

However.

Nobody else but me has to directly experience every new and unexpected obstacle, every bloodletting, every injection and surgery and procedure either, so I ask you to recognize the fact that the optimal mindset for me to continue to do so is not the one in which I am desperately wanting it all to be over as soon as possible. All that can accomplish is make me dread every remaining thing that must be done all the more, and I refuse to begin fearing any of this now just because the people around me grow (kindly, empathetically) weary of watching me struggle with it. When a new wrinkle comes up, when more blood must be drawn and I am just told a moment before the tray with needles and empty tubes arrives, when the bills aren't all going to be covered by my financial aid and I have to face the prospect of partial payments, endless phone calls, further financial burden on my caring already-taxed parents and ultimately finding crappy part-time work sooner instead of having months to rest and recover from all of this in actual health, worry-free, after my final treatments are completed... I cannot permit myself to carry a mindset that would demand or encourage that I react to new necessity by getting frustrated, irritated, angry, self-pitying, or any other negative vortex of wasted time and energy. And that is all I can be, from the moment I start to dread the next step, resent the treatment, or waste too much time bemoaning my own discomfort.

I must instead be calm and flexible, like water.

Each test and treatment I am going through is something that must be done to minimize the risk of cancer resurgence in my near future, and I am committed to that. I elect this path. I accept these tests, this treatment.

I accept that cancer has happened to me, and that this is all a part of it.

And as well-meaning as the concern is that's come from some of you, that which comes from a place of "wishing it had never occurred" or "wishing you didn't have to go through this" is not useful to me, and can only tempt me into uselessly, negatively beginning to wish the same. Not once through this whole process have I ever fallen to wringing my hands and crying "woe is me," and I do not intend to start now. I apologize for the blunt necessity of having to state any such a thing, but I will speak my mind on this:

Stop asking me to regret this. I freely accept the cards that life has dealt me.

And do not expect me to share your fear of it. I play each hand steadfastly.

I can handle this. I remain unafraid. Shuffle, cut, and deal again. I'm still right here, staring the dealer unflinchingly in the eye.

But it grows more difficult to uphold that when I keep having to pause my own in-progress mental programs to address someone else's worries and concerns for how I can possibly be facing all of this, or the prospect of even more weeks of treatment, or how soon I get to ring the silly bell at the hospital to indicate that it is "over." Don't you understand that it will never truly be over? I'll be on watch for signs and symptoms of cancer for the rest of my life. And I am square with that. It doesn't trouble me to know that I have unique dangers in my future. It isn't out of my way to be uncommonly watchful and self-aware physically as well as mentally and emotionally. What I mean to say is, I DO NOT FEEL I HAVE BEEN DEALT WITH UNFAIRLY. To even begin to allow thoughts of that weak color and shallow depth is to have accepted the selfish fallacy that Life somehow owes me or anyone particular conduct based on arbitrarily assigned values, and I do not believe that either. I have already been given statistically uncommon advantage in that I was born in modern America; I have access to resources and treatment I would not in somewhere around eighty percent of the rest of the world. To say, to even think that I somehow didn't "deserve" to get cancer would be the same as to arrogantly proclaim that I did "deserve" to be born a white American, or to have good parents who are still together, or to be of particular intellect, or literally any other single factor over which I had no say and have no control. I cannot logically and reasoningly decry one thing as unfair to me without implying both that I think "fair" exists, and that it defines every other thing I have been dealt in my life's cards, and I. Will. Not. Commit. That. Fallacy.

You don't get to take credit for only one side of the coin. I will not fall into the traps of common thinking, of entitlement in ways no person can logically be entitled. "I think, therefore I inherently deserve" is not something I support in any form. I will not sink into the archaic lazy notion that a man's worth is defined by anything other than the works he has done with the life he was given. However long it lasts. Whatever takes it in the end.

As a great billionaire vigilante once said, "It's not who I am underneath, but what I do, that defines me."

I do not view this experience the way I have come to realize it is commonly seen and viewed. I am not "battling" cancer. I am not "fighting" anything. I understand the use of those metaphors to others in situations similar to my own and believe me when I say I would never speak against them; every single person walking this long road through treatment has exactly my equal right to choose and follow and utilize whatever metaphor works best for them to describe their own situation in the manner which helps them to rise and face the next day. I just have a much different view of my own personal circumstances, that's all. I cannot proclaim myself a "warrior" with a straight face, as I am not personally doing any of the fighting. Chemotherapy drugs are, coursing through my system and poisoning cancer cells by the millions. Radiation blasts will be actively killing scattered cancer cells that survived the initial chemo deluge. Both of which were administered by doctors and nurses looking out for my health and well-being. Who went through a solid decade of school and training, taught by uncountable mentors and professionals in the medical field. Do you understand what I am saying? If this is a war, then it is a war being fought by proxies. I am not either of the armies on the field, here. I am the battlefield itself. This war is being fought and won by mercenaries, by the service professionals who are taking pay to provide the forces and tools with which cancer can be defeated and removed from the battlefield.

There are warriors here. I simply am not one of them. I am the owner of the land, the interested party who hires the warriors to fight on my behalf. I am involved. I am vested. I am central and self-valuing. But I am not the hero holding the sword. Not in this scenario. And anyone who wants to make me out to be, you are dramatizing my situation in a way you think will make me feel better, or braver, but I can now calmly tell you in reply, "Thank you for your consideration and the gift of its metaphor, but I do not require such. I know what I am, and feel proud of it already. I do not need to claim glory I do not deserve in order to face this situation without fear. For that, I can do already."

And once more, let me disclaim here: By no means am I saying that any other person who is themselves surviving cancer is in any way incorrect in stating that they are battling it. My views are mine alone, and pertain only to my own situation. I would never restrict the belief of another to view their own personal struggle, battle, or journey in whatever way they saw fit. The act of naming a thing is an inborn privilege of the sentient; it gives us leverage. It gives us structure. And through both together, we gain power over the thing. I myself named cancer in my last post, calling it the physical depression, a metaphorical manifestation of the dark shadows that had haunted my mind; I gave it a name, that I might call it without fear. I will not ever take that power away from any other. I speak only of myself in this missive.

So... that's one point of view I hold. Here's another.

There is no evil enemy here. There is only cancer, doing what cancer does. Cancer manifests, it grows, it consumes and converts, it takes over and spreads. Humans do the same, merely on a different scale. We grow, we fight, we kill and eat, we spread and multiply. We change and sometimes ruin the things and places we touch as we do so; we are, as a species, in the process of polluting areas of the surface of our own planet steadily to such a degree that they have become unable to support us any longer. How is that any different on a fundamental level from the mindless cancer which multiplies and eats and spreads blindly until it has accidentally killed its own host? But we are sentient beings, carbon-based life that wants to live and will fight for the right to do so against anything standing in our way. We can think, unlike cancer. We can change and moderate and grow according to thought and reason, instead of pure instinct and blind desire of the moment. We can be greater. Cancer cannot. That is cancer's doom, the combination of predatory genetic destiny too similar to our own, and intellectual inability to rise above that and attain a higher purpose for its own existence than simply "Because I must." So yes, I count myself greater than cancer. But I am not so small-minded and arrogantly narrow of vision to believe that makes cancer itself, which is by definition an intentionless mass of unthinking cells, some kind of evil villain. It's just... nature. I had as well hate the ocean for being capable of drowning me.

I will kill the cancer within me if it be within the power of the medical mercenaries I can hire to do so, to save my own life and protect my self-determined right to live and mate and create and persist. But I will not hate the cancer to do so. There is no hate without fear, and I do not fear death. It is the last part of life, an irrevocable part of the whole and inevitable in its inclusion. I cannot glorify life, and still fear death; to do so is to lie to oneself about what life is. Temporary. Finite. Valuable because of its limited duration. Cancer is not sentient; it does not want, so far as any human definition of the word can apprehend. It has no greater goals or dreams, other than the carbon-based life imperative to continue to exist. The very same imperative that I follow. So I will fight it for the use of my brain's locomotive carbon flesh-and-bone-and-blood machine, but I will not deceive myself into thinking I don't understand its simple motive in the profound manner which is reserved only to those with firsthand recognition. I also exist, and in so doing wish to continue to. I will not hate that which I understand so well. I cannot hate that which I also am.

And above all else, I do not need to hate in order to fight, to win, to kill in defense of my own life with a clear conscience. That is melodrama. A villain is not required for there to be a fight with every bit of meaning and honor possible in one that has a genuine bad guy. To believe so is to fool yourself, justifying an unsure position by personifying its elements to suit your desires of the moment. One of the greatest arrogances I believe we carry as a species lies within this sphere: to misuse our amazing scientific, biologic, genetic gift of perceiving the infinite beauty and majesty of the universe around us in order to twist those perceptions away from truth and into the lies which suit our own desires. I won't do it.

Cancer's not a villain. It's not a roving shadowcasting terror. It's not a demon come to earth. It's not even actually my own depression given form; that's just a melodramatic parallel I drew toward the purpose of explaining how I was able to initially react to my diagnosis without fear or surprise. It's just a nothing versus my sentience, a mindless amoeba devouring what it can, knowing nothing of me or itself or anything beyond spreading itself the one way it is designed to do. I will stop it because that is my prerogative, as the being in the situation with greater understanding. But I will not hate it for being what it is. The moment I do, by the principle of the two-sided coin I do likewise invite the earth itself to drown me in its oceans, to crush me under one of its mountains, to choke the life from me by taking my oxygenated atmosphere away. The day I hate a parasite for being what it is before my species has evolved beyond its own remaining parasitism, I drown my soul in an ocean of my own hypocrisy. And I am better than that.

I am not at war.

I am on a journey.

And I am glad to be back here, walking with you once more.

- Gabriel, He Who Would Rather Be Truthful, Than Justified