Weird weeks make you wonder "is there a full moon"???? Silly question I know.
Cancer, death, sickness, aging are always looming over your life and you may not even realize it...
All four have been looming over my head for a month or so and this week was especially interesting/trying...
I found photos my sister took of me not realizing that she was doing so. It is an interesting view of a life I have not lived... a life of the outsider looking in... no control... you just have to watch it all play out and hope for the best... maddening I am sure...
You are looking at your bald sister, four years younger than yourself, skinny, missing a leg, having cancer for a second time and you think... "what do I do? how is this fair?"
All the while I am in my safe haven... TV and family and keeping my mind off the next hospital visit... never really thinking about how this effects the other part of my family... because who with cancer wants to burden themselves with that??? My goal in that moment was to get back to school and my life without cancer...
It becomes this strange social balance that no one really knows how to deal with... what do I do, what do they do, if I do this does that bother the other party... I mean, who knows how to deal with a young adult with cancer... That shit is for old people right? ; )
Nope!
How many young people have I interacted with that have cancer? Too many... We exist people!!! It doesn't just happen to old people...
So the question still remains... How do our caretakers take care of our lives in a dignified way? How do we as cancer "victims" deal with our family being overbearing and invasive in our lives?
YOU DEAL!!! They care what happens to you and want to be there for you... even if it feels like a total invasion of privacy, as long as it is in your best interest, just go with it and let someone else take the reigns...
You need to focus on YOU! Let the people you care about worry about the other stuff... they want to help...
I look at the photos my sister took and I admire them... because it is a view of how the other person sees you... They may not have another photo of you in your life and they want to document the time they have with you... They may know deep down that you may want to see those photos in the future in admiration, so they keep them...
Any way you look at it, this person is thinking of you and your life and even in the darkest days they want to document your life because they know one day you will look back and remember that time in your life where all that mattered was family and staying alive...
That is what life is all about right?
