Embracing the Unknown

With each day I get one step closer to being finished with active treatment for HER2+ breast cancer. This should feel like an accomplishment, a crossing of the finish line so to speak. Instead it feels a bit like jumping off a cliff into waters that are unknown and a bottom that can’t be seen. I am just as terrified at the end as I was at the beginning of this journey.

I never understood, in full capacity, what cancer really was. The disease I understood but the emotional and physical breakdown that is a part of it was unimaginable. It has made me very frustrated at “normal” people. Everything I hear makes me want to yell at them, “at least you don’t have cancer!”. I mean move it along people life can be so much worse than you ever imagined! But recently I have had a bit of a reality smack to remind me that we do not know what is going on in other people’s lives.

In our society there is a need to complain. I feel like it has become an acceptable way of bragging. For example; we tell someone how we are so tired because we got a promotion at work and now have to put in longer hours. To me it seems like the small stuff is what gets complained about and big meaty things that we probably need to talk about are what we keep hidden inside ourselves.

During high school a boy committed suicide my senior year. I was already a Peer Counselor but because of this I was sent to get more training and became certified as a suicide intervention counselor. When I went away to college I continued to work for a suicide intervention group that was close to the campus. Though it was a difficult job it was something that eventually led me into the field of communication. I learned how important words are, the unsaid feelings associated with them, and the immense damage that can be done because of them.

For the past year I have been so focused on myself that I have ignored how extremely hard life is without adding on a disease. It is tough growing up and existing in a world that thrives on social media that at its center is a popularity contest for the entire world to see and take part in. No matter how many anti-bullying campaigns are launched there are still people that feel left out, excluded, and insignificant. In a world where beauty is no longer in the eye of the beholder but in the number of likes you have received our self esteem is directly correlated. If we are smart enough to stay off of social media when feeling depressed we find out that “the real world” is more often than not hiding just as many people ready to let us know what flaws we have.

Everything comes back to the unknown.

I guess it is a good reminder that we do not know what people are going through. That there is an abundance of unknown in this world and in this sticky thing we call life. Yesterday someone posted on facebook this image.

I don’t know where they got it from and I actually am not a big fan of celebrities because they are very rarely good examples for my kids but I do think that this is a good truth to see. People put on a good face. They laugh through their pain. They smile through their tears. Most times it takes one person to reach out and show that they care. It takes one person to show kindness. If we can embrace the unknown and remember that even though our own unknown might be terrifying, the person next to us might be going through something just as hard.

Looking back at this year I know that I could never have made it without my family and friends. I talk a lot about Scotty, my kids, and my parents but it is my siblings and their own kids that have helped me too. I want so desperately to have this life and to experience every part of it with all my family. I want to hear my nephew play his trumpet in another parade and I long to sit in the audience of a packed house and let the sound of a cello or piano wrap around me from my niece. I find more joy in sitting and watching my kids play with their cousins than I ever thought was possible. And I find myself smiling when I sit at the table to do my work as my children and their friends giggle from the other room.

I know that life is hard and that we have very little control of so many parts of it. But we do have control on how we behave. I just wish that everyone from babies to grandparents could find the beauty that exists in each and every one of us. Life is so precious, and, it is meant to be lived.