One of the comments that my ex wrote to one of the articles
received about me was that they should be careful about their poster childer
when only the nice parts of the child end up on the poster. This blog has
always intended to be fairly raw and when you do things unprocessed, sometimes
you make mistakes. Other people’s articles show the nice parts of the poster
but here, you’ve literally seen pictures of me bleeding. I know that there’s
entries here that people have warmed up to because well my heart was fairly
warm. There are those which have made people angry or hurt.
The last few entries have been worrying people. The honest
truth is being broke scares me as much as my sickness and I try to figure out
how to not get there. I am so damn afraid of being poor and passing that onto
my daughter, so damn afraid. And when we’re afraid and feeling trapped in
corners, if we fail to recognize it, like a rat we swing at things that may be
harmful but also at things that may be trying to help. We try to justify that
somehow that job wasn’t a good match despite the fact that you’ve said you’ve
loved it for years. Let me be clear beyond belief; I don’t believe that
anything that went wrong in my life wasn't at least partly at fault. Todd who would put together the tourney did it without asking
me for any help because he knew that financial fears would have stopped me from
doing the medically right thing to do and my pride would have found a way to
shut down taking help. The last run I went before qualifying for Boston was
with my friend Andy who connected me with Livestrong. 3 of us ran together and
we talked about how they would do things. One of them said, I’d just ignore it
and go party it up till it killed me. Andy said he would to, except he had a
kid and that changes the game and the world…
It’s changed mine.
I’ve hurt my mother’s feelings by some of the things I said
about my childhood and the last few entries have hurt some of my coworkers. I
was just wrong on some of those things but one of the sad/great things about
human psychology is that when we’re happy we’re more likely to remember happy
memories, when we’re sad, we’re more likely to remember sad memories etc. And
lately, I’ve been scared and angry so I’ve been reflecting angry and scared
memories. That’s not healthy to live there but it’s also unhealthy and dishonest
to not acknowledge it (though it’s probably less than wise to do so in a public
blog). Before cancer, I had some serious sports injuries because I’d take
forever to getting around to seeing them and then aggravate the injury. This
blog is a way to address some of the injuries and hoping that in letting it out
briefly and intensely, rather than retaining it… I make some progress. One of
the ways I get through the day and rough days is by saying and trying to live “Having
bad days is against my religion and I rarely sin.” I’ve been sinning more than
usual lately.
But I made some mistakes and blatant remarks in this blog that
its not okay to let sit unaddressed. On the small level, there are tons of
great athletes at my job. Amy was the one who helped me push better for a
marathon. There is another serious weight lifter and other cyclists. More importantly,
the norm certainly there is tons of good people. Perhaps from the population we
work with, we see they are (almost) all good parents. They are good people who
do good, though I can’t honestly take back that most of them do it while
finding a way to work without challenging the system and part of my problem
always was that I pushed the system and local government rarely takes that
well. I had always challenged the system and I think contributed some for which
they tolerated it, but my heart suspects that once I’d brought in a 3rd
party (the EEOC) for getting stuck in a bad job that was less than acceptable to me when I was already feeling overwhelmed by a diagnosis.
Maybe the fact that we’re self insured and cost them hundreds of thousands of
dollars wasn’t helpful either.
On a bigger level of apology, I don’t think my mom did an
inadequate job by any means and I know I’ve hurt her feelings by talking about
some raw emotions and memories from childhood. I like to think that she gave me
my good qualities and that I made poor choices which gave me my bad ones. She
wasn’t perfect but I’ve met no parent who is but I’m working my ass to be a
good parent because of her example not in spite of it. And I imagine that the
good qualities from Kiana will be some from her mother, some from me, some from
herself. I can take the blame for any bad choices.
On a similar level, my ex has made comments over and over
that she left because there was another girl and it had nothing to do with
cancer. This is true from several years ago, before my daughter was born. I’ve
had to acknowledge this because a couple of organizations have gotten remarks
about it. How angry she still is at me a year after we’ve been apart gets
interpreted differently by different people. Some people say it’s the guilt of
doing what she did. Some say it shows how much anger she maintained and never
processed. Some say it’s the conflicting emotions of trying to figure out how to
be in love with someone else when that means reduced time with her daughter. There’s
obviously no way to know. When this story was sent to a couple of organizations, they asked
about it. They appreciated that I didn’t dodge the issue or avoid it. It’s
never made this blog because I started it from the day after the seizure and it
was a mistake from long ago. I wrote it
to keep track of what happened since the seizure and the cancer but it’s
obviously shifted a little with more references to the past. So let me
acknowledge that, probably the worst mistake of my life from several years ago. If you think something that occurred years before justifies someone leaving their child and someone while they are unable to drive with lots of medical restrictions... I don't know what to say.
Thank you to whoever reads this and whoever cares but I am
no saint, never have been, and never pretended like I was. I am someone who
tries to move forward but sometimes gets stuck dealing with the past but I don’t
want to live in it, again no matter how good or bad it is. I want to keep
training for races and I am starting to train for that brain power 5k so I can
do better in it. I don’t want to rest on my laurels; I want to improve for as
long as possible. If I run a marathon again, I want to train hard again. I’d
rather be alone than get into a bad relationship so if I dare to dream on that
again, it has to be an updgrade. On the job, I probably will get to a point to
where finances win because that’s one of my absolute biggest fears. With Kiana,
I will use every resource I have to not lose a second of time with the greatest
gift the universe has ever lent me.
I write this, not as a story, hoping for some great ending
but just as a way to capture slices in time, unprocessed, unfiltered, in case
the memory ever betrays or fades or whatever that I can still remember the
moment. I don’t know what’s coming but I’m trying to accept that I wasn’t
quite prepared for life with cancer; I was prepared to die and those are gigantically
different. I am not free from cancer and my dealing with it has “freed” me from
other things. If I’ve ever said anything that hurt you or offended you, I am
sorry at some level. That really wasn’t my intention. If peeking this closely
inside a damaged brain is discouraging you, please stop reading it because I
get through the day by people helping me and I don’t ever want to be someone
weighing someone down. I talked to a guy from my running group about why I stay
away from girls because I don’t want to weigh someone down with my cancer. He
answered wisely, “dude it’s not a secret, people get to make their own
choices." I don't know if I can get to the capacity to ask someone to make that choice.
On that whole poster child thing, I think every single one
of the pictures I’ve been in shows a scar visible on the side of my head. I
have others that aren’t as perceivable but I accept them as part of my identity
though I wish to never be wholly defined by them. Life maybe easier to make
sense of if we make it about black and white, about victims and villians,
heroes. That’s just so rarely true. At
the end of the day, we’re all broken. Sometimes
in dark places, those cracks are the only way the light gets through. Thank you
for occasion tolerating my cracks and my dark places for those of you who have
done it. Thank you for being some of that light. I’ll try to get back to being more faithful to
my religion.
I'm sorry, but if that was the worst mistake of your life, then it goes to show she wasn't strong enough for you. If it really was the worst mistake, then someone is doing their darndest to tell you otherwise. Nothing will change until you realize that one thing you did would not have perfected your life back then. Would you feel differently had she stayed and still found someone else? That's what she did anyway...
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