I took a friend out to dinner last night who wanted to sit
and talk because they are going through a relapse of cancer. It was originally
stage 2 last year and now it’s back as stage 3. She sounded a lot like what I
felt last year. She was trying to figure out how to communicate with her parents
who like my mother is an overworrier. It felt intensely hypocritical to sit
there and tell her to make sure that there was at least one person who she was
unloading all of her emotion to and at least one person who she was sharing all
of her medical information to. The medical information I shared readily with
everyone, the emotional stuff I wasn’t even aware of some of it. Perhaps in
self protection mode, or perhaps in trying to be protecting everyone else mode,
some of it I didn’t even process till way later. She was closed to the ideas, not wanting this
random disease to be damaging to anyone but
her. She, like I had, did her
best to hold it together the whole time and it wasn’t until I excused myself
from the table to the bathoom that she let herself cry. I came back to hug her and
she said simply “I never cry.” Well I never had either but there’s a reason it’s
built into the system. Maybe it’s not that different than sweating… it just
relieves other than things to try to get them to a better balance. We are going
to meet again in a couple of weeks because she has a trip coming up and I
offered to be either role but that either way, she was going to get a text from
me daily until she picked one of each. Today’s was already sent. I reemphasized
the line that I hope to always echo in my lifestyle: you have to work on the
relationships you want to keep.
Living strong is important; so is acknowledging that we’re
human. The balance is at best tricky. “We” want to believe that we are better
than “them.” Those of us who don’t cry and don’t weigh our family down with a
random occurrence are more “noble” in our own emotions and thoughts. The
Livestrong ad for the bicycle race comes out this week (someone on a group ride
asked me if I was the guy from it and it becomes the second time where other people
see the ad before I do). I was annoyed with Livestrong when they first asked if
I could be in their ad about how I mishandled cancer in regards to my wife. Why
couldn’t they focus on the fact that I had put off brain surgery to qualify for
Boston but there was something awfully accurate about it. It’s good to work on
your strengths but there are some weaknesses every human should work on and
mine a long way from being there is how to completely deal with my emotions. I
biked hard last night, coached some people training for their marathons this
morning and am preparing for an ultimate tournament in a couple of weeks
and that’s healthy but there’s more than that. I’ve laughed and made plenty of
jokes about what may kill me and I also think that’s healthy. But you have to
acknowledge some of that humanity. I cried five times between the diagnosis and
the surgery. The first was a very angry crying as I threw a gift card someone
had sent home, the second was when people handed me checks towards my
medical bills, the third was at the
tourney as Kiana kept wanting to know “why she was there.” There was and is no
good answer. The fourth was when I decided to the surgery and went out for some
cheesecake, assuming the guy I knew was done. The last was in Barbados by
myself in the restroom sensing that the wife was disconnected but I couldn’t
think of anything to do or say to fix it.
If people are randomly split into two groups and are told
that it’s completely random, they still believe the group they ended up on is
better. We cheer for our team, our family, our friends. My God is better than
your God. My political party is better than your political party and many many
people never re-evaluate. We die with the faith, system, and beliefs of our
parents and surroundings… I was an am a stubborn enough son of a bitch to where
even being told I was probably dying my coping mechanism was to try to hold on to
all of my life and laugh about it. Life was even more of a bitch and rewarded
some of that stubbornness with keeping my life but laughed back by taking some
things away because of that stubbornness. I am struggling to figure out what to
do with that stubbornness. The fact that I have meals like that and raise money
for charities has within the span of an hour has gotten people who I love to
say that I’m both “humble” and “narcissistic.” Are those mutually exclusive?
I’ve held onto many good things and am incredibly grateful.
My director once, as we argued about me being stuck in a back closet because of
my driving restriction, in a human moment just asked why don’t you just go work
somewhere else and I answered because I believe what we do at here. And I do…
but it’s not like it’s my only belief system. The problem with when I believe
things is I do it with incredible passion and at a track workout, people want
to be pushed. In some places, they just want to be allowed to be… I guess I
hoped work was more like the first for me but I didn’t do enough of to each his
own there. If you just do what you’re told, life is easier but is that really
living?
So now there’s no medical evaluations for a while and I’ve
definitely taken some criticism (including at last night’s dinner) for that and
I suppose it’s more than fair. But that’s not preventing anything honestly so
it’s not self harm… Not getting on the scale doesn’t make you gain or lose
weight, it just tells you if you’ve done so. Somehow, it’s somewhat comforting
to be holding weight pretty steady just as it’s somewhat comforting that my
neuropsychological said that all the tests reflected the deficits I noticed and
none that I hadn’t caught. I still have a series of tests that I do regularly
to tests my own neurological functions… plus the Ipad rehab games. This somehow
feels like a diabetic testing their own blood sugar level.
I am looking for a job but I’ve made one of 2 commitments.
It has to be something I’m passionate about and where passion is encouraged,
something that as I listen to some of my friends talk about reflects their
work. Or it has to be a way to pay the bills that I can tolerate that I couldn’t
possibly care less about “the cause”. Choice 1 is choice 1 but I’m not going to
give 6.5 years at any job where cookie cutter is the norm unless it’s just a
way to pay the bills. I also have to get better at communicating there. I’ve
made many friends in life but less at that job than any other job I’ve had.
Part of it was the nature of the job, being a juvenile probation officer is
heavy and I very purposely didn’t talk about it to be able to disconnect when I
left and not burn out. That may not be the healthiest thing and it may have
been part of why those were the people who I last told about Duke. Also most of
my friends never heard about it either because I just had to compartmentalize
to not “take it home.” A lot of staff leave there when their children become
teenagers and I understand why.
If and when I’ve landed a job like that, I am going to try to block off some of the icecaps around my emotions and try to let myself be and someone else in. A recent facebook post someone had up was “My ex said you’ll never find anyone else like me… that’s the point.” A couple of friends from running had dated one after the other and now they are both married and sometimes life is just about finding better matches. I did this with doctors, with friends and this has proven wise to match with people who are a better match. I did it less with a spouse and employment… and this has proven less than wise and netted these results. So, not having really dated since high school, and being nerdy and data driven, I’ve read some books on relationships in the last couple of weeks before this termination thing, showing at least some cracks in the barriers.
Being raised Seventh-day Adventist, a religion which has
sometimes been contended to be a cult (I don’t believe it is), also well
sheltered me too much from the world. I went to a boarding high school and the
college I went to was a bunch of tee-totalers in wine country… In the Marshall
Islands, we were behind a wall. I’ve gotta pick up some skills that didn’t give
me enough of. We took that “be in the world, not of the world thing” a step too
far in my book.
I am going to do my best to take these new chances and make
them opportunities, to hold onto the good, improve the decent, tweak or get rid
of the bad. I don’t want to be over romantic or meaningful but maybe life part
II, like conception, child birth and growing a child isn’t some formula and
some of it is going to be messy and I’ve got so many damn steps to learn. But
everyone keeps telling me to take this second shot at life. Some of that will
be recognizing where I didn’t fit in and some of that will be recognizing my
mistakes and shifting some of both. I am working on just letting some of that
anger go as quickly as I can or channeling it correctly because the old saying is Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more
hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
Keep on keeping on is a
good phrase if things are going right but they haven’t been. So I want to keep
going for now but not just keeping on but analyzing my faults and what you did
right though it definitely is my tendency to notice what I did wrong. I’ve
literally even thought about taking a gigantic leap of faith and going back to
school, seeing if that brain still works. But I’m lost right and broke right now
so it’s not wise to jump into school without a great career or future in my
mind. There’s probably going to be some
slip ups and some mistakes along the way as there have been so far… but I hope
it’s a learning process and in the end, mine and Kiana’s life are somehow
better for it.
I sat across the table
from someone who left someone they had been with for 15 years to be with
someone new and now they are getting married. I can’t say that I was fond of it
all since they were the one leaving and quitting which is so against my nature but it
was interesting to listen to. I’ve been on both sides of many tables now, I hope
I find somewhere to land because I’m tired of being lost.
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