Ready to Tell You
Thu., October 21, 01:42 PM
Some of you may have wondered why I posted fewer entries this year. On the other hand, since I was never that diligent about writing, a lot of people probably never even noticed. Post? Some days I didn’t have the energy to read!
In any case, the worst is over, and I’m ready to explain. Early this year, when I was going through all those routine medical tests, I learned that I had breast cancer. And with that knowledge came three … let’s call them axioms:
- I knew I would get better;
- I would accept help; and
- I would not publish anything about my illness until I was better.
It’s that third item I want to talk about first. Why wouldn’t I want to write about my experiences? It’s not as if I were reticent about my opinions. It wasn’t a secret. (I do remember a time when it was somehow shameful to have cancer, but those days are long past.) Furthermore, as we all know, Diaryland and other weblogs are a wonderful place to vent one’s dissatisfaction with specific misfortunes as well as the world in general.
In addition, I have benefited from the posted experiences of other people in more ways than you could imagine. In my philosophy I am therefore obligated to do the same for others.
What stopped me then? It’s a peculiar phenomenon of weblogs in general, not just Diaryland. I think it may have originated from a motivation to empathize with someone else’s misfortune, or perhaps just a lack of knowing the right thing to say. But it has become a kind of teenaged “one-upmanship,” a competition of “my pain is worse than yours.” No, it doesn’t describe everyone who writes about illness. (I know lots of people who bear horrific problems with patience and humor. They complain, but trouble is not the center of their lives.)
Yes, I continue to describe it as teenaged, even though some of these people are clearly post-adolescent. Somewhere the mindset of “me-me-me” has overtaken the world. And I want to say, just because you hurt doesn’t mean the whole world has to bleed.
I suppose it was inevitable that the phenomenon would escalate. Right around the time that I received my diagnosis, several on-line cancer “victims” were discovered to be frauds. (Not all of them were on Diaryland, but at least one of them was.)
There’s an old saying that, if you’re not going to tell the truth, you’d better have a good memory, so that you can remember what you told to whom. One of these writers disseminated her story until it got back to someone who knew her in real life; they knew that the stories were false.
Kind-hearted people who read these diaries were hurt and disillusioned. They had every right to become cynical. If I had written that I had cancer, and someone said, “you’re making that up,” I wouldn’t have been surprised.
But I also felt that would have been the last straw. I'm not that tough, and it would have been more than I could handle. So, though I might write in the meantime, I chose to wait until my treatments were finished before I would post.
There was plenty of time, after all. I knew I was going to get better. And I am.
