We were riding the train in the Cincinnati airport after a long weekend of family tied together by people from long ago. My stop was terminal A, hers terminal B.
As my stop approached, the two of us standing beside each other holding onto individual poles preventing us from falling, my aunt looked at me and said, “I couldn’t read your blog.”
Before that moment, I assumed she had forgotten I had a blog. On our second full day together I learned that she did not understand stage IV breast cancer is terminal asking me, “So what is your diagnosis?” So, bringing up my blog at the very end of our time together did not exist on the list of things I expected her to say.
I quickly jumped into protection mode not wanting to hear any negatives about my writing. “It’s okay,” I said. “I was really depressed in the beginning. It isn’t so dark now.”
Because I was able to get to know her better over those few days, I know now she was not bringing to light any negatives about my blog. She brought it up to tell me she now understands why I have a blog.
The train stopped. Before I departed my aunt said, “I think you want to be heard.”
Nodding my head I said, “Yes, I think I do.”
We hugged goodbye. I departed the train giving more thought to what she had said, the doors closing behind me.
She is right. I do want to be heard. I want to be heard, but I want the people who are part of my life to want to hear me. I don’t want to force it upon them in conversation. I want them to take time out of their day to read what I write because they care about me even if it makes them uncomfortable.
I have long suspected that the very people I wanted to read my blog did not. Those family members were the people I targeted when I first began to write--along with a few friends. My expectations of what I think family should or should do or be to one another are often much higher than what reality actually gives me. This is proof of that.
Maybe I am asking too much. My want for people to read my blog so they understand my emotions connected to my death is perhaps more than they are willing or capable of doing. Breeching the subject can be highly emotional. It could cause me pain and pain for them as well. The conversation of death is often avoided because dipping your toes in it may cause a dam to break. Staying clear keeps everyone from drowning. There is a great need to protect against that. I get it.
On occasion I have slipped into a conversation with a family member about my disappointment that no one except my two oldest daughters read my blog. That little push has caused them to take a moment to let this part of my life into theirs. I might hear something small about it the next time I speak to them but after that, nothing.
I feel selfish feeling this way. There is nothing so special about my thoughts that must be read. But I do want to feel as if my thoughts and words matter to them. Then, maybe, once in a while, when they are telling me about their lives they might acknowledge that my world is different. One where I have to consider I might not be here next year while they get the luxury of planning their future years not aware as I am of a timeline with an endpoint in the not so distant future—statistically speaking. The two perspectives are vastly different.
So yes, dammit, I do; I do want to be heard. I want people to know what I am going through. That I am scared, hurt, and full of pain, rage and self-pity for a disease I cannot control. And I am jealous, yes jealous, that the people in my life can pursue things that I will never be able to.
Yes. I want to be heard. As another scan approaches--June 26th-- my fears are enhanced. That day I must rise much too early in the morning and journey to a machine revealing my future is the day I need to scream into the universe because I don’t know what else to do. This blog lets me do that. I am screaming in this post. My life and my death are racing each other.
I need to give away my grief. Put it out there so I don’t feel alone trying to live as I do constantly having my death hovering over me. It never leaves my thoughts, how can it?
I carry cancer with me, everywhere. I carry the thought of dying, everywhere. When I am tired, my defenses are weakened and can easily reveal on my face my feelings if prompted by the right stimuli. When everyone around me is struggling to be heard about the things that are bothering them, I am struggling too to keep myself from letting loose and scattering all of me in front of them. I am losing so much; I am losing my life. I am not ready to die. There is so much I want to do.
My words strung together from thoughts in my head matter to me. Maybe I shouldn’t care so much that my loved ones hear them. But I do. They are my words expressing how I feel. Sometimes I just need validation they care.
Somehow, I thought my loved ones would want to hear my pain and offer me soft words when I needed it. I was wrong about that.
We are all islands living among each other and not really stopping to listen to what the other needs to say. I too am guilty of forgetting to listen, but am trying to correct this mistake whenever I can. I think we all want to be heard and want our feelings to be important.
So it is to my two now grown daughters, to a few friends who have let me know they read my blog, to those people I have never and will never meet, and maybe one day to all of my family members that I want to say thank you for giving me some of your time. Thank you for reading my blog and for listening. I do need to be heard by someone, anyone.
You are it.
