One of the questions I still ask myself is "why me?" A BC site I occasionally go to is Y-me.org, so I don't think I'm unique. When you're smacked upside your head with a cancer diagnosis, and make it through to the other side of treatment, you're left with a sense that at the very least, it all should mean something profound. What is the point of going through all of this if it doesn't have a positive outcome, a mind-changing perspective, or life-altering repercussions?
This is definitely human rationalization, not objective fact. No matter how this happened or why it happened to me, I'm left with the obvious outward changes and naturally want the mental universe to balance out. I contemplate what has changed inside, but am left feeling a bit hollow and superficial. Surely I must have gleaned some new insight, gained something significant to add to my character or world view?
Shouldn't I be kinder, gentler, more filled with humility, more seeking of grace? Shouldn't I be soldiering on with a renewed appreciation of optimism and gratitude? Shouldn't I be looking at life with renewed zest, and a passionate, energetic determination to commit to living the rest of my life with the volume turned all the way up? On one level, perhaps I am, but the response I'm noticing lately is the impulse to cover over the trauma with some emotional scar tissue and just try to go back to "normal," whatever that was. It is so easy, so tempting, to want to slip back into the amnesiac life of before: Trusting. Oblivious. Nothing bad can happen to me.
I think I desperately want this to have changed me in some significant way, because if it's just a random occurrence that I randomly survived, then it could just as easily happen again (when I'm back to my unconscious, non-vigilant self?), or worse, happen to someone else I care about. This line of thinking is intolerable right now. I'm just now moving beyond the physical pain and frustrating inabilities, and still trying to get a grip on the torque wrench that will adjust the mental attitudes to something I can live with from now on.
But if it just happened without reason or purpose, and I haven't learned anything new, then... what do I do now?
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1 comment:
YOU take a day at a time and appreciate what each day holds in store for you. You move through the happy times and take as much as you can from it. Maybe we are the lucky ones - it could have been a bus that hit us!!!!!! Then, you'd have no blog, no new friends, the list goes on and on and on............
M.....;-)
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