soopastryheart

There are very few things in this world that invoke the type of anger that makes me want to put my fist through a wall (or someone’s face): desecration of religion, Michael Vick, and perhaps Target copying the exact design of a bag that I purchased at Anthropologie for 5x the price are included in that exclusive list.

But every once in awhile, I come across something that is so enraging, so incomprehensible, that it makes me question and worry about the sanctity and future of human existence.

To understand what I am speaking of, please take time to read this:http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/men-more-likely-to-leave-spouse-with-cancer/?hp.

Being diagnosed with a serious illness is difficult news to bear. Being told you have the big C can feel like the emotional equivalent of being hit with a pillowcase filled with bars of soap. Such news can be devastating, shake the faith of the most devoted, and send the eternal optimist into a spiral of depression.

When I worked in the hematology/oncology department at Harborview, I watched as the team treated mostly low or no-income individuals without families or a support system. Having cancer can give you less reasons to smile, but I was convinced these folks were in worse spirits than families I’ve seen come in together. There have been plenty of studies that advocate the importance of having a support system when going through major diseases and surgeries. I believe in science, I believe in facts, but I also believe in the intangible components of the human body, the parts that can’t be shrunk by radiation, or removed by surgery. I believe that the human spirit is an equal and integral part of the process, the cure, and I don’t care that it can’t be measured or quantified.

Cancer has the ability to strip down the emotional barriers of the world’s most composed, imperturbable people. When my grandfather’s condition with stomach cancer worsened, we all flew to Seoul to see him for the last time. What I saw was a man I barely recognized. His body had whittled down to almost nothing; his skin resting on his bones like a thin bed sheet, desperately hanging onto anything it could grip. The treatments were not only unresponsive, but they had caused a severe decrease in appetite – and thus making him too weak to eat anything at all. His veins were so prominent that I felt the urge to poke at them, to see if they were still fluid or if they were as brittle as they appeared. As I reached for his hand, a nurse warned me that he was too weak and ‘fragile’. Fragile? My grandfather? The man who rode a motorcycle even when he was limited by a cane? This man, who punched a doctor for running too many blood tests on me when I was a newborn? He could barely open his eyes to look at me now.

I couldn’t believe this was what cancer had done to one of the most dauntless men I have ever known. But what I saw next knocked the wind out of my thirteen-year-old body. I stood in the hallway with my mother and brother at my side as we watched my father collapse into my grandmother’s arms. She held up all of his weight as they both cried into each other’s shoulders. Here was my father, the very symbol of masculinity, a man who had been perpetually stoic through everything else in his life, breaking down before my very eyes.

This is what cancer had done.

I’ve been around serious illnesses and cancer diagnosis for most of my life. I was too young to understand the complexities and mechanics of my grandfather’s battle, but I always understood the importance of my dad having been there, to say goodbye, and to hold my grandmother (or rather, have her hold him). I knew my grandfather lived a life that should be written about, and left it surrounded by those he shared it with.

When my friend Becky’s breast cancer returned, I visited her in Venice Beach and we cried together, cursing out loud how unfair it all was. We then proceeded to drink three bottles of wine, and I listened to her as she told me how much she enjoyed freaking out little kids with her Sinead O’Connor look. Even after losing her son and her marriage years before, she told me she had never felt more loved and supported by her friends and family. She never spoke about the medication. She occasionally complained about her lack of energy, but mostly talked about how much supplemental strength she was gaining from her friends. She told me she couldn’t even think about going through it again without the people around her, that it was their optimism and prayers that got her out the door each day.

And that night, in my loopy, drunken state, I silently promised myself that I’d be there for Becky, that even after my short visit, I would call regularly, and visit again when I could. I told myself I’d be stronger this time around, so I could really be there for her, in all the ways I wasn’t with her son.

But I called less than I promised. I didn’t visit. I found reasons: midterms, papers, trying to adjust to my first year in college. With every excuse, I tried to convince myself that a phone call wouldn’t do much anyway – nothing I could say would change the fact that Becky had cancer. I couldn’t make it disappear by holding her hand.

I’ve spoken to Becky several times throughout the years, and each call has always been filled with laughs, encouragement, and advice – mostly from Becky to me. She listened patiently as I complained about my latest melodrama, and joked about my inability to keep a boyfriend. We argued about sexy CNN anchors, and talked about her bizarre neighbors – they had a tendency to yell obscenities at their plants in the middle of the night. I tried to explain to her the breakdown of carbohydrates in the body so that she could lose her muffin top(disastrous), and she spent an hour trying to instruct me how to bake a pie from scratch (catastrophic). We talked about everything and anything, but we both deliberately avoided talking about her cancer, or her recovery, or anything remotely related to the subject. I had a hunch she suspected my discomfort, and I was grateful she never confronted it.

It wasn’t until this article that I realized why I stopped trying to support her, why I chose to avoid it entirely, and how I convinced myself it was for the best. As angry as I was with this article, I understood. I understood because…really, was I that much different?

The first time I read the article, I shook my head in disgust. The second time, I caught myself clenching my jaw and fists.

And I was so ready, fueled by disbelief and rage, loaded with angry words, thoughts, and opinions forming a tornado in my head, to spit out a self-righteous rant on how royally messed up this is.

But as I set forth to type out the words, my hands stopped dead in their tracks, frozen and hovering above the keyboard like I was suddenly facing a firing squad. Because the third time I read it, I didn’t feel angry.

I felt ashamed.

For some people, it just too much. For some people, the fear of loss is far greater than any amount of love they may have. For some, denial and the guilt of desertion is more tolerable than the acceptance of reality. For some people, loss becomes incomprehensible. So we run. We run when every fiber of our beings are screaming to do otherwise. When our conscience is ordering us to stay, when our own voices are screaming at us to balls up, we run. We run when our feet want to stop, when we hate ourselves for the betrayal, and even when our hearts hurt so much they don’t seem worth having.

Or at least, that’s why I ran.

It’s why I couldn’t bring myself to visit Cody during his final hospitalization. It’s why I ignored the chance for redemption with Becky.

I ran because I was a coward.

It’s not my place to assume the situations of the couples in the article. Relationships are difficult, they are complicated, and most times, can really only be understood by the two parties that create it. I don’t know anything about the couples studied. I don’t know how they met, when they got engaged, or where they were married. There are numerous variables that probably factored into their dissolution of marriage, and I don’t have any of those facts.

I was quick to become angry and brand these husbands (or ex-husbands) as cowards and asses. I became angrier and angrier each time I read the article, but it wasn’t until I really delved into my own experiences and history that I realized I was mostly angry about how much the article resonated with me – because no matter what reason these men had for leaving their wives during a devastating diagnosis, I couldn’t blame them, not completely, not the way I really wanted to… without admitting my faults as well.

I hope that one of these days, I will gain the courage to explain to Becky – to apologize – why I bailed when I knew better. And god forbid if I ever get another chance to redeem myself, if I am ever thrown back in that scene, I will take it. I won’t be selfish. I won’t run. I won’t even shift my feet.

Because forgiveness is a lot harder to grant when you’re asking yourself.