Little bugs.

This is something I wrote last year, but it's still actual now.


On of my online "sisters" (read: breast cancer sisters) recently was complaining on how hard pressured she feels about "being the good cancer patient", while she was feeling guilty for not having any urges to go backpacking to "rah rah meetings" to give speeches as a model cancer patient/survivor. Of feeling like she's doing it all wrong all the time. All these little things, like little bugs creeping over her life.

I think that I have my little bugs too. Even if I was never (well maybe in my teenagehood) affected by what others said and thought. My motto was always "is this person important to me? Does their opinion affect my life, my career, my family? Are they the ones who pay my bills and do my laundry and cook for me? NO? Then why in the world I would give a rat's turd about what they think?" - oh, and also, numerous times I was not afraid or shy to tell them in their faces the exact same thing.

I had my share of "get your backpack on and go". So if now I get any kind of hints on that, I remind those persons of what I did and ask them what exactly did they do themselves in this respect. To the "I think you should..." and "if I were you I would..." I reply "well, when you will have breast cancer and go through this yourself, then feel free to do so".

This is MY life and I live it how I think it should be lived, not how others think. Yes, I had the bad luck of getting BC - but then I will make the best of what I have left. I do have my up and downs, like everybody else. When I get the blues of "I cant' do this or that" I look back and say "yes, but I did this, and that, and that" and then maybe spend my time remembering the beauty of what was. It is a treasure that BC cannot rob me of.

Maybe I should feel ashamed, but I was never impressed by declarations of "xxx disease made me a better person", to be honest, I always thought the disease must have done something to those people's head. How in the world can one be grateful for this? Such a hypocrisy, in the run for the spotlight. Ask ANY of those people, if there was a miracle and they could change this "wonderful experience" and this "better person" they've become to NOT having cancer, would they refuse it? Really?

Did BC make me a "better person"? Not at all. It just made me a different person. Maybe even a worse person by some people's standards, but who cares about them?

At this time in my life I am less forgiving. Little dramas and spotlight shows that in the past I would overlook and let pass, now I either shove out of my life, or call to attention the person doing it. If they don't like it and don't change their behavior, then good riddance. I don't know how much of my life I have left, but I am determined to NOT have room in it for unimportant things.The disease made me re-assess the values and importance of things and people in my life.

I will never always choose what is less important over me sitting in the garden watching the squirrels cajoling or me playing my favorite online game. How I want to live my life is more important than what a doctor, a "friend" or an acquaintance thinks.

I might have no power on the length of my life, but I do have the power on the quality of it.

And who doesn't like it, oh well, too bad. I don't care.