Why do I write here?

It has been a while since I've written anything. Part of that is because I don't have a lot to report, and the other part is that I don't know what to write. Which is weird. If you know me, you know my fingers are rarely at a loss for words.

Writing has always been a huge part of my life. I've kept a journal since, like, forever ago. I've always seen blogging, along with various other Internet ventures, as a natural, 21st-century extension of my journaling. Writing in my diary as an angst-filled fifth grader in 1985 helped to relieve anxiety, and blogging 20 years later in 2005 served that same purpose. Somewhere along the road, I realized that blogging is different than writing in a journal, if there are people who actually want to read your innermost thoughts about how stupid it is that your boss hates yellow so much that you can't even use standard Post-It notes at work. And apparently there are. And I have no regrets about this whatsoever, because I've met some really cool people along the way, people I've never met in real life, but whom I consider to be very, very good friends. People who probably know me way better than 90% of the people I see on a daily basis, people who cared about me long before I spent four months on bed rest, before I developed debilitating hip pain, before I had cancer. But still, knowing that people are reading what you are writing changes the nature of the writing.

Thus, I suddenly find blogging here to be somewhat difficult. I originally started to write here because I was bored, and because, being an avid blog reader, I had read a number of other blogs that were useful to me as I dealt with excruciating hip pain at a relatively young age. As I deal with cancer, also at a relatively young age, I find reading blogs to be even more important. And I've read a lot of blogs lately, perhaps too many. In the world of cancer, or even just Unfortunate Medical Conditions, there seem to be two types of blogs: those written to inform others of their status, and those written as therapy. But it is an ironic situation: it is the raw emotion of the latter that draws me in, the blogs that are written as if there is no expectation that anyone is actually reading them. Information about side effects, risks, recovery time, and other logistics is easy to come by, but knowing you aren't alone in being unable to express your grief over losing a breast is why I read.

And it is also why I write - to get all of the things out of me that I don't tell people in a normal conversation. To foster this part of me that is for the most part not visible in my everyday interactions. Most of all, I write for myself, either as therapy, or so I can have a record of my experiences. I write to inform, but mostly to inform myself. Even reading back through what I wrote a few months ago is like reading something written by another person; I only know I was at a particular place at a particular time in a particular state of mind because I know those words came from me.

But yet... here you are, reading this. It would be a lie for me to say writing this is all about me. I'm writing this for you, too. There are a handful of you who only know this side of me (my 'Internet friends'), there are a handful of you who know or at least knew me in real life, who want a little more detail than I share on Facebook, and then there are a handful of random folks from all over the world, at least according to Blogger stats. I have no idea why you are here, or if you are here to stay, or what. And so I find myself at a loss for words. Will you tire of my self-absorption and self-pity? Will sharing what I'm really thinking make you see me differently, lose respect for me? Will you get bored if I share the minutia of my e-mail interactions with my doctors? There is so much to write, and yet nothing at all.

So while I contemplate what I'm doing here and what I should write about next, I'll finish with a story.

A few evenings ago, I went to the grocery store. I saw a man get out of a taxi cab with a suitcase and stagger halfway across the parking lot. He was in my way, and many others' ways, only he didn't seem to care too much. He didn't seem to know what he was doing or where he was going. He didn't seem drunk, though, just dazed - as if he himself couldn't believe he had come to be the center of this parking lot spectacle, yet resigned to the fact that he was. It was quite a sight. People drove around him with puzzled looks on their faces, ultimately deciding to pretend he wasn't there. He eventually made his way across the parking lot and sat down on the cement base around a light pole, rubbing his eyes. After a few minutes the cab that he came in left. It made me want to cry. Then again, a lot of things make me want to cry these days.

When I was a kid, probably about 10, I read a Dear Abby column that has had a lasting impact on me. Someone had written a letter complaining about the fact that the woman in front of her at the grocery store was using food stamps, but had on a diamond ring, then went and got into a fancy car. Abby's response was to try not to be angry, because we have no idea what circumstances led to this woman needing food stamps, then rattled off a couple of possibilities. I don't remember the exact details, but it was something like this: Maybe she was newly divorced and waiting for alimony. Maybe she didn't want to sell the ring because it was a family heirloom. Maybe the diamonds weren't even real. Maybe she couldn't sell the car because she owed more on it than it was worth. Maybe she borrowed the car from a friend. Maybe her husband just died, and parting with the ring would be too much. The point is there are practically endless scenarios. To this day, whenever I feel myself getting super judge-y - and trust me, it happens a lot - I think, what would Dear Abby say? and try to make up a story to justify the actions of the person I'm judging. Maybe she's having a really bad day because she just found out she has breast cancer.

I do this a lot, make up stories about other people. I'm not a naturally compassionate or empathetic person, so the stories help me. I could think up a zillion stories that might lead this poor, disoriented man to his current state, and knew I wanted to do something for him. I would have given him some money, but I didn't have much cash, and thought Hey, here's $2, go buy yourself half of a latte at Starbucks wouldn't exactly be helpful. I figured he would eventually make his way into the store, where I could offer to pay for his food for him if I had the chance, or... something. But when I came out of the store, he was still sitting in the same place, looking a number of different things, but most of all, tired. People continued walking past him as if he were not there. Are we really so desensitized to others' suffering that we don't notice? Or do we not know what to say or do, so we say and do nothing? I'm certainly guilty of the latter. It's like that teenage girl who survived the plane crash in Washington, then spent two days hiking through rugged terrain to get to the highway. Once she got to the highway, she tried to flag down cars, but no one would stop. I imagine she was quite a sight - burned, dehydrated, dirty, traumatized, hysterical. I probably wouldn't have stopped either. Only after reading about it on CNN would I have realized, Holy shit, I drove right past that girl and did nothing.

Eventually, I built up some courage and drove up next to this man and asked him if he needed help. He didn't say anything, but his eyes grew wide, as if he couldn't believe someone was talking to him. And let's be honest, what can someone like me really do to help him? We both sat there stupidly, staring at each other. I had gotten cash in the grocery store, so I asked, 'Can I give you this?' and held out a $20 bill. He gave me a huge smile, and while accepting the bill declared, 'God bless you!' I wish I could have done more, but not being trained in social work, I slunk away awkwardly while he smiled and held a thumbs up and bowed in thanks to me as I drove off.

Other than my cancer-induced, sleep-deprived super emo state, I'm not sure why I felt such a connection with this guy. I see panhandlers every day, and live in a neighborhood where homeless and other types of desperate people roam the alley and go through my trash and recycling on a daily basis. But then I read this post on one of my favorite cancer blogs, and it became clearer to me. We all suffer for various reasons, and we all deal with our suffering in different ways. For those of us who tend not to be outwardly emotional, it is hard to let people know that absence of tears does not mean absence of grief. We don't want our grieving to become invisible, yet we don't know how to share it with others, and we dare not, because we know others aren't equipped to handle it. We do not want to burden ourselves knowing that we have burdened others with something they don't know how to react to; we don't want to make those we care about feel bad that they cannot help us.

I had no idea how to help this man in the parking lot, and was scared to try, but I could not let his grief become invisible. Who knows what this man's story is? Maybe he was once a typical man with a job and a house in the suburbs and a wife and kids. Maybe he lost all of his money in a financial scandal, then drank himself into oblivion, only to wake up on the streets to find out his wife had taken the kids away and he wasn't allowed to contact them. Or maybe he lost a kid in a horrific accident and it made him crazy. Maybe someone he loved very much died a painful death from a terrible disease and he saw no reason to keep living afterward, only didn't have it within himself to end his own life. Maybe he once read the same Dear Abby column that I did when I was a kid, while he was reading the paper over his morning coffee before heading off to his job. Maybe as I trying to get away as quickly as possible after giving him money, without looking him in the eye, he was thinking to himself, Maybe that woman is feeling generous today because she, too, is grieving in her own way.