The Dirty "C" Word...

"Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can help you to feel good about yourself and those you share them with"

Yes...I wish I could use words to make myself feel better but as I sit more than 8000 miles away from my father...as he moves from treatment to treatment...the latest one being a blood transfusion due to incredibly low platelet count...all I feel is a sense of helplessness and anger. Helplessness because I am here and he is there and there is not much I can do from here...anger because I don't understand why he can't be that minority that miraculously gets better...why not him? Every treatment brings with it a new surge of hope...a hope that what is broken will be fixed yet the reality is that with every surge there is a following ebb and it is that  ebb that is intolerable...I go through my day almost like a robot...emotions, feelings...even sensations wrung out ( I realized at 3 PM that I hadn't eaten in 12 hours and I wasn't even hungry!)...Cancer is a four lettered word in my dictionary - A hardened inflexible nemesis which has found one of my two Achilles points...how is one to stay positive. If I feel so lost 8000 miles away, I shudder to think of what my parents go through day in day out...fighting, hoping, fighting some more and trying to stay positive? Yes in my life Cancer is a dirty word...it has made me in a not-so-positive way :

1.  rethink my priorities
2. taken me into the deep abyss of depression...and I am mostly an optimistic sort of a person
3.  question the purpose of life ( we die anyway...so why is living so important)
4. makes me irrationally over-correct 

And honestly, the hype about people who become strong in the face of adversity is passe...I am one of those people who crumbles under extreme pressure (and the reality is those moments of extreme pressure have been few and far between)...however these days  I feel like I am hitting that break point quite often (giving myself countless pep talks...I believe the support system needs to be internal)...I pull myself from the brink...go on with some semblance of  normalcy...but what exactly is "normal" in such circumstances???

I listen to Mariah Carey's "Hero Within"  again and again and in some ways it is my coping mechanism for today and for now I will take what I can get -

"There's a hero
If you look inside your heart
You don't have to be afraid
Of what you are
There's an answer
If you reach into your soul
And the sorrow that you know
Will melt away

And then a hero comes along
With the strength to carry on
And you cast your fears aside
And you know you can survive
So when you feel like hope is gone
Look inside you and be strong
And you'll finally see the truth-
That a hero lies in you"

Watch it here -



And I hope it helps you someday,as it helped me today...