I drew this cartoon in the thick of my treatment on a particularly rough day. As I recall, I got a flat tire on the way home from radiation, my daughter was being a total pain in the neck, and the cat had vomited all over the rug when I finally made it back to the house. I remember thinking, incredulously, “Wait a minute… Other bad stuff can’t happen right now; I have cancer!” Turns out, it can–and does–happen.
Par example, last week I had planned a family beach trip to, in the words of my surgeon, “relax and enjoy the summer.” But the day before we were scheduled to leave, my husband stepped in a yellow jacket nest while doing yard-work and went into anaphylactic shock. He was rushed to the emergency room in an ambulance and spent the night in the hospital under close observation. It was awful. And, yet again, I was incredulous. Really, universe?!? Does our family not deserve some small reprieve after the world’s shittiest spring? But, as I should well know by now, it’s not really a question of “deserving.” These things are a matter of chance (hence the term, “misfortune”); as far as I can tell, human suffering is meted out unevenly and at random. And there are many people for whom it is much greater, or more dire. My husband is alright, we eventually made it to the beach, and some version of relaxation and enjoyment was had. It was not what I’d envisioned, initially, but we made do.
Sometimes, I taunt myself with the idea of someone out there in the world whose life is one of utter ease, without pain, conflict, illness, or injury, who just hums along without encountering unexpected obstacles, like a train on a greased track. I don’t actually know this person, most likely because she doesn’t exist. We also have a tendency to conceal our individual struggles, perhaps out of a sense of shame, which further promulgates that fantasy–the uninterrupted life of utter ease (or, if it’s more your thing, astounding productivity). Either way, I thought I’d share our recent mishap here to counteract that narrative–to remind myself that, even if it’s slow and squeaky, the train has not derailed. We keep chugging along, and I’m grateful for it .
Well, then 