Schadenfreude.

Early in the week, we had a visitor who unintentionally spun me into a very dark place. It started with my answer to a question about eating meat  - I'd said that no, I wouldn't eat mutton barbecue because I didn't eat mammal of any sort. I don't care if other people do, I just don't. He made a joking remark about how he made a practice of abusing his body through junk food and heavy drinking at every available opportunity and yet had never really been sick his whole adult life. Ha ha ha ha! I smiled politely, but I will admit - inside I seethed. I wanted to suggest that maybe it was pure dumb luck that had protected him. So far.

I think, at least on an unconscious level, people delight in the stories of someone who lived a healthy life and then was struck down by disease anyway. It fits our rough sense of justice about people who think (we believe) that they making superior decisions. It doesn't even matter if the person is just doing the best they can to take care of themselves - it still irritates people. The long distance runner who drops dead of a heart attack in his 40's, the vegan who finds they have dangerously high cholesterol, the thin person who develops Type II diabetes. See? See??? And, conversely, everyone knows the stories of the centenarian who attributed their longevity to cigarettes and whiskey. And who doesn't want to think the statistics don't really apply to themselves? But even knowing all that about how people operate, there was something about that offhand jab that rankled. Over the next day, I brooded about it.

By that night, I was unable to sleep much. And I woke up sunk in a misery I can't even quite describe. I've worked really hard to stay away from the "why me?" questions and not to indulge in self-pity over my cancer. But I started yesterday morning wondering if living an active life and eating a healthy diet are all in vain and if there was any real point in continuing to try. Any of it - diet, exercise, endocrine therapy, visits with the oncologist, follow-up tests. I spent all of that morning and most of the rest of the day lying in bed, tears flowing like a freaking water faucet had been turned on, and feeling nothing about my life except despair. Not scared, just lacking any motivation to get up and keep moving forward.

I know - it's not what you typically read here, is it? Well, I'm sorry. I'm human and I think I got kind of a raw deal. At every step of the way, since I was diagnosed, things have been worse than anticipated. From the sad-sounding young radiologist who called to say he was very sorry, they weren't expecting it but found invasive cancer, to the breast surgeon and medical oncologist who were both certain I would not need chemotherapy, to waking up from my reconstruction surgery with a foot that no longer worked, to the podiatrist who thought the damn thing welded to my tibia would instead be an easy free-floating lesion to remove. None of this leaves me particularly optimistic about what's ahead for me.

Don't get me wrong - I've spent too much time talking with people in the same boat to think I've been uniquely targeted or that other people haven't gotten an even worse deal than I have. Women who have young children at home or who wonder if chemo will destroy their chances of having children at all. People who were diagnosed with cancers that had already coursed through their bodies, setting up camp in their liver or bones. It could always be worse. I know that. But somehow, that's not where my head is right now.

If you're looking for inspiration here about the upbeat person who kept a great attitude as they beat cancer to the ground, I'm not the one to provide that. At this moment, all I know is that I have painful implants where my breasts used to be, a port that protrudes from under my collarbone and hurts when anything brushes against it, and a throbbing ankle I can't put any weight on. Last year I was active and vital and happy, and now a bald, mutilated, crippled reflection stares back at me from the mirror. I don't know how the fuck I got here. Maybe I'm not far enough out of active treatment to feel remotely healthy. Maybe, when I can walk again it will seem different. Maybe if I'm lucky enough to have a period of time without a recurrence, I might start feeling some hope. I'm working on it. But the next time someone suggests to me, even indirectly or in jest, that their own decadence protected them from cancer while I chose the fool's route, I might not be so gracious in my response.