#Sibling angst a potent and deadly poison

[quotidianish]

When I think about hailstorm and winter I explode a million times actually. They’re brothers fated to tear eachother apart by the will of hierarchy. They love eachother in a loveless place. They wish it didn’t have to be like this. Hey. Hey what if I DIED

[meadowhilley]

it’s back

Today, my friends, is World Cancer Day. How exactly does one celebrate such an occasion, you wonder? That’s actually what I’m writing to find out. For starters it seems like a fitting moment to break my nearly year-long silence and tell you It’s back.

Not the cancer—I’m still “free,” as far as anyone can tell. No, what’s back with a vengeance is the sensation of living with an ugly and insidious thing growing inside me. The Get-It-The-Fuck-Out-Of-Me urgency that two and a half years ago made me drop everything, fall into a blue vinyl chair, and start blogging straight through my chemo infusions.

I still can’t explain by what internal mechanism this revelation about my compromised physical state triggered a visceral awareness that I’d been living with a different sort of malignancy for decades—a tangled knot of repressed emotion growing more potent and far-reaching as I happily went about the manic business of being a working mom. Or how I understood that my ability to heal bodily was predicated on my willingness to undergo a mental purge. Or how I knew with absolute certainty what I needed to do, even in those foggy predawn moments before the diagnosis had fully resolved into a clear picture of what awaited me in the days and months ahead.

Whether it was some atavistic survival instinct that kicked in or what they (dismissively) chalk up to “women’s intuition,” whether it was divine inspiration or something closer to unhinged delusion, at the very moment I received The Bad News I found myself in A State of Grace, like in a primal garden scintillating with dew where knowledge hangs low on the branch, hungry for the right mouth.

Glutton that I am, I bit. And instantly I came to understand that my body was a book I’d been writing for years without ever stopping to read it. At the center of my story was this malignant enigma, a living organism pregnant with meaning whose tendrils reached greedily through the space-time of my inner landscape, looking to occupy all my vital sites.

Stopping its spread and reversing the cancer’s insidious creep was the obvious goal of our immediate coordinated response. But as my three doctors each took up their weapons—poison, blade, and fire—I lay low like a meadow-turned-battlefield, bracing myself for the onslaught and devising an alternate plan, knowing that the only way to truly best this beastly part of me that fed on darkness was to draw it out, into the light.

So I painted my face. Obviously. Spent a week wearing only dresses. Naturally. Loitered seductively at the mouth of what I guessed might be my deepest emotional cavern. Patiently. Until one day, in the small round mirror of my compact case, I glimpsed a dark shade emerging against a background of shadow. Taking a sultry step forward in my red two-inch heels, I watched discretely as it advanced with predatory appetite, hypnotized by the allure of an easy meal. And at the very moment it crouched to pounce, I turned to face my Beast-Me.

Go ahead, I told my cancerous self, feeling beautiful for once and more powerful than ever. Show me how ugly I am inside. You will not be the first.

My plan wasn’t particularly well-formed. I was totally winging it, to be honest. With hindsight though it’s possible to list the major steps of my cancer-fighting campaign as:

1. Perform strength to psych myself up for the encounter.

2. Position myself as bait.

3. Coax the unknown threat out of hiding.

4. Subject it to intense examination.

5. Force it to reveal its origins.

6. Love the thing to death.

All on my terms, in a place where I felt safe and strong and well supported.

In other words, I would write the cancer out of me.

Out, like, in the open. Words confided to a private journal were not going cut it. An invasive species so entrenched would have to be pulled up by the roots into the glaring light of day and subjected to full exposure. This pathogen and its attending pathos should be left to shrivel and wilt under public scrutiny, I understood, until having lost all potency conferred by me, their host, they would reveal their true, pathetic nature and leave me whole.

If you’re not an exhibitionist by nature, writing publicly about your intimate past and present is highly ill-advised. Maybe you’re someone who cares about what people think of you. Or maybe you have a family to protect, a job you’d like to keep, or competing interests and hobbies. In my case, all of these inhibiting factors were compounded by the muzzling effect of four hundred years of injustice perpetrated by the West, which we have systematically justified by painting the Other as radically different—a threat to be mastered, a contagion to be contained.

How could I possibly talk about my challenging 13-year relationship with my African ex-husband, who was also a Muslim, without perpetuating these longstanding stereotypes and adding fuel to the fire? How could I tell my story without doing more harm than good? Fully aware of the risk that my experience would be generalized and my words misinterpreted, I felt compelled to write all the same. Common sense and fear, I came to feel, were my greatest enemies. To build a bridge, you’ve got to reach dangerously across the gaping abyss.

All this to say that hitting “Post” was never a mindless gesture for me. It required a force of will that ran counter to reason, and caution, and instinct.

Announcing that I had cancer in a Facebook status update was admittedly a shameless bid for your attention, like dancing carelessly on a mountain ledge. But I wouldn’t have sought your attention if I didn’t think it was absolutely vital to my healing. You, dear friends, were the gentle sunlight that scorched my disease better than a daily dose of photon rays at +$3,000 a pop x 25 sizzling pops. It was because you agreed to bear witness to my self-designed form of treatment by reading me as I attempted to decipher the book of my body that I got better. You did that. Each one of you made a difference. And it didn’t cost us anything but time.

So now it’s back. That oh-shit-here-we-go-again feeling, like there’s some creature dragging its claws through my gut from the inside. Only this time I’m even more reluctant to write publicly. For one, I’ve been writing privately, trying to build a bigger bridge, in silence, and that jealous pursuit demands all the attention I can afford to give it.

But, UGH. The world changed two weeks ago just as it did two years back with the diagnosis, and ten years before that when my first marriage ended: abruptly, dramatically, alarmingly. A rug has just been pulled out from under our feet, and with my introvert laid out in utter shock, my extrovert showed up, a rival sibling looking to compete for the same scant resources of time and attention, demanding I Do Something Now.

Don’t! shouted my introvert, albeit weakly from the floor. Keep to yourself, it pleaded. Focus your angst inward. Don’t be so arrogant as to think you have something of value to say in the here and now. Lay low. Leave this one to the activists and experts.

Reasonable arguments, all. But here’s the thing: on the subject of hostile takeovers, I am something of an expert. I devoted my doctoral dissertation to groups who used writing as a means of liberating themselves from their longtime oppressors. I lived for six years in a country that had only achieved its independence a generation earlier. Even more instructive, I personally survived the experience of being colonized twice: first mentally, by my domineering ex, then physically, by the cancer, whose insidious advance reminded me so much of the guy’s subtle way of methodically getting me to give up my freedoms, one by one, until it seemed I had nothing left. Claiming that others would be better suited to speaking out against the authoritarian power grab by the big bully now occupying the White House, that someone else would do a better job describing the risks his tyrannical methods pose to our liberty and national character, it’s all just bullshit, a way of shirking my responsibility.

So it’s with a certain authority that I can assure you: the cancer plaguing us today may wear a name other than ER/PR HER2-Positive Invasive Ductile Carcinoma, but it is just as deadly. It’s not only an oppressive ex haunting my own little psyche, but our current President doing a serious number on our collective consciousness. This shit’s not just in me this time, but it’s in you, too. And it’s going to poison the world over if we don’t all stand up to stop it now.

One of my first thoughts on getting the diagnosis was, Did I bring this on myself? My ongoing attempt to answer that question without wallowing in self-loathing has brought me on the greatest journey of my life, towards healing. The same can be true for us as a country.

Yes, we brought this on ourselves. But we also have the means to fix it. We are all cause and cure both. Niit niit mooy garabam, the Wolof proverb goes. Other people are our own best medicine. We need to turn and face this ugliness together, give ourselves permission to speak out, and shout a resounding Fuck No as one. The disease may have found its way into US, but in no way is it a definitive reflection of who we are. Not if we refuse to play host to its toxic presence.

So how should we celebrate World Cancer Day? I’ve come up with a couple suggestions, based on personal experience:

1. Start by making yourself feel good and beautiful and strong.

2. Don’t be afraid to draw fire. Welcome discomfort. Actively displace yourself.

3. Coax this shared malignancy out into the open.

4. Take a good, hard look at it, understanding that it offers us the blessed gift of insight.

5. Figure out where it comes from, and how it managed to take root within us.

6. Spread beauty and love in abundance.

Writing was the tool that best fit my own hand, but everyone has a custom-made means of expression, an instrument perfectly suited to doing the patient work of parsing out what’s healthy in us from what is corrosive. My girls got a great kick out of the Turnip sign that recently sprang up just feet away from the spot on Main Street where an enormous Trump sign has for months been planted like a foreign flag, causing Brewster residents to wonder who we are as a community.

Me, I can’t wait to see what you all come up with.