I decided to repost this old piece after reading Katie Rosman’s Wall Street Journal piece “Read It and Weep, Crybaby”
September 3, 2009
It’s 11:30 in the morning and I’ve already done it once today. Cried. Not sobs. But a quiet, empathetic cry. Large tears welling.
It happens less than it used to. I have gotten better at managing it. I can now get to the point where I well up, but the tears don’t actually spill out and run down my cheeks.
It’s progress.
That difference seems to make people less uncomfortable. My doctors are used to it; they know I well up. I figure if you’re dealing with cancer patients you are used to seeing lots of crying– you must have a coping mechanism. Maybe it doesn’t even register anymore. Maybe they are immune to it. I see tissue boxes in all of their offices so it’s likely a common occurrence.
There are certain subjects guaranteed to make me cry.
Tops on the list?
My parents; my mother in particular. Raise the subject of anything happening to my mother— any illness, any harm, most especially her death– these words if spoken aloud instantly make me cry.
My mother is, to me, a prized possession, a beloved security blanket that must remain complete and undamaged.
Other topics do it too.
Today the trigger was talking about a specific day I was bald in front of my plastic surgeon. I remember the way I felt stripped of every ounce of dignity in a way that being naked, topless, breastless countless times in his presence had never made me feel. Obviously I can still connect to that emotion.
I still remember that feeling of being naked. Not clothes-less, but dignity-less, bare of everything that held me together as me. Sitting in a coffeeshop with music playing and the sun shining and my friend sitting with me, I could still feel that feeling two years later.
I could still feel it. And I cried.
I cried for the friend I was with, herself recently diagnosed with breast cancer.
I cried because I didn’t want her to have to feel it too.
I cry for her sometimes. I cry because I want to protect her. I want to be the pit bull. I want to stand guard at her driveway, at her mailbox.
“NO!” I want to yell.
“You cannot have her,” I want to say to the intruder.
To cancer.
To all of the things she might have ahead of her that will cause her pain.
Silly, perhaps.
Childish, perhaps.
But that’s how I feel.
I bet that’s how she feels.
I know that’s how I felt.
As a person with cancer you wake up and think,
You know what?
I don’t want to have cancer today.
I want to take a day off.
I don’t want to go to any doctors.
I don’t want to make appointments.
I don’t want to talk about cancer.
And even though I can’t seem to talk about anything else,
I don’t want to talk about it.
I just want to stay in my pajamas all day
and eat peanut butter from the jar with a spoon
and have the world go on without me
because I don’t want to participate today.
I just want a “sit it out today” note from my mom
so I can just take a break today…
and maybe tomorrow too…
I want to protect my friend.
We moms are good at that.
My daughter started middle school. On the second day she came home and started in on her math homework. Within minutes she was in tears. She got frustrated and started crying. The teacher had given them a very hard sheet of problems and told them to see what they could do. Some of them were complex probability and statistics questions. She brought them to me and was frustrated. I didn’t laugh at her. Or even criticize her for over-reacting. I knew what she was feeling. I knew it was the “everyone else knows what they are doing and I’m the only one who doesn’t” syndrome. I knew that, like me, when frustration takes hold, our kind doesn’t get angry, we get emotional.
It’s not a great trait; it is especially hard for men to deal with. For husbands. For fathers.
My father used to go crazy when I started crying. It was just an irrational, irrelevant act he had to deal with. A distraction.
I know if my husband had been there he would have told our daughter to stop crying. I know the tendency won’t serve her well.
I always think of Tom Hanks’s character Jimmy Dugan in A League of Their Own when he yells “There’s no crying in baseball!”
It’s a good thing there wasn’t a sign on my oncologist’s door that said “There’s no crying in cancer.” Some days I think it’s a necessary part. I think it’s healthy. For me anyway.
I’ve cried on Saturdays.
On my birthday.
I’ve had breakdowns stringing Christmas lights on the trees in my yard when I just couldn’t get it right.
I’ve kicked the tires of my car.
I’ve slammed doors.
I’ve screamed to the sky.
I’ve sworn a blue streak.
I’ve cried so hard my stomach turned inside out and I’ve retched and collapsed because I just couldn’t hold myself up anymore.
I’ve dreaded the night-time because I knew I would be scared and my dreams would frighten me.
I’ve taken medications to muffle the anxiety of the chemo treatments I knew were about to come.
I’ve been terrified and wondered how I was going to get through it.
I’ve faked it and smiled and been the portrait of strength and composure while ready to crap in my pants because I was so scared inside.
I’ve felt the chemo needle go in my arm bringing the drugs in, felt the cold liquid hit my blood and wanted to scream “Wait! I’ve changed my mind! I think it was a mistake! I think it wasn’t me! I think you got it wrong!”
I felt the pre-medication go through me, hit my brain, cross the blood-brain barrier and fog me up.
Pausing, knowing it’s in me.
Thinking
Please.
Please.
Do your work.
Save me.
Drugs, do your work and save me.
How will I know if they did? I won’t.
I don’t say I’m cancer-free. I have no idea if I am.
I will hopefully die of something else and I will have my come-uppance. I will give cancer The Finger.
I will have it say on my tombstone:
Hey, Cancer: I laughed last. I died of something else.
So, call me a crybaby.
I prefer to say I experience the world richly.
Either way, I make no apologies for my tears.
That’s the kind of girl I am.
Link to Twitter
Speechless. Just … bravo. I cry every day, so I’m happy to stand next to you as that kind of girl. xox
i. LOVE. your posts . thank you for sharing and be so real and honest. i read and nod and cry, and walk away like i had a cup of coffee with a friend and feel better for it, and better able to help myself and others with cancer cuz i understand myself a bit better.
it’s like somehow naming the monsters in the closet makes them smaller….putting words to feelings that have been swirling around and remained unidentifiable, is sometimes hard to face, but each time we do, we are being a survivor and working it out….and rising above.
i think you are equipping women to be braver, stronger, real and better able to face and deal with, and overcome.
hugs
I LOVE this post and love you for being a “crybaby” because I am one too and always have been.
As usual, your post was incredible.
My Mum was a nurse. She had been for years so I looked to her wealth of experience. I couldn’t feel every death, every illness or it would kill me as a nurse. I would burn out, she told me.
I graduated and had a patient, who I had been with through his bladder removal, his urostomy surgery, his chemo and now his death. As he lay dying in his bed, I remarked on he and his wife snuggling in bed. I said they looked so cosy and was invited to join them, which I of course did. I was close to them and they felt like they could have been my parents.
He died shortly after and I remember crying like a baby. His wife consoled me. She and I cried together. One of my coworkers remarked that I had been unprofessional and told me that I couldn’t do that for every patient who died. I looked back at Harold and his wife, and told her “The minute I don’t cry when I feel it inside, is the minute I leave this profession. If I lack the ability to feel, then I can’t be a nurse anymore.”
Humans are the only mammals who shed tears, and that is what makes us human.
To cry is to show your humanity.
Thank you for sharing your humanity, and your humility.
I’m glad you are “that kind of a girl”. I’m also glad you wrote this. I remember, back in the beginning of my cancer journey, I couldn’t stop crying and I reached out to you on Twitter. My tears were uncontrollable and I was confused, as they seemed to come out of nowhere. You took time, your precious time and reached back to me. We private messaged, and you reassured me that I was normal. That the crying was normal. You were responsible to helping me make it through that event. I thought I was losing my mind.
I would like to copy this post and have my oncology staff read it. I was very weepy on some of my appointments. They would have none of it. They became exasperated with me. Again, I was confused. I thought, if I could cry somewhere, it would be at my doctor’s office. I cried when they told me my port had failed. I was exasperated. I cried thinking about the nurse having to find a vein. I cried thinking I would have to go home that day without a treatment. Tears everywhere and they ran. Maybe they are too immune. Maybe I’m too emotional for them to handle. Your post, now, reassured me again that I AM ok. That IT IS ok to cry. All kinds of tears. Thank you for that. Thank you again for writing words about having cancer that I can relate to. That make me feel better. My wish for you, is that by making me feel better, that you feel better. You fought the war, you share your combat stories with us. Forever grateful for that. xo
Enjoyed this post probably because I’m a crier too! At least compared to the rest of my famiy.
How is anyone supposed to get through life without crying?
I cry about all sorts of things. I think the only crying response I would change (if I could) is crying when I’m angry. Not exactly a powerful-person mien. It always makes me feel like Mary Tyler Moore, saying “Oh, Mr. Grant!” in frustration. *Sigh*
Cancer diagnosis & treatment made me cry more than anything in my life aside from my dad’s final month of life. That is saying quite a bit. No one in my life liked to see me cry, but no one told me to stop. I’m grateful for that.
[…] Lisa Bonchek Adams reposts her essay, “CryBaby,” over at her blog. I don’t care who you are, I don’t what your ailment — everyone must read this. There IS crying in cancer and it’s about the most natural thing possible. […]
This was exactly what I needed to hear today after having lost my mom last April to brain cancer. I cry everyday sometimes all day. She was not only my mother but my best friend. Everyone tells me I have to move on and get my life back. She gave me life and was my life.
Thank you for your post.
I remember finding your blog when I first started my own in 2009. I remember the beauty of it but there was a piece of me that didn’t want to read about all the pain and loss. Then my own world shifted on its axis with the stillbirth of my son and I too, began to write about grief and healing. So today I return, thanks to Lindsey, and I find a place that feels comfortable, validating, even though our journeys and losses are different. I have always cried at everything – sadness, anger, joy, frustration. The last year has brought more tears than I thought possible. And just this week I’ve said goodbye to my oldest friend – one of 25 years – because when her pregnancy brought more tears, she couldn’t understand or accept it.
So lovely to be here again. Thank you for sharing your life.