Cancer Survival: We Are More Than Bodies

I thought my experience was rare.

My parents banishing emotion. Expecting their kids to achieve, obey, and accept without a tear, a shout, or a complaint.

Before I got cancer, I found an outlet in theater and dance. The quality of my performance didn’t matter; what mattered was my finding an outlet, a way to express myself.

In the rehearsal studio, on stage, I was disciplined, but I was free. While my parents could have punished or forbid me from studying and performing art, they did not. At least my emotions no longer terrorized them in their home. 

Other people attended my shows. Other people applauded me.  

Now, after I have mostly recovered my best self from the damage my parents inflicted on me, I confront a world where repression to the point of cruelty is common.

I see the way younger people treat elderly relatives. Driving them to appointments, bullying them to take their pills, controlling what they eat and drink, monitoring their vital signs via apps.

During my first cancer, my parents also ensured I received the medical care, the pills, and the nutrition I needed to stay alive.

Physical, but not emotional, survival. My fears, my joys, my struggles were my own to manage. Even as a teenager likely to die before the age of 20.

During my second cancer, I watch as healthcare providers act like decapitated beings, robots with salaries who still eat and drink. 

Whatever shortcuts or abuses make their days easier, they are willing to execute. Their humanity was lost so long ago, they deny and rob the humanity of others.

Cancer survival. I am neither meat nor machine. 

If I am especially skilled in emotion and its expression, how will I use my skills in a world rapidly draining of human feeling? Of the messy and miraculous ways of being that transcend the physical? The hungers, the needs, the desires.

Yes, we need bodies, but we are more than bodies. Deprived of empathy, I am a river of empathy for others. I can be with people and meet them where they are. I can match their depth of feeling.

One small stream in a world of rock.

One small stream in a world of rock