back in blog

Well, it’s been well over a year since I’ve posted anything. There were a lot of reasons why I stopped writing, but after more than a year and a half as a full-time cancer patient, mostly I just needed a vacation. I didn’t want to be ‘that guy’ anymore. I didn’t want people constantly asking me about my health, treating me differently or even deferently. Pity and praise, thoughts and prayers prefaced pleasantries and broke the ice, but not for me, not after a year and a half of it.

Cancer was a total mindfuck. I’d spent too long with too little choice over what I wanted, despite everyone doing what I wanted, which can actually be worse. So I declared myself cured (which I actually wasn’t – not completely like now), purposely burned the rest of my cancer cards and began to do what I wanted to do (which can also actually be worse).

I also felt that this blog had deteriorated into a bit of a travelogue, with little substance in terms of cancer advice and was hoping to correct that, but didn’t believe that I had the appropriate detachment, objectivity or even proof of my own cure to preach to others about a condition that I just happen to know a lot about from terrifying, first-hand experience. 

But I think I have that detachment now (or at least as much as I ever will) and survival guilt has seriously begun to ruin my party. People are dying while I rationalize and make excuses, and although I can’t possibly understand what each goes through in their own private hell, I do understand better than most and I think I can help. So instead of rambling on about my wacky misadventures, I feel I owe something to the memory of those that have died and to those just beginning the horrible waking nightmare that is cancer.

That said, I’ll write whatever I feel like, and if wacky misadventures can somehow inspire those who think that their life is over after being told that their life is over, then I’ve done some good - because it’s only just beginning.