What is your “why me” story? Which moment in your life did
you find yourself seriously questioning the reality of your most recent unwanted
“calendar appointment”? What had you digging through the recesses of your mind
wondering what in the world you did to anger the “upper management” so much so
that they sent you “reprimand”? It’s so easy, even to point of being comfortable, to
go through life looking for the cause in such great minutia that if not found
in rapid pace, the event is almost missed altogether due to our compulsion and
addiction of finding blame. We've become a human race obsessed with knowing why.
We feel self-entitled as an outright constitutional right to know the “why” so
that we can, with great detail and self-righteous commitment, offer justification
or blame.
I remember several such moments in my life where this saga
of “why” came to my forefront. One was a particular breakup of my youth. I remember
very specific and incessant thoughts of needing to know why I wasn't chosen
over the other. I couldn't accept the outcome of rejection until I had analyzed
the path into unrecognizable shreds of pitiful becoming self-absorbed, bitter,
and paranoid of being “less”. It consumed me. In hindsight I can now see that not
knowing “why” was almost more harmful to me that the reality of breakup. (I now
know why and find myself so grateful God leaves some prayers answered in
opposition to my own will.)
A second event carries a bit more weight. The room was very
dim, I’m assuming out of necessity, but it cast an eeriness over the moment. I
can still see what little light there was reflecting from the steel (?) arm, supposedly
carrying the cure, craning above me in a parallel to where I lay. I lay below
it naked on a rotating table of steel and discomfort shamelessly padded with
bed sheets as a miserable excuse for padding. The light was cast in the room
from the right side, steadily growing dimmer as it cascaded to my left. Linoleum
tile created the floor below, and mirrored above the steel arm hang a checker
board arrangement of 20x20 ceiling panels. The room lacked color. It was a blah
collection of steel and beige scattered with a smattering of sterile this and
that. A few steps away, behind a lead lined wall containing single square
window was the technician, whom had just gotten me settled onto the mobile
table. He evidently controlled the cure. Yes, a he (some days a different she),
and yes me, naked on a table. A quick click of a remote control had him sending
me and the table into parallels and latitudes. Over-estimating sent me right
back into the direction I had come to a lesser latitude. Again, again, there. And
then similar traversing with the steel arm above only this time there were red laser
pinpoint beams shooting down from the steel arm. The beams were navigated this
way and that to line up with tattoo dots on my chest, abdomen, under arms,
chin. Then silence as the arm and my table end their romantic swaying dance. Over
the speaker: “Ok, Sally, hold still, we are ready to go” followed by 8-10
seconds of this rhythmic clicking sound. I can’t believe I have forgotten the
time count. Was it 8 seconds, 12? 15? And after you counted in your head the
beats of the seconds you finally hit the moment when there was no sound at all.
We were done, until tomorrow, when we would do it all over again in the exact
same order as my mother sat out in the waiting room listening to horrific music
(which she adored) and putting together jigsaw puzzles while she nervously waited
my return.
Nothing about the moment was normal. Everyone else I knew of
any merit in my current world was sitting in English class, and then algebra,
and then French. No steel arm, no padded table, certainly no nakedness, and I’m
absolutely sure cliffs notes on Keats
or Thoreau, instead of invisible doses of radiation, were their cure. There was
no sadness in that moment for me (that came earlier). There were no frustrations
(that too came earlier). A previously abnormal moment, after 30+ days of such,
was now a very normal moment for me, and even that was abnormal. But, on one
specific day as I sat counting the clicks that the machine regurgitated into
the stillness of the room, I recall for the first times in the past 2 months the
word forming on my lips… “why?”. Why was I the one on the table? Why was I
stripped down to nothingness lying on a table when I could be commiserating “if
x = 1, then y = 3” with the rest of the sophomore class. There were plenty of “mean
girls” that could easily take my place, right? There surely could be a better
substitute for me. That was the mind of an immature 16 year old processing the
events of the moment. I may have uttered the word “why” before that very moment,
but I don’t recall it. I am also sure my parents had uttered the word “why” on
some occasion of this trauma, though I wasn't privy to it. But now, for whatever
reason, as I lay shivering on a padded mobile table while counting clicks, the
word “why” became my here and now.
There sat a grapefruit-sized tumor in the center of my
chest, to the right of my heart, several inches down in depth from the surface,
nestled on my lungs like a nest holding its prized egg. I don’t know how long it
had inhabited its space, but its picturesque likeness on the grayed-out screen
left no denying its existence. I carried a scar of tumor biopsy at the base of
my throat and a jagged seam reflecting spleen removal at my abdominal center
line. These signs were there pointing me to the reality of the situation, but I
could find no tangible merit or guarantee of the “why”. And there the “not knowing why” sat…with me…in
the darkened room…on a frigid steel table…under the talkative steel arm
carrying my cure. And it sat. And it sat. Fully exposed just as I was in the center
of the beige cube.
It’s as if we can question something out of existence. If we
can discover and then in turn discredit the reason, then immediately, in
response, the disastrous earth-tilting event no longer exists. It will dissolve
itself into nothingness the moment the “why” is deemed faulty. If I could prove
I was indeed not worthy of a lymphoma diagnosis, then at that very moment the
tumor would recognize its mistake, fill
out forms of relocation, and make its way down interstate 40 towing all of its
blood vessels and ick in tow. If I could prove I was on my way to model appearance,
he would stick it out. If I could show, I was without fault, I would still have
that employment. No tainted words, no broken friendship. Knowing the “why”
would propel me into perfection. But nowhere on that CT scan of my chest was
anything that remotely resembled “why”. And no amount of pondering, digging, begging
could produce it. How can I blame someone if I didn't know the “who” behind the
“why”????? ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH! And this consumed me for several weeks, each day
as I climbed back up onto the table and under the steel arm.
I’m learning in my adult years that there can be great fault
with this incessant discovery of “why”. The prodding and poking for the purpose
of discovery, and in turn blame, carries little more than profound long-living
bitterness. “Why” for the sake of blame, while it carries some relief initially,
as time goes on, it equates each moment in life as a negative effect of cause.
I admit there are moments when finding the “why” brings great revelation and
truth, but in the case of blame it becomes a burden of worry and strife while
we continue to obsessively plow our way to its discovery. I don’t want to
discredit the value of knowing “why” when there truly is a fault of your own because
you then have the opportunity to do self-growth in correcting possible a flawed
behavior. I've had moments of that where I would have been much better off not
uttering the harmful words to a friend. Recognize, growth, think with a heart
of love before you speak. But in most moments of true calamity, I am finding
the incessant and belligerent searching for “why” only duct tapes myself in
paralyses in the moment, preventing me from embracing and overcoming better on the
other side.
I was 16 and likely failed miserably at any form of triumph on
this area. I fumbled the ball with each passing day becoming self-absorbed in
the teenage years. But over time I did go on to accept and embrace having had a
cancer diagnosis. It can bring about miraculous things if we let it. And even
in death, it can bring about miraculous things for those around us, if they let
it. That’s choosing the outcome instead of floundering in the “why”. It’s choosing
joy over bitterness and blame. It’s encompassing light despite circumstance and
despite the possible bitterness of “why”. I’m working to flip this switch in my
thinking with greater frequency and success.
So I ask myself again. What is my “why me” story? Which moment
in my life did I find myself seriously questioning the reality of my most
recent unwanted “calendar appointment”? What had me digging through the
recesses of my mind wondering what in the world I did to anger the “upper
management” so much so that they sent me “reprimand”? And I hope that as the
years have gone by that I can identify less and less stories where the why even
mattered at all. Instead of focusing on the forefront of my story of cause, I
can instead relay in much greater detail the saga of joyful outcome.
Therefore
I ask you, surgery #6, what joy do you bring me next?
I ask you, surgery #6, what joy do you bring me next?
