The OCD Diaries

January 28, 2013

Cancer’s Silver Lining

These days it’s sobering for me to think of all the cancer patients I know personally. I’ve written about my aunt and one of my hometown friends. I’ve known others, as well. I’ve never had cancer, but it’s become a source of anxiety in my life.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:2ql32BJPN3hnyboml4JfER]

Along with knowing many who battle it, I’m at a higher risk of developing colon cancer one of these days, thanks to nearly a lifetime of Crohn’s Disease. I have to get a colonoscopy every couple of years to keep an eye on things, which gives me confidence that if it ever arrives, we’ll catch it early. But it’s given me a somewhat fatalistic outlook: I assume it’s coming eventually.

NPR recommends asking these two questions of your doctor before having your colonoscopy.

That said, I’ve seen a silver lining around this disease. Simply put, it tends to bring out the best in those who suffer from it.

I never hear the people I know with cancer grousing about it. There’s no “woe is me” going on. No bitterness. Just gratitude. They seem to appreciate what they have a lot more and spread that gratefulness around. I have no doubt they still experience plenty of anxiety and awful feelings out of public view. But that’s what makes their public face so inspiring. They can still show us how to be strong, even though they are exhausted and in a hundred kinds of pain.

I’m thinking about this because my Haverhill friend announced on Facebook that she’s decided to get hospice care. Renee Pelletier Costa often posts her messages from bed, because all the chemo and radiation saps her energy. But everything she posts is about how lucky she is and how much support and love she has.

Her battle is getting tougher, and she has decided on hospice care not because she sees the end in sight, but because the services offered will allow her to cast aside the chemo treatments and focus on healthier daily living. She wants to be able to do more for her family and get more quality from the time she spends with them, and this is how she can do that.

“I have no plans of dying anytime soon,” she wrote on Facebook. “Only God knows.”

Indeed, it’s not about dying. It’s about living. It’s more useful to focus on the latter, because when you get down to it, none of us really knows how much time we have.

Thanks for the lesson, Renee.

Livestrong Tatoo

July 18, 2012April 28, 2020

Impostor Syndrome

A friend of mine, announcing on Twitter that he had landed a new, prestigious position, noted that he was feeling a bit of “Impostor Syndrome,” the fear that someday people will discover you’re really not as smart and talented as they currently think you are. It’s a feeling I’m very familiar with.

I’ve had a lot of good luck in my career. I’ve survived the rough patches, such as when I was floundering as night editor of The Eagle-Tribune. Working nights was taking this morning person and wringing out the editing skills that once seemed easy and instinctive. I moved on to a job writing about cybersecurity and haven’t looked back. I’ve been on the board of directors for a security user group. I’ve been invited to give a lot of presentations. I’ve had a few promotions. People read my security blog and this blog and actually like what I do.

Along the way, I have moments of cold fear when I think about how far I’ve come, and I wonder when people are going to wake up and realize that I’m not even close to being as good as they say I am. True, I have my critics and they’re always happy to take me down a few pegs. I’m grateful for them, because they keep me honest. But those people who think my skills are so sharp that they invite me to speak and write and to share my work on the social networks? Surely they’ll wake up one morning to find that I’m just a fake.

That’s a thought that goes through my head every day.

It’s good, I suppose. If I believed all the good stuff people said about me, I’d become another person — the kind you don’t want to meet. Even with Impostor Syndrome, my ego sometimes gets the better of me.

But I’ve also gotten comfortable with the idea that I wouldn’t have gotten the breaks without some level of ability. I’ve seen people with sparkling resumés get hired to write and edit and arrive on a cloud of praise, only to flounder and choke within a few short weeks. When the skills aren’t really there, you get found out pretty quickly.

Surely, then, if you last a while in a position and people keep honoring you with prestigious titles, there has to be something there, right?

Whatever the case, I choose to enjoy the ride as long as people keep letting me take the wheel.

I’m sure my friend is doing the same.

July 12, 2012

A Tale of Two C-Words

I’ve always hated the C-word. I’m from Revere, Mass., and I can cuss with the best of ’em. But that word has always crossed a line for me. I don’t even like it when someone throws it out there with the “see you next Tuesday” innuendo. I also hate the other C-word: cancer. This is a post about both.

Mood music:
[spotify:track:04T3Vav6UnphVew2bBUDe5]

The latter C-word is the one everyone fears. I’ve known many cancer patients, especially those with breast cancer. I know a lot of women who beat it. I know people who are battling it right now, including a family member. And I’ve known women who put up a good fight but lost in the end.

I have a ton of respect for people who talk openly about their diseases. There’s my friend Penny Richards, who wrote a book about her experience called My Breast Cancer Sally. There’s my father-in-law’s mom, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease today but beat uterine cancer decades ago. There’s an aunt who’s going through chemo right now.

And there’s Xeni Jardin, founding partner and co-editor of the award-winning blog Boing Boing. Jardin has been chronicling her cancer fight daily on as @xeni, and I’ve come to admire her for it.

Lately, some jackasses have been calling her names on Twitter, including that other C-word. It seems they don’t want to hear about every nasty detail of her breast cancer battle. Yesterday she called a few of them out, posting this:

Jardin Tweets

I don’t know what makes people like this spout off the way they do. Maybe they’re lonely, depressed and plagued by a variety of insecurities. Everyone has a story of pain that shapes the people they become.

Some tell their story with grace, unflinchingly sharing every embarrassing detail so that a few people might be educated in case they have to go through the same thing someday. That’s what my friend Penny did, and that’s what Jardin is doing now.

My aunt uses a lot of humor to share her experience on Facebook. She’s always been tough and strong, with a biting sense of humor. That’s what’s going to get her through this. And by sharing some of it online, a few people might learn something.

There’s courage in the face of adversity, as these women demonstrate. And then there are those assclowns who stare at adversity, get scared and try to make themselves feel better by tweeting obscenities at people who don’t deserve it.

In high school, I was bullied, and in turn, to make myself feel better, I bullied kids who were weaker than me. I’m still ashamed about that and have made amends with some of them. Experiencing bullying as the victim and abuser has given me a decent ability to spot weaklings. People who use Twitter to tear into other people are pretty fucking weak. I hope these guys see the light and become better people later on.

For now, I’ll just leave them with this message from Jardin:

Jardin's answer

Stay classy, folks.