Discomfortable Disclosure

I think I finally realized today that telling people about my cancer experience always feel bad in some way.

I thought it felt good to talk about it sometimes, to get it off my chest, to let me people know more about who I am, or whatever, but it doesn't.

I sometimes feel like I'm trying to show off

or get pity

or let them know just how tough I am

or explain a very BIG or WISE concept.

But I always feel like I've made someone else uncomfortable (or made myself uncomfortable)

or that they can't speak now because I've brought up something so huge.

Or that I'm somehow in some other zone than they are.

and if I'm talking with another survivor, I feel like we either spend the whole time trying to show or understand how our experiences were alike, or not alike.

It's as though when you go through it, no matter how many people are there to support you and love you and go through it with you, that you're still really alone in your own personal experience. No one else went through just what you did. No one else can really understand.

And if they do feel something similar, it's because they experienced it too, their own illness in their own way. And you talking about it just makes them go through it again. That's no fun either.

Will it always be this way?

So now I"m about to publish this on my blog. Am I getting too personal?

This is where I get brave and may publish it anyway, because I don't HAVE to make anyone feel uncomfortable, because they... you... don't HAVE to read it.

And I want to be able to speak.