The Survivor Closet

I've finally started "coming out." For me that can mean telling people either about being Jewish, being a writer, or about being a cancer survivor. In this case, I mean the latter in every way. And I'm doing it in almost every venue available to me.

As I wrote in Discomfortable Disclosure (scroll down on this link) and in so many other places, it's really hard for me to figure out how to tell this part of myself, and yet it's really important. Well, now I've eluded to one person at the shul by directing her to my blog for a different entry, and more directly told someone else by sending my link to Now She Could Fill My Heart since it related to a conversation about teshuvah (repentance) and Rosh Hashanah. This person then introduced me to someone else who is 10 years out from a similar but far worse diagnosis.

Then today I told someone from school. It felt weird but appropriate for the conversation we were having as she gave me a drive home, and in fact she pulled over so we could finish the conversation rather than rushing me on. I appreciated that. It really felt good to suddenly be heard so clearly.

I've also told the woman who runs the gym I go to. She was talking about Team In Training which a few colleague friends ran for me in the Seattle Marathon of 2003.

Why I am doing all this now? It was inevitable eventually. I've known that for a long long time. And it also connects to my being back at work full-time for the first time since my diagnosis 2 1/2 years ago.

But I think this is also about the month of Elul and the chagim (holidays) within it. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are all about life and death to me. More than any other holiday they remind me that everything we have is temporary and that every day counts. You've heard these thoughts a million times, and hearing them from me won't necessarily help you through your day, but there are some mornings when I wake up and just really really get it. Those are hard days, terrifying days. But what I love about the high chagim is that by the time I'm all done with all those hours in shul, I really do work myself into a place of completely surrendering my fate to G-d, whatever that might mean. How long can it last? My ego comes back within hours or even minutes of Neilah (the final service of Yom Kippur). but the taste of it does stay available for the rest of the year if I can call on it.

My entries are getting pretty serious lately. I feel conflicted about that. But already it's so hard to show the intense and serious me to new friends here, I feel safer doing it here to old friends and even strangers. I want to be honest about what I think and feel. (And I AM editing out plenty.) So there it is. Gentle feedback is welcome.