Everyone has stress and develops habits for coping when the stress gets bad. I get flack for mine and being an ass. Why? Sarcasm and dark humour. One of the first things I did was look up cancer jokes. That minimizes its power over me, also gets me called insensitive and makes others uncomfortable. But when I am with another person who gets it and can pass the jokes around it feels like this isn’t serious and I am not dying.
But I knew my mechanisms going into this and some days it doesn’t work, like chemo days when after I just want to curl up and die. There is also the anger at how unfair this is and hating all those people who don’t want to puke their guts out, even if they are my friends and are helping me through it. Thankfully my friends understand, roll their eyes, and go back to trying to help on those bad days. On the worst days yelling and bitching is how I cope and thankfully people know it and take no offense.
Back to dark humor which is much less depressing. “Can you have hamburgers?” “What’s it going to do? give me cancer?” that was part of a back and forth with a friend who gets it. Who then promised that if I die while he is in Japan to go to a Shinto shrine and pray for me knowing or else I would haunt his ass. We both study Japan and know anyone who isn’t honored in death will come back to haunt people. That felt really good joking and knowing life goes on.
Cancer is Bullshit 