Most people who know me don’t really know me. They know a public façade. It is not my intent to deceive by presenting a façade. In fact, I do not even realize that’s what I’m doing until I relax back into who I think I am at my core. The façade, I suppose, is a protective mask that appears almost automatically when I am in the presence of people who I do not know well. And I suspect those people are wearing masks, as well; until they feel safe and comfortable in the presence of people they do not know well. I think façades are natural for introverts. Sometimes, though, an introvert can get so good at presenting a façade that he can be mistaken for an extrovert. But when his attempts at disguise fall short, he is looked at with skepticism; others do not know what to make of his botched extroversion.
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Silence is the absence of sound. Darkness is the absence of light. Death is the discontinuation of life…not simply its absence. But silence and darkness could be present in death…yet how can that be, inasmuch as both are progeny of absences? Is it possible to have vision without eyes to see or hear sounds without ears to listen? Is life possible without its foil, death? What state of being precedes life and what follows death? Are they one and the same? If ignorance is the absence of knowledge, what is stupidity? Is stupidity a coupling of ignorance with the willing refusal to learn? The answers are obvious, yet inaccessibly complex and impossible to understand. That is true of almost everything. People have a cursory understanding of the universe of which they are an infinitesimally small component. But that superficial awareness is enough to get us through—it must be, for that’s all we have. Consider, though, how much more we might accomplish if we worked, both individually and collectively, to vastly increase our knowledge and understanding. We cannot even conceive of that imaginary future, though, because of the limitations we allow to be imposed on ourselves.
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Another almost-day-long chemotherapy session today, with a return tomorrow for the routine day-later injection. I cannot remember exactly how “normal” feels. To remain alert and fully awake for a full day at a time…to be blissfully unaware of the physical presence of my torso and its contents…to breathe without the constant reminder of phlegm in my airways…to have enough energy to walk for a few blocks without losing all my energy and most of my breath. Those aspects of “normal,” all together, sometimes seem impossibilities. I wonder whether those daydreams will come true. It depends, to a great degree, on the success of these interminable treatments. Today will be chemo session number 16. I finished radiation treatments (there were 25 of them) about two weeks ago. Sometime, I hope soon, at PET scan will reveal the results of the last several treatments (of both kinds, in tandem). And I’ll go from there. The possibility that the results might not be good often interferes with my daydreams. I can be sailing along with positive, hopeful visions of the future, but then suddenly I hit an iceberg and find myself thrashing about in icy water. That’s when long periods of dreamless sleep are so inviting. I do not recall any of my sleeping dreams involving my cancer or its treatment; I consider that a positive thing.
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I woke this morning to another wave of nausea. Not nearly as aggressive and unpleasant as the one a day or so ago, but disagreeable enough for me to find it offensive. All’s well now, though. I suppose the nausea is an artifact of having had so many chemo treatments. I wonder whether my hair will ever grow back to some semblance of the way it was before I lost it all to chemo drugs. It’s quite sparse now, each strand is extremely thin and soft, and almost entirely white, with some grey thrown in. My “salt & sand” hair color is long gone and the circumference of each strand of hair is a fraction of it pre-treatment size. I’m getting used to it, but I do not like it.
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Out of curiosity, I looked back at the second blog I created years ago to see what I might have posted on this date back then. Here’s what I posted on January 27, 2011, fourteen years ago, under the title “Safe Places:”
There are places where one can be alone with one’s thoughts…places where it is safe to question beliefs, ideas, and conventional wisdom. It’s safe there even to question one’s own motives. The key is finding those safe places. We all have them, though they may be hidden deeply within the crevasses of our minds, hidden beneath all the detritus left from the surging flood of socialization.
