Remember You by All the Love You Gave Me

This morning, still in bed, I got a message from a friend that GD had passed away a few days ago. No details, just a short report of what she heard from someone. What the hell does it mean that a healthy person of 45 "died suddenly"? On Monday, December 29, 2014, as I learned later. My stomach turns. Not grief, but utter disbelief grips me. But does an ex-girlfriend have a right to grieve over the loss of a man who all but cut her off and got married?

My head is clouded with all the things that I said and did which might have caused him pain and unhappiness. Oh dear, they aren't few. I wish I didn't remember some things at all.

I disappointed him once, and nine years later I failed him again--or we failed each other. The first breakup was mostly due to the circumstances: I had to leave, and as we could not manage over the overwhelming physical distance between us for many reasons, I gradually gave up. The second time around, I was the one who wanted to revisit that margin of possibility left unexplored between us. The first breakup hadn't soured our mutual fondness and we were still good friends who knew each other intimately. Turning 40 and getting nowhere near happy with any man, I longed for some comfort, fun, and familiarity. I knew he still had a soft spot in his heart for me. Settled in more comfortable places in our lives, we gave it another shot. For over a year, I really did what I could, traveling the distance twice, talking to him on the phone almost every day, trying to sound out all the potentials of that relationship. However, whereas a long-distance relationship with extended periodic separations perfectly suited me, he dreaded its attendant dangers. Though he enjoyed having our lives reconnected so closely, he was wary of investing fully into that reconnection. I was willing to divide my life, but to my frustration he refused to budge from his own comfort zone. Aware of his painful recovery from alcoholism that followed the disintegration of our first relationship, I couldn't blame him. My long-distance scheme was proving unfeasible to him, and his wish for me to discard my own life and move in with him was just as impossible. In a strangely passive aggressive stance motivated by his distrust of my feelings, he was refusing to revise his set pattern of life for me, while waiting for me to give in entirely to his own terms. But that uncertainty and reluctance of his wearied and disenchanted me in the space of a year, and my growing disenchantment ironically justified him in his doubt of me. Disillusionment and fatigue made me see in him things that I did not want to see, and drew out my own foibles. It was a strange breakup, for I am not sure I was the responsible one. I broke it off but I felt rejected, for it was actually he that would neither have me as I was nor bring himself to the halfway point between us. But he resented it bitterly. He became touchy and defensive even with Kim, who initially had introduced us. As his resentment and anger got compounded toward both me and Kim, he dropped his friendship with Kim, too. But I don't regret having tried the second time, because I really did do my best, which frankly I didn't the first time. On his part, though, I could see why he was so angry. Perhaps he felt that I reopened the scar that took time to heal, only to leave him wounded again. 

He didn't defriend me but I knew he left me barely hanging at the tail of his "folks who are practically dead to me" list. I never told him but the second breakup was a bitter one to me as well, for I was sorely disappointed at the failure of what then appeared my last resort. Even now I would not be too surprised if it should prove to have been my last chance at a tolerably 'normal' relationship. If I could not form a committed long-term relationship with a good man who loved me, if my best shot wasn't good enough for him, doesn't it mean I'm hopeless? It was not a pleasant notion and, tough as it was, I had to come to terms with it. 

Over a year later, while in chemotherapy, I got back in touch with him. I knew that he had just gotten into a new relationship and that I had forfeited his friendship, but I wanted to tell him myself, because he was still someone who mattered to me, who I wanted to spare the awkward unease of hearing secondhand of my illness. Maybe a strange thing to do, but an uncertain prognosis made me imagine the worst. It wasn't to everyone that I wanted to spread the cheerless news of my breast cancer and its dark implications. Little had I expected such a cold shoulder from him, though. He bluntly expressed his regret. A non sequitur update about a friend filled the rest of his terse reply, in which he mocked this friend who he knew to be my special favorite. The anger was naked in this email, and it was upsetting that even a critical illness could elicit from him no other emotion than anger for me now. I wasn't exactly expecting him to fly over to my side in tears. But a stranger would have expressed warmer sentiments than his. He had reasons to be angry and I probably shouldn't have written him at all, cancer or no cancer. On the other hand, I felt all right about letting him know. He had dodged a bullet there. Since he ended up evading the shitty lot of dealing with a cancer-ridden girlfriend, wasn't it all for the best? I wouldn't have minded if he had secretly gloated over his narrow escape, not that he was the type who would. Although using my cancer to wriggle my way back on his good side wasn't my intention, his coldness was hurtful. A lasting friendship with a man whom I broke up with twice was a selfish fantasy, and that was where our communication ended. That was December 2011. The following summer, I saw the photos of him in Jeju Island. He married that new girlfriend the next spring. I remember seeing those photos on Facebook in silent wonder: how was it possible for him to go so fast and far with this woman, when he wouldn't travel anywhere for me? The answer was obvious. She wasn't me and she must have loved him in a way that made him go far and wide. And he must have loved her in that way too, whereas his love for me was mostly a source of anxiety. It wasn't jealousy that I felt. I was a little chagrined, but his new-found love and subsequent marriage gave me a sense of relief, too. If things turned out nicely despite the damages I might have done him, then surely I no longer had to feel too bad about having been the bad guy in our history?

The sense of guilt cannot be dispelled though, even when I know that I, we, did what we felt compelled to, true to our needs and desires. People love, hurt, and break up all the time, and as Kim says, it's a normal emotional passage between real people. It would be a terrible presumption to think that I was some sort of femme fatale or even a semi-trauma in his life, after all. But we all know of our secret emotional bookkeeping: sometimes you give more than you get, and other times you get more than you give. This bookkeeping, albeit nonsensical, at times issues mandates that are hard to ignore, and I cannot shake off this feeling of owing something to him that I can never repay. It is too bad that I did not try to reconcile with him. But it was clear that he had no intention to do so. Whatever sense of guilt and regret I have would have quietly dissipated in time, had he lived long and prospered. In the end, it all boils down to my own difficulty in accepting a good person's tragic premature death. Mortality is painful, because there is nothing anyone can do about it and there is no getting used to it; no possible way to stomach this helplessness calmly, and no right way to react to it. In a sense, guilt may be a living person's way of translating this unbearable, inexplicable pain into something more manageable. 

Life is absurd. My breast cancer is absurd, but GD's death is even more so. I thought by now I've gotten familiar with my vulnerability to the random violence of life and death. When I am busy hardening myself against the weight of my own vulnerability, the mortality of someone else, someone who was once very close to me, hits me in an unguarded spot. It is selfish to be bitching about my own living aches when GD is dead and gone, but it does hurt. Perhaps that is why the living get to hog the attention when death descends upon us. Friends send me separate messages of sympathy and consolation. I deeply appreciate their concern and am encouraged that I am not alone in this muddle. But I remain unsure if an ex-girlfriend has a claim to their condolences, especially the one who bred considerable pain, anxiety, doubt, frustration, and anger in the heart of the deceased. Maybe they offer their sympathy because they know the guilt of a bad ex. 

I am not the bereaved one. There is the wife, the poor woman whose heart must be rending at this incredible death of a loving husband. Weird as it sounds, I'm glad he had a wife who will grieve for him. I wonder if it is horrid of me that I do not feel entitled and would rather not grieve. I would like to find consolation in that GD was finally happy, at least happier than I was, in the past two or three years. He must have been happy with her--I want to believe, for his sake and also for my sake.

GD would often surprise me with his recollections of minute details from our earlier days together. If not as many, my memories are also plenty. I remember how shy he was the first time he took me out, I remember that house-brewed beer in that restaurant. I remember all the places we went together. I remember how worked up he would get about the upcoming departure every time I had to leave, how attentive and protective he was whenever I was upset. He loved my cooking, and I enjoyed messing with his scarcely-touched, top-quality kitchenware. I would make fun of his food-greed, but in fact his bad eating habit worried me. I remember the tiny red birthmark on his wrist and the childhood story he told me about it. I remember him trying to feel my heart beat for no apparent reason. Some of my eccentricities annoyed him to no end, while some of his drove me crazy. But no one was as openly affectionate in his everyday dealings with me as he was. No one I dated made me feel as pretty as he did. I know he loved me dearly, and I was ever so thankful for his tenderness and good heart. I really hope he left this world with only kind memories in his heart and sweet images in his eyes.

G, I thought I was likely to die before my friends. You upstaged me there, honey, and what a sad surprise it is. My heart grows heavy when I imagine how unfathomably lonely you must have been at that absolute final moment. Death must be lonely, for you go alone. I hope you're in your happy place now. I miss the time we spent together in that firehouse loft of yours. We had fun there, didn't we? I am sorry I couldn't give you all of my heart then, but I am happy to have been responsible at least for a small portion of your happiness. Do you know that I left a few bobby pins in the guest room bedside table drawer in your house near the park? I left them there, knowing that I'd come back the next summer. I forgot to take them out the next time, though. I think unconsciously I wanted to leave a little trace of me there with you, wanting not to disappear from your life altogether. I never wanted to stop being your friend. I am happy to have been your first real love, and I am sorry to have been such a pain to you. I am sorry I teased you so much, but I never meant to hurt you. I was frank with you, and I'm glad you told me you knew it. We know things about each other that no one else does, and that intimacy means a lot to me. I know you always had your own aches and darknesses that you found hard to bear. May your soul rest in peace now. Though I can't have been that important to you in the end, please forget all the hurts I gave you, and remember the good times we had together. I know you were generous and patient with me for a long time. Thank you so much for all the love. I'll remember you by the love you gave me. But dear, why did you have to go in such a hurry? I would rather have you hate me and stay angry at me alive than remember me fondly in death. I still have that little spider man that I forgot to bring you last time. What am I going to do with it now?

Woman in the Next Bed

I hear that a friend of Kim’s was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.  My heart sinks at the news, even though I don’t know who she is. I’m sure she already has her own network of friendly support and commiseration. Nonetheless, I offer to do whatever I can for her—exchange emails if she wants, for instance—just in case. Instant solidarity based on shared affliction may sound like a cliche, but you realize that it’s become a cliche because the ages-old truth in it has been worked to no end.

 

Knowing your disease is important.  But it's not just a matter of knowledge.  Breast cancer is such a public disease that googling alone will provide you with an overwhelming amount of information.  I devoured whatever I could get my hands on in the first few weeks after my diagnosis. But only a very limited amount of medical discourse and statistical data helps you cope with the catastrophe that has become your everyday life. Statistics is especially tricky. You’d like to learn the 5-year survival rate, 10-year survival rate of your particular subtype of cancer. Inevitably, however, in the process you also get to learn the recurrence rate, the mortality rate of your particular age or ethnicity group. Your refusal to be reduced to a piece of data won’t effectively prevent your wondering where in that pie chart or graph or table you’d fit eventually. This can undo you at a stroke, because, being that one woman out of eight, deep down you think the odds are already against you. Especially if you’re that one woman with the triple negative breast cancer unlike the other nine women with other, less difficult subtypes of breast cancer, wouldn’t you think the odds are really against you? It’s hard to say what particular good it did me to learn about the TNBC’s higher recurrence rate in the 3rd to 5th year period.

 

What did me good, on the other hand, was the things I learned from other women with cancer. During my first chemo infusion, the woman in the next bed, who looked about my age, almost determined the ways in which I took my own chemotherapy. Seeing that I was as tightly wound as possible, she asked me whether it was my first. She was having her fifth. Only two years older than me, she had colon cancer. Not exactly the most inviting personality in general, I was in no mood for conversation.  But she kept talking. I never could understand why some sick people just assumed that other sick people would openly discuss their sickness with anyone. My slow, inexpressive responses didn’t deter her, however.  When the nurse from the oncology department left me with the booklet about the side effects, diet, exercise and so on, the woman in the next bed again turned to me.  “You won’t throw up. You’ll lose appetite, but with antemetics these days you don’t throw up.” I still didn’t feel like talking but I could gladly do without one of the most upsetting images about chemotherapy. “Eat whatever you want and keep your strength up. It’s a cycle of good days and bad days. You’ll be fine on good days, fine enough to go out with friends and stuff.” She was actually answering some of the questions I had asked the nurse. The nurse gave me a lot of helpful general information, but this co-patient’s first-hand report was in fact much better than the nurse’s noncommittal “every patient can react differently” spiel. And she told me many things besides, including what she liked to eat, how she was dealing with particular symptoms, etc. She wasn’t invading my privacy. She was instead forgoing her privacy to help me with what I was in for. In the end, she told me that it wasn’t easy but “bearable” (her exact word) and showed me that it was possible to carry on with life, with the chemo as part of it. And she wasn’t being a hero or a cheerleader, either. That was good to know, truly. If someone who was going through nine infusions could say that it was bearable and make it believable, it meant that I’d be OK with my six infusions. Weeks and months into the chemo, I realized that there were many things that professional medical discourse didn’t, couldn’t, prepare me for. But I often thought of this co-patient’s reassuring word and demeanor. Symptoms and side effects came and went, and I believed that all those things were bearable—and they were.

 

Three weeks after my last infusion, I was sitting in front of the Breast Cancer Center at the KUMC (Korea University Medical Center) for the ultrasound and a CT scan. I noticed the woman next to me burning a hole in my face with her stare. By that time I was too used to my own sickly face to be very self-conscious, but her stare reminded me that I indeed looked awful. I was annoyed and turned around with a terrible, accusing look. When our eyes met, she said: “The eyebrows go, too? No one told me about the eyebrows.”  With such absent-minded despondence in her face. She had had her first infusion only a few days before. Memories of my first day were still fresh. I said that no one had told me about the eyebrows and eyelashes either, and that I hadn’t even realized that they were gone until there were only four or five strands left. I found myself saying things to her. “Losing hair is nothing to worry about. I feel better than I look.” Without meaning to, I suddenly turned into that woman in the next bed from a year before, and was basically telling her that it was going to be “bearable.”

 

I had another friend who helped me with the details of her experience from five years ago too. Since hers was the TNBC like mine, her successful cope record is particularly meaningful to me. Though she was temporarily living in Brazil until a few months ago, she was another woman in the next bed to me with her long-distance support. For another friend—this is an old friend’s wife—I’ve been the woman in the next bed most willingly since her diagnosis last June. Everybody knows at least one person who has or had breast cancer and it’s one of the first things they would tell you. Most of the times such remarks don’t amount to much, but connecting with that person might actually help. I guess that’s why there are support groups on and off line everywhere. My own personal chain of “women in the next bed” attaches me to these co-patients.  All the more so, as I never forget that still early in our occurrence history we’re copers rather than survivors just yet. I hope Kim’s friend is coping well. I hope my friend’s wife will sail through her last infusion in two weeks.  Every time I think of them I root for them and root for myself.  In commiseration I root for all the copers and all the women in the next bed.

What if

Yesterday I went to see Dr. Lee at the National Cancer Center.  She is the surgeon who operated on me on February 28, 2012.  I saw her only two months ago for the first followup meeting since my surgery, and everything was fine then.  About 2 weeks ago, however, I found two new lumps right next to the surgery scar.  This is the last thing you want, especially if you recently came out of the long hard process of getting rid your body of cancer.  Seriously. The first thing I did was call the NCC to make an appointment, but the earliest I could get was November 5, which meant thirteen days of suspense--thirteen long days that I would spend in the circular torture of uncertainty, fear, hope, and despair.  I had had a few scares about other symptoms since the end of the radiation treatment, which sort of familiarized me with the routine of this torturous waiting.  All those scares ended up being nothing serious.  Yet this was different, surely--two hard round lumps were found again in the remaining breast where malignant tumors had been removed.  Imagine what I could not but imagine.  I saw Dr. Lee the next day at the NCC breast cancer awareness event, and when I told her about the newly found masses, she felt them over the shirt and said that they were probably fat tissues hardening near the surgical scar.  But she still wanted to look at them closely to be safe.  The chance of recurrence at this point was low, but she also said that there were "quite a few exceptions," which was why she didn't want to brush them away.  She told me to come see her on November 5.  She could put me in an earlier spot that day, but could not get me anything before that date.  A few reassuring words from her were better than nothing, but she still wanted an ultrasound and possibly a biopsy as well.  A biopsy again?  From that day my sleep was disrupted: I woke up at all hours and kept having...not exactly horrifying nightmares but ambiguous dreams that left unpleasant aftertaste.

One of the worst parts of having cancer is this fear of recurrence and metastatsis.  The mere idea of going through another round of chemotherapy sickens you, not to mention the overwhelming reality of mortality closing in on you.  You literally startle with every pain, every new symptom and every unfamiliar feeling in the body.  And no one will tell you that you're just being neurotic.  Instead, doctors will say that you can never be too vigilant about anything unusual now and, if anything, they will want to have a closer look.  I sincerely miss the days when I was just another crazy hypochondriac.  The physical comings and goings that these appointments and tests entail are the least difficult part.  Even a regularly scheduled followup test seems like an exceedingly tough hurdle.  You feel small as you realize that you've become ridiculously dependent on the semantics of doctors' facial expressions, tonal changes, and gestures.  Then, whenever you're about to do something, the inevitable question arises: "What if I did this and then got the bad news?"  This question is a definite party-pooper, for nothing much retains its initial significance when measured against it.  It can and will stop you from doing whatever you were going to do.  You find yourself putting everything on hold, suddenly abject in front of the frosty reality of all-encompassing meaninglessness.  Thus your life grinds to a halt, until the results put you in the clear for now.  Even then it feels more like a reprieve than anything else.  So easy to just let yourself go in the way of fear and negativity.

The first few days after discovering the new lumps were slow and difficult.  Just like the days before I learned the result of my first breast biopsy.  I could not think of other things, and I kept feeling those lumps as if to make sure they were still there, just like I did last fall.  But every time I put my fingers there, I also hoped to find them miraculously gone, just like I did last fall.  As stupid and desperate that hope was, the disappointment and despair were fresh each time I learned that they were still there.  Pressed too much and too often, the lumpy area began to hurt and consequently the entire breast and arm ached, as if the mind-blowing agony wasn't enough already.  By this time I forgot how glad I was that she had left my breast almost intact and unscarred.  Why did Dr. Lee not remove the entire breast?  I was tired from all this fear and pain and did not feel like doing anything.  What was the use, when I didn't even know how long I'd live?  Inaction seemed the only logical choice.  Yet I couldn't just sit around fueling dark thoughts.  It wasn't easy to peel myself off the bed in the morning to go swimming, walking, grocery shopping, and so on, but I did.  I went out to talk about their theses with my graduate students, and I went out to dinner with friends.  All these things that I did, however, kept reminding me that I was living in this body which was mortal, already damaged, possibly beyond repair, and definitely beyond my control.  After a few days, though, I stopped fingering the lumps.  Numerous times I had ascertained that they were there, and there was nothing to be done about them until I saw Dr. Lee.  As the days of uncertainty were prolonged, resignation took over, and I thought about the lumps a little less.  Perhaps my mind needed to restore quietude or something similar in some way.  It wasn't optimism.  It was as if my mind was trying to dissociate itself from fear by remembering that fear too was useless after all.  The resilience of human mind probably enables us to cope with the worst in this way.  I couldn't altogether stop asking myself "what if I did this and then got the bad news?" but I didn't let it stop me from doing things.  I even started this blog as if to defy that question.  So, the second week in waiting crawled by and I went to see Dr. Lee yesterday.

After the ultrasound Dr. Lee gave me the same explanation she had already given to me at the NCC event.  She did order a biopsy and arranged it so that I didn't have to make another appointment for it.  Although I had to wait three hours in the hospital because she squeezed me into that day's packed biopsy schedule, I was glad to have it done before the day was over.  The young radiologist who did the ultrasound and took the tissues was matter-of-fact about the frequent hardening of fat tissues adjacent to the surgical scar.  All things considered, it is likely that that's what the new lumps are.  She didn't even seem to think that a biopsy was absolutely necessary.  That's not a bad sign.  Now I wait another few days before Dr. Lee calls me about the biopsy result.  I am not as worried as two weeks ago, but my sleep is still disrupted.  I don't like the fact that the fear of recurrence has this negative effect on my store of joie-de-vivre, which wasn't overbrimming in the first place.  I can no more pretend that it isn't true than I like it, though.  Maybe we in middle age should all be content with semi-joie whenever possible, as Kim says.  Still I don't understand those people who persist with perennial optimism under similar circumstances.  Are they stronger than me?  Is it sheer will, or is it self-deception?  The insidious question "what if" always hovers over my head.  What if, indeed?  I don't know that one could live as if that question didn't matter, or that one should.  On good days I forget to remember it.  Usually it takes an awful lot to plug on, countering that question with "even so!"  Yet I am told to maintain a positive outlook on life, for it helps reduce the chances of recurrence.  I can only smile at the lethal irony. 

New

The purpose or direction of this blog I cannot say.  I guess it's like any other blog.  Since late last year writing became even more important than it used to be.  I communicated with close friends and other people in writing in the long months of my treatment.  Volumes of letters came and went, mostly emails but sometimes letters and cards in the post as well.  It helped me objectify and nurse my fears, and get on with the reality.  My kind friends' letters and emails gave me the love and support that I never knew I needed so much.  
















It was always private, though: my body, writing, my friends, everything.  While I was in the thick of it, I couldn't even imagine writing about it so openly.  That I've been playing with the idea of blogging for a while now probably means that things got a little better, or at least a little different.  But that doesn't mean I am not hesitant.  My experience of the past year is not exactly a pleasant business, and I don't always feel like dwelling upon it or talking about it--any part of it.  Not many people enjoy watching a documentary about diseases and other forms of suffering, and neither do I.  Part of me desperately desires to move on, leaving it all in the past.  Yet it is impossible to do so, obviously.  Then why a public display of personal exerience and feelings, when I much prefer bottling things up usually?  I still hesitate.  I do and do not want this.  But I could see why Dr. Susan Gubar wanted to write a book about her ovarian cancer, when I read that article about her in The Chronicle (http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/131611/).  

So here I am, thanks to friends who did encourage me to write (many thanks to Sheri, Kim and Anne!).  I don't pretend to a blueprint or a grand agenda here, though, much less any authorial stature or ambition.  And I unabashedly and desperately hope this isn't going to be my closing chapters like hers.  This certainly is neither to inspire nor edify, neither myself nor anyone else.  This won't be only about my breast cancer.  I still don't think that what I write would be worth anyone's while to read.  Maybe no one else will read this, and that would be perfectly fine too.  Call it therapeutic scribbling. Yet, it is also true that I am not writing this only for myself, although I can't quite say who or what I am doing this for.  Maybe I want to rechercher my own termps perdu in my own rambles.  Is there ever a reason.  Not having to justify anything is sometimes all the reason one needs.