The Blanket

Another day – another child taken from his family by cancer – and I just sit and await the discovery that I am once again wearing the invisible, lead-weighted blanket of depression.

It sits there neatly folded in a corner of my mind – full of ill intent – waiting to envelop me when things go wrong in this awful community of childhood cancer that I call my home.

For far too many years, it was my constant companion.

It was very rarely folded and put away, as the deluge of bad news was without end. In wearing it so frequently, I did become somewhat familiar with it – how it worked against me – and how it impacted my relationships with myself and with the world. Life could be the same while wearing it, but it was just so much more work than it needed to be – much like just about everything else in the world of childhood cancer.

Eventually, I was fortunate to discover that there were simply certain things in my life I needed to stop doing – things I thought were ‘helping,’ but in reality, were only serving to make my life harder than it needed to be. I could not continue to place myself in front of the fire hose of grief and expect any relief.

By freeing myself from these choices – these behaviors – I was able to free myself from some of the soul-crushing reality that is childhood cancer. I could not continue to spread myself quite so thin.

When the blanket descends over me, it works as a barrier to my senses, so that all good things in this world are muffled as they pass through. Joy, happiness, and love are diluted before they have a chance to reach me – to boost my spirits – and this makes the ‘lows’ longer and deeper than they need to be.

Even worse is that in addition to muffling all that is good from reaching you, the blanket also works to insulate all of the thoughts and feelings that brought it out to begin with. And since this blanket only descends upon you after troubling, heartbreaking, or devastating news, the thoughts and feelings it works to keep close are the very things you so desperately need to rid yourself of.

Meanwhile? Life goes on.

Jobs must be attended to, children cared for, fundraisers planned, wakes and funerals attended, and more money raised with the hope of saving some of these kids.

After countless years of this, I am now at least aware of the blanket – I cannot deny its existence.

I can also now tell when it is most likely going to envelop me, and if I can’t prevent it from coming, I can at least prepare for its arrival. In so doing, I can do my best to try and get out from under it as quickly as possible.

I do not want to waste hours, days, and weeks wrestling with myself over the right to be happy – to experience joy. It is all mine to experience, as long as I continue to give myself the permission to do so. Bad things happen in this world all the time – terrible things happen to people you care about – and it is normal to have such intense feelings. However, placing myself in a position to avoid experiencing ‘unnecessary grief’ and coming to understand my reaction to it has given me the freedom to, thankfully, live my life – most days – without having to expend so much energy just to get through each one.