Indifference or Selfish ?

I keep mulling over one of Mare’s recent post.

Generally speaking, people don’t want to know about your problems. Or rather, they don’t really care about it. At all. Their world revolves around themselves and their “stuff”, not “your stuff”. No matter how painful it is to you, to them, it’s yours and yours alone. Not theirs. It’s a sad truth that everyone has experienced at least once, let it be relationship problems, familial issues, or health / medical complications. The listener’s eyes just sort of glazes over, looking past your shoulder and wondering when you will stop torturing them so that they can go back to their own problems. And if you insist on involving them in your issues, they soon learn ways to avoid you, perhaps even cutting you off completely from their life. Why should they waste their precious time and energy to give it a second thought. After all, it’s YOUR problem.

Well damn it, because we’re suppose to be friends and you should care about the plights your friends are encountering. What’s more, you should be there for them, to lend an ear, a shoulder, or just to hold their hands through it. Even if you cannot begin to comprehend the complexities of the situation and really don’t want to know all the gory details. Even if you think it’s a non-issue to you. It is obviously an issue to your friend if it upsets him/her so much that they feel the need to unload and share with you. That’s what friends do. They are there for each other through good times and bad times.

I have had some very personal experiences with this and am still struggling to come to peace with my own feelings.

After being diagnosed with lymphoma when I just turned a tender 24, I (we) were devastated. I cannot describe the despair, pain, loneliness, and a whole range of other emotions in words. I was literally in pieces, to be mended only by time and love.

I withdrew from everyone for about a month after diagnose. I couldn’t bare to tell the story over and over; I did not have enough tears for that. But after that initial withdrawal, I reached out for the help and support that I needed so much. I also composed a bunch of email addresses that I would use to send out bimonthly updates, as my chemotherapy was every 2 weeks. I wanted everyone to know the latest happenings and this was easiest to do (perhaps I should have started blogging then?)

In the entire 10 months of treatment, I received a couple of care-packages, less than a dozen phone calls, a total of two visits — by two different people, and about two dozen or so total email replies to my bimonthly updates. Yea. I have a lot of friends (sarcasm).

One of the two visits still taunt (haunt?) me to this day. We were sitting in the livingroom chatting about stuff - not cancer related. I then asked something that had been bugging me for a while. Why I never receive an email reply to my monthly updates from him? Did I get the email address wrong or what? The gist of his reply: “Your descriptions are too detailed and sometimes they make me sick. I cannot even read your emails, let alone reply them.”

That’s right. My emails made him sick. My medical terms were too much for him. My nausea and bedriddenness were unspeakably yucky to him and he couldn’t bare spending a few minutes of his time trying to understand all that I had to endure. Has he tried to imagine how it all makes ME feel? Hey after all, I’m going through it. You’re just reading it.

And it also prevented him from sending me any emails / making any phone calls or contacts, as if I would plague him with the cancer itself if he were to make any contacts.

But hey, at least he came to visit me. Toward the end of my radiation treatment. That has to count as something, right? Sigh.

We never talked about cancer stuff after that. Until his father was diagnosed with cancer.

Another friend… when I finally heard from him months after I reached remission, I asked why I haven’t heard from him before now. I don’t even know how to categorize his response. Our conversation was something like this:

Him: “No one in my family has ever had cancer (well, neither have mine!) and the only ones I know that had cancer died (gee thanks). I didn’t know what to say/do for you, so I didn’t say/do anything.”

Me, enraged: “What if I really did end up dying? Wouldn’t you regret for the rest of your life that you were never there for me in my darkest moments?!”

Him: “I guess so. I didn’t think about that.”

———————-

So what was my point in writing all this cancer stuff? I don’t remember, because I have chemo brain. Oh yea, people suck. They don’t care. They don’t want to know. It’s YOUR problem. Period.