i am angry and ashamed of it
every time i see something about patrick swayze that doesn’t end with “passed away today” i am briefly filled with blinding rage. then regret. then supersadness. then more anger, because being sad doesn’t take away being mad. rinse repeat until i distract myself.
it’s not that i don’t like him. it’s not that i wish him ill, or any other person who is suffering from any kind of cancer and is fortunate enough to survive long enough to reach some level of acceptance with “life as a cancer victim/survivor.” i really don’t. i know lots of people who lived with/are living with/are survivors of all sorts of cancers and do not begrudge them anything they and their loved ones have that my father did not. i think it’s fabulous that science is catching up and so many common cancers are no longer short or long term death sentence. i’m just jealous and bitter when it comes to pancreatic cancer and unfortunately mis-focusing it on patrick swayze.
the thing that makes him different is that he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer a year ago and instead of dying like 90% of the people who don’t make it a year is so fine that he gets to go make tv shows now. every article feels like a slap in the face. “this guy lives and your dad died” they say to me. “this guy beat the insane odds and your dad didn’t.” and most importantly and tragically which makes me feel like kant, “if this guy would have died quickly and violently like your dad did, there would have been national attention and donations given to pancreatic cancer which might be saving other people’s lives right now.”
that makes me feel terrible. i’m tired of keeping it inside, though, where it festers, so i’m exploding it onto this page in the hopes that getting it “out there” will decrease a bit of the pain the reaction causes me.
[...] a few hours after I learned that Patrick Swayzee had died. How is this relevant? I’ve previously documented how Patrick Swayzee’s cancer causes violent emotional swings in me. I recognized a few months [...]