Inside the Bubble
People often ask me how I am regarding the advanced prostate cancer.
It is a fair question. A kind question. But the truth is, I never quite know how to answer it.
The strange thing is, I do not really feel what people probably expect me to feel. I am not walking around in floods of emotion. I am not constantly overwhelmed by fear or sadness. I am not sitting quietly all day thinking dramatic thoughts about life and death. In fact, a lot of the time, I do not really feel much at all.
That sounds wrong, even as I say it.
There are so many genuinely sick people in the world. People in dreadful pain. People who are desperately unwell. People who look ill and feel ill every minute of every day. When I compare myself to that, I almost feel like a fraud. I know I have advanced cancer. I know it is serious. I know what it means. But inside my own head, it can all feel oddly unreal.
That is the hardest part to explain.
Once you are in this cancer bubble, life starts to feel slightly false. The people around you often seem to feel more than you do. You see it in their faces, in the softness of their voices, in the careful way they ask how you are. There is love in that, and concern, and kindness. But it can leave you feeling as though you are not reacting properly, as though you have somehow missed the right emotional cue.
I have spoken to others who feel the same, so I know it is not just me.
It is not that I do not care. It is not that I do not understand. It is not denial either. I know exactly what the diagnosis is. I know the seriousness of it. I know there are difficult roads ahead. But knowing something and feeling it every minute are not the same thing.
Most of the time life still feels stubbornly ordinary.
There are appointments, blood tests, scans, tablets, side effects and worries, of course. But there is also making tea, watching television, having a laugh, wondering what is for dinner, thinking about the next job that needs doing. The extraordinary and the ordinary sit side by side, and somehow the washing up still needs doing.
Maybe that is how the mind protects itself.
Maybe if we felt the full weight of it every waking minute, we would never get out of the chair. So instead the truth comes in flashes. A letter arrives. A pain catches you. A conversation reminds you. Then it slips back again into the background, not gone, never gone, but quieter.
So when people ask how I am, I sometimes want to say this:
I am living with it, but I am not living dramatically with it. I am carrying something serious, but I am carrying it in an ordinary sort of way. I know it matters, but I do not always feel crushed by it. Sometimes I feel more numb than upset. Sometimes I feel almost detached from it. Sometimes it feels more real to the people who love me than it does to me.
That does not mean it is not hard.
It does not mean I am not frightened sometimes.
It does not mean I have no feelings.
It just means the reality of advanced prostate cancer is stranger and quieter than most people imagine.
It is not always tears and despair.
Sometimes it is just a man sitting with a cup of tea, knowing something huge has entered his life, but not quite feeling it in the way everyone expects.
And perhaps that, in its own way, is one of the truest parts of living with it.
