Does cancer make you special?
Jealousy and illness and the impossible answer to an impossible question
If you were wondering where I was last week… I have come to a point where my writing obligations to this newsletter, stacked on top of the job writing and other writing, has reached a boil. After a few weeks of smelling the fumes of my cancer-related creativity… I’ve decided to downshift.
Going forward, I’m going to keep Good Marrow as a bi-weekly publication. Hopefully that will allow me to approach the writing with fresher eyes. This week was inspired by a bit of writer’s block, a special kind of wall that writing in fiction usually doesn’t generate. But as always, I appreciate you reading whatever I write whenever I write it.
As I sat at my desk and thumbed through my phone, perusing the catch all Notes document for a Good Marrow idea that sparked, I couldn’t help but discard so many thoughts with “who cares…” Believe it or not, there is an editorial process to this endeavor that feels the need to save some imagined audience from pithy thoughts solely for content’s sake.
My general process has been some amalgamation of Weekly Event That Happened To Me + Cancer / Reflection = Post. It is diaristic and sometimes feels a little self-indulgent. It is not a place for news takes or pop culture discourse or music or film reviews—it is a place to talk about cancer, which can feel like kicking a dead horse.
And so as I began forcing an idea up from the mud, I also began to doubt. Is this worth it? Does it matter? Which inevitably reached a vanishing point as it related to cancer— You’re healthy now, what more is there to say?
Months after the successful recovery from my first bone marrow transplant, after I had reached remission and the hair had returned to my head as a thin mat, I began to go out into the world. And after my doctor offered a begrudging smile and permission to have an alcoholic beverage… I journeyed with a friend to a watering local hole.
Of the many people in the bar were a number that I had gone to high school with. Staccato eye contact confirmed the rumors— Elliott had had cancer. I caught glances and wide eyes, breathy “I’m so glad you’re ok’s”, and embraced the placid ripples of wading back into the world like some sort of reverse ghost sighting.
But at one point I settled into a table next to someone I had known, and after some pleasantries, when a rapport had apparently been reestablished, they looked at me and said with a scoff, “You must think you’re so special, with your cancer and everything.” A quick lesson in how people can change.
I didn’t know what to say. I felt a burst of anger, an impulse to laugh it off, a quick hit of embarrassment, as if I had done something to rub it in… It was my first encounter with a feeling that I assumed most people buried deep down inside. Because as bracing and unsympathetic as it was— I knew what he meant.
At first blush it was jealousy. A simple shifting of the spotlight, a version of classroom jealousy when people had their birthdays or anyone was singled out for some sort of superlative. Or maybe it was a season of life, no different than how I feel when someone sells a movie or a book or buys a house or some other page of life’s successes generally works out for them. I am jealous, but I smile. Good for you. No, really.
It’s the same way we turn on celebrities or athletes or figures of public interest. We all hold shifting, imaginary lines in our minds of what measure of success (and the public display of it) is and is not tolerable. We have our own barometers of likability tilting with every smile and mention, oftentimes unable to put our finger on why it slips into dislike.
But cancer is also more than an event. It is a new identity. It is a recasting of personhood. Not really a great one, but the character comes with weight and gravitas and pathos. The "strong” who suffer. From the outside, a cancer patient can say they are this new thing, which can then refract back onto others. If someone has become some new thing, and I have not— then what am I? Should I be something more? Am I lesser? Could they think that I am lesser?
In this age of outward marketing, we all need something that is succinct and pops in the little bios of our lives. Mama, runner, cat dad, writer, creative, [sport team]… And then there it is, like the heaviest gold star— cancer. Could be patient, could be survivor, either catches the eye.
The judgement happens in a millisecond. We don’t need to admit it but it probably varies wildly between curiosity (I didn’t know that…), jealousy (they think they’re so special), annoyance (why do they have to post that…), and some version of empathy (I hope/am glad they’re ok…)
There is a certain sense of martyrdom to cancer. As one of our more known boogeymen, the word is filled with enough ammunition to take imaginations through a gauntlet of suffering, both for the recipient and the observer.
The word becomes an unspoken contract, and in a game of whose life is harder, it can feel like a trump card. But the jealousy doesn’t end there. There is always a higher stakes table, and the the inter-cancer league between one patient and another (prostate vs lung!), is a circuit of its own. I am guilty to having had the blankest smile on my face when talking to someone who had a mole removed (written admission of weaponized specialness and weighted suffering).
But the cancer industrial complex can also feel like a test, pushed by narratives that someone could (impossibly) be strong enough to handle it, as if cancer has ever chosen the right person— a gross mischaracterization that assumes hundreds of thousands were simply miscast.
But the unpredictable ability to survive allows this idea to flourish, and since history is written by the victors, a certain persistence of vision can be held— Cancer survivors are special.
It is so easy to feel special when you are diagnosed with cancer. It’s not the right word, but it fits, even if there is a certain dysphoria to the word, in this case it being synonymous with “cursed”. You are terribly chosen for something universally known to be difficult. And now you get to be that terribly tested version of yourself.
I have a number of theories of why people might be jealousy of those who have cancer. It’s not that different than spinning through fantasies as you lie awake in bed— how could I be the hero in the story of my life? It’s a strange admission, but when I was younger, as our living nightmare of school shootings happened with increasing frequency, I remember sometimes staying up late and imagining what I would do if it happened to me— and most importantly, how would I save the day?
I can’t say it never happens, but I can imagine that some people only think of the hell that is cancer so they can imagine coming out the other side, and all the good it would do for them.
It persists in the stories of survivors who uproot their lives and change everything. So many people are looking for a reason to change and cancer is an easy one. It is external and it does the work for you. It allows the fantasy— if that happened to me, I would never live the same way again.
They’re not wrong. You don’t. It’s just not always in the way that one might imagine.
Personally, I regret to bring the proof to the pudding, but I’ve had cancer three times and I’ve said twice before that if I got it again I would do something dramatic. But here I am. But maybe that’s just another thing for me to get jealous about— those who do.
To this day I often debate whether or not the smug guy in the bar was right. I am special and not. We probably all are. The afflictions or hurdles that any one person has to overcome in their life probably makes us all more alike than different, it’s just that cancer lacks any such subtlety.
I can’t help but think of the similarities to all the other marginalized, the different people that at one point may have just wished they could be the same. Because there is a jealousy in the many when some lesser-other is held up, and that jealousy burns twice as bright when the reason they are being emphasized is to acknowledge how hard their lives have been.
One of the first cancer survivors to visit me in the hospital after diagnosis gave me a small speech that felt like a reading of rites; “Congratulations, you are now part of a very exclusive club that you never wanted to be a part of.” I have heard a variation of it spoken from patient to survivor to survivor to patient, myself giving my own spin on it to some newly diagnosed.
It works because it gets a lot right. You are special and cursed, in camaraderie with a thinning and growing membership, with everyone having different opinions on what they get (or don’t get) from their status. It comes with a card, that venerable sympathy machine that is supposed to get you special treatment. Use it proudly or sparingly.
Ultimately, after so many words and so much time trying to remember and make sense of it— I can’t remember what I said to that guy in the bar. I just remember a frozen smile. It’s a special one I save for special occasions.
Sensory Activation: Things I Was Into This Week
“Dr. Pepper surpasses Pepsi— is the 2nd most-popular carbonated beverage in the US”
As a long time fan and advocate of the twenty-three mysterious and delicious flavors of Dr. Pepper, it felt like a long-coming win when the masses finally got hip to this soda beverage’s superiority.
There were periods of my teenage life when I would visit the good doctor twice a day. As a health-adjacent newsletter, I have to confess to it not being a great decision health-wise, but happiness-wise… I wish I could go back.
Do yourself a favor and have one today. You deserve it. All twenty-three mysterious flavors of it. King Coca-Cola will be a tough mountain to climb, but I believe that we can do it.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed what you read, please Like, Comment, or Share— it helps boost visibility of the newsletter and is a nice acknowledgement from the void. But most of all, I would love to hear from whoever is reading.
Powerful reflection. Thank you for writing this. And I’d like to punch that person for you. 😊
Elliott - you're a good person. And fuck that person who said that to you.