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I'm still having a tough time coming to terms with Edith's suicide. The hardest thing for me, I think, is feeling like I failed as a friend. That I should have done more, somehow. I realize, intellectually, that there really wasn't anything that I could do to "save" her, but it's still so hard to shake that feeling. I think it's gonna be a long time before I stop waking up at night to find myself analyzing and picking apart our last conversation like a haunted detective, compulsively searching for that one tiny missed clue that will make it all make sense.
The outpouring of support I've received from both friends and strangers has really been amazing and I wanted to share the following email sent to me by a reader who had some really ballsy, insightful and powerful shit to say about surviving breast cancer. I can't say reading it made everything all better, but it did help me to understand some of what Edith might have been going through. I'm reprinting it here with the author's permission in the hope that it may give similar insight to anyone else out there who's still struggling.
Christa,
For the first time in a long while I was reading your livejournal,
and I came
upon your post about your friend Edith Speed. I was going to write
you
a quick response but it kept growing, and finally I just said fuck
it and
decided to mail it to you. I hope it gives you a little comfort.
If not,
I apologize. I don't mean to meddle, but when I saw what you typed
about wondering if you could have done anything different,
everything
in me wanted to scream through the computer, "No, no, NO sweetie,
it's so much more awful than anyone lets on, this whole cancer
shit!!!"
Anyway. Here's what I wrote:
Two random events today:
--I was standing at my sink, struggling, wondering what the
statistics are of how many of us breast cancer survivors commit
suicide. Because lady, it fucks you up. You're never the same.
Chemo separated me from my Self in a way few people would wish to
survive. It is a strange, awful wondrous thing to be a survivor,
and every day the war between the horror and the wonder rages. I
think there's a lot of us out here in the world who die and the
"cause of death" column reads "suicide" but what it really needs to
say is, "breast cancer treatment".
--Tonight, on a lark of following links I come to this post.
Please let go of any blame on yourself you may be holding. The
landscape after breast cancer is bleak and comfortless and lonely
no matter what fucking happy faces we put on for everyone else. As
much as you are suffering such great loss and questioning yourself,
please factor in the mountains she had to move every day and the
great weariness of soul that comes from moving those goddam endless
Sisyphus stones. It is living hell. No one else can do it for us.
No one else can be there with us in that dark place where our
butchered spirits meet the unknown at 3am. Worse, we're not
supposed to talk about it. Cause we're supposed to be happy and
pink and cheery. Come on lady, look at Lance Armstrong! So much
of breast cancer treatment and aftercare is a monstrosity of
"positivity or else". We are basically told that if we don't think
positive we'll die. But no one talks about the horrors that follow
us back out of chemo. That take up residence in our minds and
don't leave. That haunt us and choke us and bleed us all day long.
The neuropathy. The constant pains. The swelling, the tiredness,
the devastating sense that we went into surgery ourselves and came
out Frankenstein's abandoned creations; alone in the world and
enraged. Only happy breast cancer survivors need apply to society,
so we say all the right things about living in the moment and
loving our lives while we lay awake at night insane and plow
through our days crazed with DRIVE over the STRESS of a MOMENT IN
TIME. Those of us who stumble out of treatment broken, reanimated
and spiritually razed find little to no comfort in all the things
we ever knew before. Not even in you, our dearest loving friends.
Because WE are not the same. I wonder how many of us are out in
the world just floating, wandering dazed; our collective Dr.
Frankensteins living happily their heroic cancer doctor lives, and
we left observing the happy villagers through their windows, trying
to learn the language and mimic the motions of human life. Trying
to learn how to fit in but knowing there is no place for us because
in truth, there is something in that goddam chemo that kills the
part of us that could know what "I" ever meant. It's a bitch,
sister. A real bloody bitch. I don't care if they paint the whole
damn world pink, some of us just come out of that shit ravaged
beyond what we could ever speak to the people who love us. They
throw anti-depressants at us and send us to support groups and look
at us like we're ungrateful because we dare question the wisdom of
the barbarity. Save my life at all costs, isn't that it? Even if
the body and the mind I'm left with afterward are so unfamiliar I
feel like a ghost haunting a life that used to be mine?
Even now, I fight the urge to type, "BUT HEY, IT'S GREAT. I'M
GLAD TO BE ALIVE. IT'S GREAT. EVERYTHING'S GREAT."
It feels like my societal duty to say so. I feel like a cad, saying
anything different. But I have whispered with a few
other brave women, that we do not all get the Cheryl Crow
Melissa Etheridge E-ticket Experience and Matching Gift Bag.
Who knows, they could be lying too. For the rest of us, it's a
hell of
a lot more like MK Ultra meets Mr. Toad's Wild Ride meets the
Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
My heart goes out to you. It wasn't your fault, and it wasn't
because you didn't call enough or tell her you loved her enough.
If I may be so rudely bold (as I clearly already am,) I would say
it was because she just could not live without her SELF any more,
and/or that the fallout from treatment in all its varying forms,
was just too much. Just too damned much.
Edith Speed, rest.
Lastly, if it pleases you to do so, support these brave women
who take on the breast cancer industry AND refuse to take
money from the drug companies. The fact they exist
gives me hope that yes, some people DO know the hell of
chemo/aftercare for breast cancer, and are fighting hard
to find a PREVENTION as well as a cure.
www.bcaction.org
Take good care Christa. I know it hurts so much.
Warmest regards,
EKW
The outpouring of support I've received from both friends and strangers has really been amazing and I wanted to share the following email sent to me by a reader who had some really ballsy, insightful and powerful shit to say about surviving breast cancer. I can't say reading it made everything all better, but it did help me to understand some of what Edith might have been going through. I'm reprinting it here with the author's permission in the hope that it may give similar insight to anyone else out there who's still struggling.
Christa,
For the first time in a long while I was reading your livejournal,
and I came
upon your post about your friend Edith Speed. I was going to write
you
a quick response but it kept growing, and finally I just said fuck
it and
decided to mail it to you. I hope it gives you a little comfort.
If not,
I apologize. I don't mean to meddle, but when I saw what you typed
about wondering if you could have done anything different,
everything
in me wanted to scream through the computer, "No, no, NO sweetie,
it's so much more awful than anyone lets on, this whole cancer
shit!!!"
Anyway. Here's what I wrote:
Two random events today:
--I was standing at my sink, struggling, wondering what the
statistics are of how many of us breast cancer survivors commit
suicide. Because lady, it fucks you up. You're never the same.
Chemo separated me from my Self in a way few people would wish to
survive. It is a strange, awful wondrous thing to be a survivor,
and every day the war between the horror and the wonder rages. I
think there's a lot of us out here in the world who die and the
"cause of death" column reads "suicide" but what it really needs to
say is, "breast cancer treatment".
--Tonight, on a lark of following links I come to this post.
Please let go of any blame on yourself you may be holding. The
landscape after breast cancer is bleak and comfortless and lonely
no matter what fucking happy faces we put on for everyone else. As
much as you are suffering such great loss and questioning yourself,
please factor in the mountains she had to move every day and the
great weariness of soul that comes from moving those goddam endless
Sisyphus stones. It is living hell. No one else can do it for us.
No one else can be there with us in that dark place where our
butchered spirits meet the unknown at 3am. Worse, we're not
supposed to talk about it. Cause we're supposed to be happy and
pink and cheery. Come on lady, look at Lance Armstrong! So much
of breast cancer treatment and aftercare is a monstrosity of
"positivity or else". We are basically told that if we don't think
positive we'll die. But no one talks about the horrors that follow
us back out of chemo. That take up residence in our minds and
don't leave. That haunt us and choke us and bleed us all day long.
The neuropathy. The constant pains. The swelling, the tiredness,
the devastating sense that we went into surgery ourselves and came
out Frankenstein's abandoned creations; alone in the world and
enraged. Only happy breast cancer survivors need apply to society,
so we say all the right things about living in the moment and
loving our lives while we lay awake at night insane and plow
through our days crazed with DRIVE over the STRESS of a MOMENT IN
TIME. Those of us who stumble out of treatment broken, reanimated
and spiritually razed find little to no comfort in all the things
we ever knew before. Not even in you, our dearest loving friends.
Because WE are not the same. I wonder how many of us are out in
the world just floating, wandering dazed; our collective Dr.
Frankensteins living happily their heroic cancer doctor lives, and
we left observing the happy villagers through their windows, trying
to learn the language and mimic the motions of human life. Trying
to learn how to fit in but knowing there is no place for us because
in truth, there is something in that goddam chemo that kills the
part of us that could know what "I" ever meant. It's a bitch,
sister. A real bloody bitch. I don't care if they paint the whole
damn world pink, some of us just come out of that shit ravaged
beyond what we could ever speak to the people who love us. They
throw anti-depressants at us and send us to support groups and look
at us like we're ungrateful because we dare question the wisdom of
the barbarity. Save my life at all costs, isn't that it? Even if
the body and the mind I'm left with afterward are so unfamiliar I
feel like a ghost haunting a life that used to be mine?
Even now, I fight the urge to type, "BUT HEY, IT'S GREAT. I'M
GLAD TO BE ALIVE. IT'S GREAT. EVERYTHING'S GREAT."
It feels like my societal duty to say so. I feel like a cad, saying
anything different. But I have whispered with a few
other brave women, that we do not all get the Cheryl Crow
Melissa Etheridge E-ticket Experience and Matching Gift Bag.
Who knows, they could be lying too. For the rest of us, it's a
hell of
a lot more like MK Ultra meets Mr. Toad's Wild Ride meets the
Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
My heart goes out to you. It wasn't your fault, and it wasn't
because you didn't call enough or tell her you loved her enough.
If I may be so rudely bold (as I clearly already am,) I would say
it was because she just could not live without her SELF any more,
and/or that the fallout from treatment in all its varying forms,
was just too much. Just too damned much.
Edith Speed, rest.
Lastly, if it pleases you to do so, support these brave women
who take on the breast cancer industry AND refuse to take
money from the drug companies. The fact they exist
gives me hope that yes, some people DO know the hell of
chemo/aftercare for breast cancer, and are fighting hard
to find a PREVENTION as well as a cure.
www.bcaction.org
Take good care Christa. I know it hurts so much.
Warmest regards,
EKW
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