Overstretched analogy alert…

I’ve been really surprised since being diagnosed with cancer, at the number of people I know who have been diagnosed too. Just in the couple of years since. Several with the exact same diagnosis. It’s a weird thing. It’s generally a great feeling to have something in common with someone. It’s really good, usually, to know that you have shared experiences with others, and that someone else has at least an idea about how things might feel for you. But when the thing you have in common is one of those things people are prone to say they wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy, well, then it feels like slightly less of a good thing. But at the same time, it’s comforting to know you’re not alone. Lots of people get into a bit of a cycle of guilt thinking about this. I guess that’s a pretty natural outcome of taking a sort of comfort in the fact that others are suffering the thing you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. I think just not really thinking too deeply about it is probably the safest thing. I mean, if you’re taking comfort in the shared experience, then the other person is probably doing the same. So you can basically cancel out each other’s guilt and not worry too much more about it.

There is definitely comfort in shared experience, but there’s also no ‘one story’. Here comes the tenuous analogy. We might be on the same page as each other at this point, but our chapters are probably different, and our stories definitely are. In the mid-80s, when (unfortunately for me) I was in exactly target age group for them, there was a trend for stories with multiple endings. You basically had to make a decision at certain points about what direction the characters should take, and then progress to a different page to follow the story accordingly. I hated those stories. I mean, really hated them. I thought they were really lazy, as if the author wasn’t sure what would be the most popular ending, so decided to put it in the hands of the reader. That way, firstly the author didn’t have to make the decision, and secondly, if as the reader you didn’t like the ending, you had either to blame yourself for choosing the wrong one, or just go back and choose a different one.

But maybe that’s kind of how it is. Some stuff gets chosen for you, and some stuff you get to choose. Sometimes the same page is part of a different story for someone else, and sometimes you go through a few chapters with them. Kind of running out of steam with the analogy here, but you get what I mean. I guess the pertinent point, both comforting and not, is that the experience of one person will never translate directly to another. So, however much I want to take hope and confidence from the stories of people who, 30 years on from the exact same diagnosis as mine, have never had another dodgy scan, that doesn’t mean my story will mirror theirs. But neither is there any more reason to think mine will follow the same path as those I know who’ve been less fortunate.

None of us knows what’s going to happen next. And, scary as that is, it’s a sure fire way to keep you turning the pages when you’re in the middle of a story.