One thing every cancer patient wants is normalcy. We maintain the hope that someday our lives will be as they once were, no more chemotherapy or treatment-induced handicaps. While we wait for that day to come, we try to establish little bits of normalcy in our lives.
In my case, I reached out to the community college and began attending a couple classes there. Taking band was a good choice: it's a flexible class and it really doesn't matter if you miss a couple days a week. Then I signed up for photography. Taking pictures is one of my hobbies, so I thought a class that provided me with a chance to learn how to use a dark room and get a professor's opinions on my photos would be good for me.
However, this class is proving more difficult than I thought. It has a very strict policy for attendance and requires you to be in the darkroom several hours a week outside of class. At first I thought I could handle it, but now I can't help but thinking that there is no point in me attending class and I dread working in the darkroom with all the offensive, cold chemicals. I'm only auditing the class, I'm not receiving a grade for taking it, so it doesn't really matter that I don't take the tests and such, yet I feel bad for procrastinating, if not avoiding, that little bit of extra work.
I don't know. My inner drive is dwindling and I feel like I'm using my disease as an excuse to cut class. I had chemotherapy yesterday and I feel like going to class today would just be too much. Is this a lame excuse? I think so, but I can't help following through with it. There is nothing in me, except guilt, that makes me want to go to class.
For over a year, nothing has been expected of me, especially in an academic sense, so it's easy to just say, "Oh, I'm not feeling 100% today, so I'm not going to school." But I know this is stupid. Other people deal with more- more homework, jobs, demanding lives- and they don't fuss about it.
I've been told it's not the same for me. I have a terminal illness, so it's really up to me to decide what I want to exert my energy on for the day. I need more rest than other people, so it's okay if I miss a couple days of class. But it still feels like a bad excuse.
I keep looking for a suitable justification for skipping, but I can't find one. Part of it is I don't want to admit to my teacher that I'm behind and then beg for understanding why I won't be able to catch up today. It bothers me a lot. I was an "A" student, who always had her work in on time, and now I'm just a lazy bum who shies away from a little bit of work and depends on excuses.
It's stupid that I feel the rest of my life will probably be like this: I'll be provided with opportunities to be normal, and I'll get nervous because cancer has made me fearful that people will only remember me for my disease and how my life is different because of it. Or that I'll end up leaning on my disease and using it as a crutch to avoid things I don't feel like doing.
I really try not to do this. I don't want to be remembered as lazy. I guess when I go to photography, I can't help thinking that it's all fake. I'm not being graded because I'm not receiving a real college education. I'm just there to kill time, so who cares if my work is "D" quality? Yes, I want to improve my overall photography skills, but I really don't give a damn about the history of photography or the individual elements that construct a proper photograph interpretation.
I guess there's nothing I can do about it today. Class has already started and I'm sitting at home, feeling guilty, and wondering if my mood will improve as the week goes on.
Damn the weather, damn photography, and damn weekly chemotherapy that drags at my spirits.
The End.
