I Fuckin Get it.

I am surrounded by wonderful, caring, kind people. People who want me to be healthy, people who love  me. And yet if one more person says “Oh, I get it, I’m not even having ECT and I forget things all the time,” to me when I talk about the difficulties of losing my memory, I’m gonna lose my shit.

Imagine you’re a bald man, and you have a friend going through chemo and your friend going through chemo says “Losing my hair is kinda hard, weird. It’s not a big deal, but it takes getting used to.” And you reply with, “Oh, I know, I don’t have any hair and I’m not even going through chemo.”

You would be an asshat.

I get that people are trying to make me feel better. I so get that. And really, I appreciate that that’s the intention. I do. But basically it comes off as “No need to complain. We all forget things,” which makes me feel like I should shut up or tell them to shut the fuck up. And frankly, I don’t like either of those options.

The thing is, sometimes we just need to sit with the uncomfortable feeling of not being able to make things better.

We have to be able to hear someone talk about remembering maybe ½ of the last year of their life and know there is nothing we can do. Of course we all forget things. But trust me, this is different.

I am so fuckin grateful I feel better. All the memory loss is worth not wanting to kill myself. I get that. I get that so hard. I never need to be reminded of that.

And yet even sometimes, side effects, however much worth it, still suck.

Attending birthday parties for close friends and having no recollection of being there, kinda sucks.  Having days with your son that he loved that you can’t picture at all, kinda sucks. Having a play premiere and not remembering the majority of the process, kinda sucks.

And people who get that, people who say ”Wow, that must be hard,” and let me have my moment saying “Yeah, it is, it kinda sucks, but it’s toally worth it,” having that with people, that is just great.