unknown and out of control...that's one thing that fits

i think i believe today, more than ever, that everything happens for a reason, and that our experiences are a physical manifestation of something much bigger than we are. why? because i'm healthy, young, and have cancer. it doesn't really add up (like being obese + eating a lot of sugar = diabetes). thus, i really have to think that there's some other reason for it - and the "at some point your cells in your lymphatic system started to go crazy" doesn't really cut it for me - mainly because i don't understand it. my oncologist told me that if i were a molecular biology major in college, i'd understand it. i majored in psychology. so, here we are, searching for an alternative meaning for me getting cancer. mind you, there will be no references to freud, or my alter-ego...but, if thinking outside the box isn't for you, stay inside and google "histopathology of hodgkin's disease".

everyone finds their own way to cope with adversity. the two things i'm most scared of are those that i have no control over, and those that are unknown. my cancer is both of these things. i have little to no control over how it acts in the course of my lifetime, which is the scariest, and i will attempt to control everything i can to be healthy and live a normal life...but, the rest isn't up to me, and accepting that is a journey in itself. and, i will likely never know the answer to so many of my questions about it. or, rather, the answers will never be sufficient. i can say "my b-cells, at some point, began growing and dying in an atypical pattern and formed a large mass of scar tissue, etc...", but, really, no one knows how this happened...there are no known causes for it, and so it's futile to focus on these things.

in all of this that's unknown and uncontrollable, i find some strength knowing that there's a reason that this crazy little collection of cells is in my chest...i've got something to learn from it. i'm being unwillingly forced to confront my fears, and i think, to some extent, this is just what i needed...