The Loneliest Number

One of the unexpected side effects of cancer treatment for me was isolation, a near crippling feeling of aloneness.

I had a very supportive family and small group of supportive friends, but I hated being physically alone. Every day I would count down to the time when my mom would come home for lunch and dread her departure. Being alone gave me too much time to think and I didn't like many of my thoughts. In a very dark time halfway or so through treatment I began to ask the question "what is the point?" Not what’s the point in my living, but the age-old philosophical question "what is the point in life" and all I could see was a cycle of pointlessness. We live and die trying to make life better for the next generation as they do for the next and it seems so pointless. This time was definitely my darkest moment when my depression was deepest. Many people didn't know how depressed I was or that I was in the depression at all while I was on treatment and returning to school.

This brings up an interesting point about depression. It is more complex than we tend to think it is and it’s not an all or nothing thing. I still smiled a lot and was happy often and kept a positive attitude while I was depressed. Those things don't make the depression less valid they help show the vast unknowable complexity of human emotion.

The above view of the pointlessness of it all is not what I really believe; these are the thoughts of depression and isolation. I believe that we live to make a mark. Not on the world, but through the connections we make with a few people throughout our lives and if we are lucky maybe more. This mark seems fleeting, but it is eternal. Because the people we connect with in our lives go on to leave their own mark through their connections with others throughout the present and generations into the future. In this way we are all connected to each other.

Mischief Managed,

Sammy

Run of Hope Total: $1,785
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