Perspective

My prospective roommate confessed to me today that she's been reluctant to commit because she's not sure she'll be able to watch me, someone she's come to care about already in just a few days' time, do battle on a daily basis with the twin ravages of chemo and radiation.

I realized, ashamedly, that I've only looked at this so far through my eyes. How I'll feel. How I'll cope. What activities I'll do to prepare myself, or while I'm undergoing treatment, or to build back my strength during and afterward, physically and emotionally. How I'll interact with those around me. How I'll get my career back on track. How I'll put my life back in order.

On the rare occasions, ever so briefly, that I've considered others, it's been through my prism as well: how I can manage the breaking of the initial bad news, predicated on the expected response of each concerned party; how those responses will affect me.

But I failed to consider how heartbreaking it inevitably is to live with someone who is physically, mentally, and emotionally struggling each day to beat back their disease and the side effects of their treatment. An almost unconscionable lapse on my part, arrogant; because for years I have been wedged in those cramping shoes, and they hobbled my walk. How can I expect someone else to have the fortitude to pleasantly endure what I struggled so hard to face?

Here I'd been focused so exclusively on this great apartment, hitting it off with a really neat roommate; and all the while so blindly failed to view the telescope in the other direction, shrinking all this glittering possibility to the smallness, the entrapment of watching one you love slowly, violently slip away beside you, even if only for a time: and you, powerless.