It's the same for all of us.

I just finished reading a piece from my thesis director, Valerie Sayers. It's a "confessional" in Image. She talks about her experience being diagnosed with cancer. I was just finishing up the program in 1999 when she got the news. It was interesting reading her account because we outsiders have a completely different memory of it, as it should be. My friend Elizabeth and I were terribly upset by it at the time because she's such a neat lady. But reading her article makes me feel sad because it makes me realize how much of ourselves we hold back from the rest of the world. How many times in life we hurt like hell on the inside and never let it show. Maybe it's a woman thing, I don't know. Why do we do that? Why do we feel like we don't have the right to let everyone know exactly how we feel? Why do we have to put on sunny faces to make everyone else feel comfortable when we're screaming on the inside? Why can't people deal with the screaming? Sorrow and pain are just as much a part of life as happiness and joy. People are allowed to feel those things, too. Why do we have to be ashamed of it? Anyway, it makes me a little bit ashamed to think about the important people in my life right now who are dealing with really hard issues because I think I should do more to let them know that their struggles aren't invisible.