Pictures of Me

Image from Hewlett-Packard "Pictures of You" video ad

A few years back, Hewlett-Packard put out what, to me at least, was a very powerful series of commercials under the "HP + You" ad campaign.

They featured popular picture-related songs and video of people using HP products to capture pieces of everyday life and save them in a meaningful way.

One of the ads in the series used the song, "Pictures of You" by the Cure, circa 1989.  That one is my favorite because it not only uses compelling images and copy, but also because it brings me back to a different point in my life when I was a teenager and a huge Cure fan (with posters, and concert t-shirts to prove it, and yes, I'm still a Cure fan because cancer jokes are the best, but that's not the point here).  It was a very different time in my life (obviously) and one when I felt both a well developed sense of teenage nihilism and, at the same time, hopeful expectation for all the possibilities in life that might be just around the corner.

I know those two ideas, nihilism and hopeful expectation, don't really belong together, but I don't think that's an uncommon combination, especially for young people the age I was at that time.

If you were to talk with me then about my bleaker thoughts, you'd get an accurate picture of who I was, but not the full story.  If you were to talk with me about my crazy-optimistic thoughts, you'd also get an accurate picture, but again not the full story.

I think of this blog in the same way.  It's a series of snapshots that together tell part of my story as it relates to cancer.  But, while each post, each bit and piece, is true to what I'm feeling at the time, each may or may not tie too closely to the whole of my experience or the whole of my life. Or at least the part of my life that has to do with cancer as it relates to me.

To give a small example of what's not in the snapshots, I try not to tell others' stories too much, except as they relate to mine, because I don't feel that's my place.  So when you read this blog, you may not truly see how wonderful and special the people in my life are.  They are wonderful and special, but it's just not what I feel comfortable elaborating on here.

But I do try to write about what's going on with me and what I'm feeling as it relates to my cancer, and that task I try to take on even when it isn't always that comfortable.  But even there, it's a series of snapshots from moments in time.

When I had my bone scan, there was a monitor to the side where I could (with maybe a little tilt of my head and neck once safely out of the scanner) see the individual dots collecting one at a time until, over time, they started to form an image in the shape of my bones.

I think (well, I hope anyway) that while each individual idea on this blog, and each individual post that contains a handful of them, represents thoughts from one point in time, as they add up they may tie together to, eventually, give a more rounded view of how things are.

When I posted after just finding out I was back to the cancer wars, you're seeing me at a somewhat addled and frightened place.  When you read posts from when I first started this blog, you're seeing some of the soapbox rants that had probably been kicking around in my head just a tiny bit too long before they made it out.  Both of those are true and part of me, but hopefully have to do with their time and circumstances more than they do with my identity as a constantly freaked-out, course-mouthed ranter (not that I could rule it out, but I hope that's not the usual me).

Thinking about that song by the Cure, it's actually a fairly odd choice for a commercial.  It does, of course, contain the line "pictures of you," so it has that going for it, but that may be the only appropriate part.  The rest of the song is a thoroughly depressing elegy to a lost love who may have left or may have died, but either way it happened in the most heartbreaking of ways.  I still think it's a beautiful song, but at the same time I recognize that it's terribly, elegantly, heartbreakingly sad in the way that post-punk 80's Goth bands did so well.

I hope my posts on this blog don't paint a picture too much like that.  In my own mind, I see myself as optimistic and hopeful (in the way of actual hope, not the manufactured cancer-fundraiser-machine fueled hope).  But I also know that part of keeping that side of me strong is taking the time to also put the rougher parts down in writing here.

I enjoy revisiting songs from that earlier part of my life, even the wistful and depressing ones.  They remind me of the full picture of the person I was at that time, that young woman fueled by worldliness and naïveté, disillusionment and hopefulness, all more or less in equal measure with a large helping of  "What's the worst that could happen? Might as well give it a go!" thrown in to give it some spark. I like the person I was then--I actually like her much more now than I ever did at the time--and I admire her determination.

But, I'm not always sure how many parts of the young person I was then remain with me now. I know I'm more comfortable in my life now, more even keeled and more confident (I know, I know, if this is called more confident...please just stick with me here).  But I also hope some of the finest parts of her still remain.

And I hope when I, and anyone who reads this blog, look back on this part of my life in blog form, we can both take the good parts and the bad parts and work them together into a greater whole with, if I'm lucky, a few identifiable finer parts that through it all may still remain.