I’m a fanatic about the Olympics, and this winter I spent dozens if not hundreds of hours glued to my television watching the coverage from Vancouver. I’m sucker for the spirit of competition, for the schmaltzy human-interest stories, for the possibility of athletic redemption. But more than anything, I’m a sucker for the “triumph of the human spirit.” I watch highlight reels of famous Olympic feats and get misty-eyed.
This year, my favorite event at the Olympics was a 30-kilometer women’s cross-country race. By the time I tuned in, the race had boiled down to a contest between two women—a Pole and a Norwegian. With a few kilometers to go, the Norwegian began to pull away and it looked like she would win easily. But the Polish skier pressed on, slowly closing the gap. At the final turn, the race was dead even. The Pole moved ahead by a ski’s length and the Norwegian matched her, stride for stride, retaking the lead.
With maybe 10 meters to go, it looked like the Norwegian would hold on for the gold medal. But somehow, after 30 brutal kilometers slogging through the snow, the Pole pulled ahead. She won the race—more than an hour and a half long—by less than half the length of a ski.
How did she do it? If you listen to the likes of Bob Costas, the Pole won because she wanted it more, because she dug just a little deeper and willed herself across the finish line.
It’s a compelling narrative, a simple narrative. I think we like to imagine that we can bear all burdens and everything under the sun, and that all we need to do is to reach inside ourselves to find the inner strength to keep going.
But what happens if it comes time to kick it up a notch and you realize you’ve already burned through all your energy? In the hospital after surgery, I was completely knocked out. I was relieved to find out that I was cancer-free, but I wasn’t rejuvenated by the news. I just felt tired and old and worn down.
One sleepless night, I found myself tossing and turning for hours. In pain and completely exhausted, I started to become extremely agitated. It would be nice to say that I held my head high and bore my suffering in silence. And a few months ago, I did do that. But that night (and many others), I wasn’t stoic or composed. I was certain that I couldn’t go on. That I was just going to break into little pieces right there in the hospital. That even if my body could withstand the onslaught, my mind could not.
And that’s where the real experience of illness diverges from the popular narrative. You’re not guaranteed of anything. There is no infinite well of fortitude from which to sustain yourself. During chemo, I sometimes found myself slumped over a toilet bowl, my head spinning from the agony of violent retching, but somehow firmly confident that I would make it through the night, that I’d be able to keep going and going and going. But these past few weeks, I’ve seen that sometimes your own defenses fail you. You try to dig deeper, you try to will yourself forward, but there’s nothing left.
Where does that leave you? Unmoored, demoralized, and, to be honest, a little hopeless.
But the strange thing is that even as I’ve found myself unable to bear the unbearable, I’m still sitting here.
