[Disclaimer: I know this is just a thing in the USA, and really nowhere else. In this country, the word "Cancer" is synonymous with the word "bankruptcy". We do our best to squeak on by, and in the process, learn a lot about people. Here are some things I have learned.]
The Best: People who don't even know your friend, who are just good people wanting to help, chip in a buck or two, saying, "I don't know your friend but I see she's important to you." Or people who do know your friend chip in surprisingly large amounts and it's a little overwhelming. Things like that.
The Worst: People become super-judge-y about how money is being used. Don't get me wrong, I'm judge-y too. Very. But what would I do with that money? One dinner out. I can eat at home one night.
- Example: My friends have cable and are worried about getting their cable shut off. I hate cable. Haaaaaaaate cable. Hate-hate. But you know what? My friend is stuck on her sick ass at home alone all damn day, not able to work and bored out of her mind. She's not particularly internet savvy--Netflix is like a super complicated, novel thing to her, and she doesn't know what a Roku is. She's drifting in and out of lucidity (on four different painkillers...good grief...). I'll raise $100 so you can have your one comfort for thirty days, even though I want Comcast to burn to the ground (once innocent employees have left the building, of course). What's it to me? Not a damn thing. Next.
Looking at you, Norman Reedus.
Why Norman Reedus? Because my friend has fucking cable, and zombies are her comfort. Zombies are less scary than cancer.
It's the navigation of all of the good and the bad that makes it so complicated. You have people giving you money, and you're so grateful--you can't say enough things to express how grateful you are. At the same time you have people who aren't going to budge, and you wonder how much effort to put into them (probably none is a good amount), and you're strategizing how much or how little to talk about it on your Facebook or your Twitter.
What's the tipping point of annoyance in your small circle of acquaintances? If you go past the tipping point, what will happen? Lifetime ban from social media?
I should be so lucky.
And then you have the people who feel like they need to give you a little sermon before telling you no. The ones who don't agree with your friend's "lifestyle" (a 25+ year stable relationship with one person) because she is gay, or that ones that question how they will spend the money because they don't seem particularly good with money.
Let's not forget the ones who, since nothing bad has ever happened to them, personally, figure your friend should have just planned better so they would be ready for the upheaval that cancer brings.
Sure. Should have just...planned better.
Meanwhile, my friend and her partner are about to lose the house, so her (wealthy) parents sent her a greeting card saying they "feel so helpless" and tucked in a $50 gift card to Olive Garden, because that's how fucking tone deaf they are.
It's weird.
Money is weird, people are weird, and people are really fucking weird about money.
PS: Don't get sick.
Anyway...someday my friend and her partner are going to have themselves a fine, celebratory meal at Olive Garden. We'll laugh about her crazy parents and there will be much eye rolling and probably wine and stuff. Until then...let's see if my bullshit can pull them through.
You know the drill...help if you can, and thank you, fair human. Or zombie. Either/or. I don't judge.
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