I started watching The Walking Dead back in November when I was deciding which shows were going to get me through the long winter ahead. I declared nothing could beat Breaking Bad, but I'd heard pretty good things about The Walking Dead and I needed a show I could admit to people I was actually watching (The Carrie Diaries doesn't go over well and I just can't bring myself to re-watch all ten seasons of Friends yet).
Don't watch the show? Well, let me give you some back story. The world is essentially taken over by... the walking dead. A dude (Rick) awakens from a coma to find an apocalyptic world that is dominated by zombies (nicknamed "Walkers") that eat human flesh and blood. He sets out to find his wife and son and let's just say trouble ensues along the way.
There's a whole slew of characters that I love more then I loved the cast of LOST (and I really loved Hurley in LOST...). I just finished Season 4: Episode 12 (every episode is feeling like it should be the finale and I am on edge here, people. I can't believe I am writing this post instead of finishing it off!)
When I first heard about Walking Dead, I wrote it off as gory and disgusting. I didn't see the context. I saw a whole lot of gruesome zombie stabbing. That's not something that's normally up my alley. Then, one day, I was talking to my boss and he said "It isn't about gore and killing! It's about humanity, and how we come together when everything goes wrong!".
Don't get me wrong though. There is still some gore.
So I'm watching a show where a (really hot) guy literally runs around with a crossbow and annihilates zombies, and I find myself tearing up and thinking "The Walking Dead is like having cancer. This is like my life!".
Daryl used to be a real hick in his past life. He used to get up to no good, and he wasn't going anywhere. Beth is a daughter of a devout Christian and has maintained fairly innocent throughout the show. In the episode I watched last night, the pair is sitting around the fire, separated from their friends, neither saying much. Beth suddenly exclaims "I NEED A DRINK. A real drink! I've never had one before. Let's go and find something!". Off they go, in search of an abandoned bar. (winning quote of the episode: "if you're going to drink for the first time it's damn well not going to be Peach Schnapps").
Daryl has grown a lot since the apocalypse, but when he sees an old trailer - reminiscent of his childhood home - he's reminded of what he used to be. Beth and Daryl spend the evening drinking moonshine on the porch of the trailer, where Beth gets that cute look on her face and suggests they burn it down. They joyfully cover the home with booze and light a match as they stand back and give the middle finger to his childhood, getting closure from his past life.
In our lives, we do what Daryl and Beth did all the time. We could have a home with a simple bed and a toilet but instead we decorate our spaces. We read, travel, blog. We jump out of airplanes and tightrope between buildings! We don't need to do any of those things to merely survive: we do them because we long for something more then basic survival. Like burning down a house to give yourself closure or making it a mission to find your first drink. Not necessary for survival, but necessary in giving your life meaning. It was at that point I decided my life was a lot like this show.
Sometimes I find myself feeling that sometimes it would be easier to just stay in bed. I'm too sore to go out. I'm too tired to walk. I'm too exhausted to read. It would be safer, easier for me to stay in tonight. I just got chemo on Tuesday. But there is a sens/leafs game tonight where all of my friends will be and I don't know if I'll survive it but that sounds like it could be pretty fun (Happy Birthday Chandy).
So instead you get up and go out. You force yourself to talk about what's going on and you write a blog to connect with other people who have the same experiences as you do. You could close your eyes and wake up in November, when this is all over but you don't. You keep on keeping on and you make the best of the year ahead.
Five (more) Reasons Having Cancer Is Like An Episode of The Walking Dead
1) It is now considered "normal" to see a Walker (dead zombie), and how casually even the youngest child will now kill them, four seasons in. We survive, we adapt.
Cancer becomes your new normal. It's shocking at first, yes. You aren't sure how to interpret the information you've been given. You're in shock, you're overwhelmed, you think you're going to die.
I assume you would feel the same if there was a zombie apocalypse on earth, too....
2) Slowly, as time passes, you start to realize you aren't dead yet (from cancer... or from a zombie) and you better start fighting for your life.
What was once so shocking (cancer diagnosis vs. zombie apocalypse), starts to feel considerably normal.
You start to just live with cancer/zombies and acknowledge the fact that it's there and you may as well just deal with it. It hasn't killed you yet, so you start to devise ways to distract yourself from it.
You learn all of the specific ways in which you can fight off the cancer side effects/fight off the zombies and while it definitely helps (like putting up the stakes outside the prison guard walls vs. doing chemo) ... underneath, the cancer (walkers) are still there.
3) It feels like the next 8 months are a lifetime. You can't imagine a life after cancer (after zombie apocalypse).
You start to build a new life around the cancer. It doesn't look like what you'd imagined or hoped for yourself, but it's still your life and you realize it's still worth living.
Same as in The Walking Dead. In reality, they could stay in one place, never making a "new" life for themselves in this new world of theirs. They could hole up and become reclusive, wallowing at the end of the world. That would be one boring show though...(and one boring life).
4) You could worry constantly about the cancer coming back (or, never settling down again because well.. it's a zombie apocolypse so how can we ever feel safe?).
You could let the fear paralyze you from having children and raising them in a world that may involve cancer. You could avoid attachment and marriage to prevent the pain of losing someone you love to the illness. My fave couple on the show, Maggie & Glenn, also battle with these types of questions.
5) At one point, residential bad guy "The Governor" looks at his lover when she asks "What kind of life will my daughter be living if we go ahead and kill all of those people in the prison? What will she be in this life?"
And he respond "Alive. She will be alive".
While this is true, you can tell she isn't happy with the answer. Being alive isn't enough. If you abandon your morals in a time of struggle, you won't be happy to be alive. It's what keeps us who we are in times of trial.
The group of survivors on the show band together. It doesn't matter where they're living: whether it be a farm, a prison, or an abandoned home. They fight for their safety and they will do anything to stay "alive". Multiple times on the show, they ask themselves (and each other): why are we doing this? What do we have left to live for? We are inevitably, sooner or later, going to die. Our situation is dire. Our loved ones are gone. We have no home, no food, no stability. Why are we fighting, with everything we have, to keep moving forward?
Because you just do. Because it's in our nature. Because life isn't always a graph with a straight line going up. Because there is more to life then just surviving. Despite the impending end of the world, there is still love to be found (Maggie & Glen), babies to teach right from wrong (Judith), friendships with that unbreakable bond (Daryl & Carol), and our basic human instinct: to make the right choices. To choose living, always. To choose morals, and to not abandon them when things get tough (Rick & Herschel).
Walking Dead isn't a show about zombies. It has little to do with zombies, actually. It's really about the characters. It's about human instinct. It asks the tough questions. It's about choices; love, loyalty, loss, morality, survival, trust. It's about hope against all odds.
Kind of like living with cancer. Except I don't get to be saved by Norman Reedus... and that just isn't fair.
