Warning

NOTE: I warn you in advance, this will not be the
happy-go-lucky of yesterday. However, I also promise to go meet up with some
people today who will hopefully help shift my perspective.

I am scared. I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want
my chiropractor to tell me that the pain I’ve had in my side for a week isn’t
muscular, it’s an inflamed kidney. I don’t want to question if it’s the daily
injection of blood thinner I’ve been giving myself that’s causing it.

I don’t want to talk with the coordinator at Kaiser about
“relocating” to Stanford for a bone marrow transplant. I don’t want to have to
tell him that I haven’t had my bone marrow biopsy yet. I don’t want to speak words like, I will likely
stay with chemotherapy for 4 rounds instead of going the transplant route. I don’t want my doctor to say words like “complications from each round.”

I don’t want to have to feel scared falling asleep last
night. I don’t want to have to tell the dark that I don’t want to die. I don’t
want to think about this specter of cancer following me for the rest of my
life.

I don’t want to be so reminded of how mortal I am, or how my
body functions and currently malfunctions.

I don’t want to have to notice everything so acutely, or appreciatively. I don’t want to wake up and the first thing I say to be, I’m
glad to be alive. I don’t want this to
be the reason I say it.

I want to have the problems I already had – romance,
finance, family, career. I want normal problems. I want normal activities, and
normal griping. I want what I had. And I can’t ever again in the same way.

I don’t want to do this anymore. 

I don’t want to go in
tomorrow and have them gauge some muck out of my skeleton to observe under a microscope. I don’t want to
plead for them to stop because it hurts, like I had to last time.

I don’t want to feel so powerless to do anything except
accept what’s happening. I don’t want to remember the phrase: The distance
between what we want and what’s happening is proportional to our pain. I don’t
want to remember that I’m upset because I’m not in acceptance of what is
happening.

I don’t want to accept it. And yet, I have absolutely no
choice.

I don’t want the doctors to tell me that I have maybe a 60%
chance of having kids now – even though I wasn’t sure that I wanted them. I
don’t want choices taken away from me that I haven’t been able to approve of.

I don’t want to be so fallible, and so human. I don’t want
to be so weak in a human body that can betray me.

I don’t want to lose my vision. My eyes continue to do
things that the doctors can’t really explain, but aren’t as concerned about
anymore. I don’t want to hear solutions like a shunt in my brain to relieve
pressure on my eye, or surgery to the muscles of my eye in order to fix these
problems.

I don’t want to THINK ABOUT THIS ANYMORE.

I want to go to work. I want to go to the coffee shop. I
want to go to art shows. I want to procrastinate, and leave dirty dishes in my
sink too long and leftover food ‘til it grows mold in my fridge.

I want to talk about boys on the phone with my girlfriends,
and squeal when one gets engaged. I want to go home for Thanksgiving like a
normal person.

I want my hair back.

I don’t want to know that it’ll take three years for it to
grow back. I don’t want people to tell me what a nice shaped head you have.

I don’t want to know that each time I go through chemo, I’m
going to get weaker each time I get home – so this, right now, right the fuck
now, is the best that I’ll feel for the next 5 months.

I don’t want to know this.

I broke my foot when I was in 6^th grade, riding
my bike home from Sunday school. I was on crutches for 6 months. I remember
being embarrassed – I mean, I was 11, and being different at 11 is awful. I
remember having to hobble down the 6^th grade graduation line next to
the shortest boy in class, because I was on crutches so I couldn’t stand by height like everyone else.

But, really, I don’t remember the length of six months on
crutches. I remember a few stand-out incidents of that time, but I don’t
remember it like it was “forever.”

I don’t want to know that I know that this won’t be forever. That “this too shall
pass.” I don’t want to know that I know this.

But I do.

And it sucks, because it spits in the face of all my
complaints and my self-pity. I’m allowed, I know, to have some of this
self-pity. I know that I’m allowed any emotion I want to have. But, I know it
won’t last either.

I’ll feel different. I’ll feel better. And then I’ll feel
awful and cry again.

I do want to be
thinking about bus stop boy again. I want to be thinking about earning money to
save to move back East. I want to be thinking about art for a café show.

But, instead, I think about mortality. I think about how
tenuous this is, and how if I don’t do exactly what’s in front of me, I’m going
to die.

Instead, I talk with doctors about stuff I don’t want to
know about at all, let alone have it be about me and not fictional and on House.

I want to read Harry Potter without the stain of tick-tock in the background.

I will feel better. But I needed to say all this, because
it’s true. Because today is a day when I’m crying about my circumstances.
Because today is a day I can’t see past the end of my own shit.

I need to say all this because it takes the isolation out of
it, and helps me move through it. So, thanks.