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.