Write It Down

Sometimes when I breathe in too quickly, my stomach feels like its bleeding out. I can’t explain it, but it feels like it is eating away at itself. My whole body will tense up and I’ll feel my stomach sinking in as it tries to make it through the disease, decay, and death. I want to say that I’m not worried, but I am more than worried. I’m terrified.
I’m not scared of dying, because I accepted a long time ago that this was it for me. I accepted that this was the life God had planned for me and that I wasn’t meant to live a long and prosperous life because it just wasn’t in the cards for me. I’m okay with that. But, I can’t help from feeling like my entire existence is slowly killing Alex. I don’t mean mentally, either. I watch him day by day as he decays into less of a person than he was before. His weight has been dropping, he eyes are dark, sunken in; lifeless. His fingers are cold to the touch. It feels as if my cancer is doing more than just kill me—it is like it is killing Alex as well.

My time on this Earth is slowly ticking away and Alex has not left my side. My mother comes and visits once a month, and every so often we skype Alex’s parents during dinner, but other than that Alex has not had a single second of contact with another human being other than me. It isn’t healthy to be surrounded by so much death without any relief. And, it is all my fault.
Lately, I’ve been having these nightmares about Alex and my death. He always tells me that it doesn’t bother him and that we are just fine—that we are just like any other couple; in love and happy. I don’t believe him. I know he loves me. After everything we’ve been through, he must. But I also know that he’s not happy with the way things are and after my death he is going to be lost. The past four months—after the news of my six month time clock—he has been completely secluded from anyone else. He doesn’t work for the paper for now, though he says they plan to rehire him once everything after my passing is squared away, but it won’t be the same when I’m gone for him.

I’m not being overconfident. I’m not saying my existence gives him some type of super-writing abilities. But, he has put so much time into loving me. And caring for me. And making sure that we were okay no matter the circumstances that he is going to be a completely different person once he doesn’t have me here to take care of anymore. I’m not ready to let him lose part of himself when I leave.
When I leave, I want him to go on living his life the way he always had before me. I want him to focus on journalism. I want him to write the articles that change the world and become the journalist whose face is plastered to buses. The one everyone remembers because they found the story that made this world a different, brighter place.
I want him to have everything he had ever dreamed of, and more. I want him to find love in another person. I want them to get married and live a beautiful and successful life together.

And, I want them to cherish him like he deserves. I want them to take him out on expensive dates; yet I want them to take him out on romantic picnics, too. I want them to buy him flowers just because they saw them and thought they looked as beautiful as he does. He deserves someone who will hold his hand when times get hard, and support him when he can’t support himself—because, Lord knows he has been that person for me.
He should find someone that can do all of the things for him that I have been too sick to do.

I want him to have a family. A beautiful family that can make his days long and hard, but beautiful and worth it at the same time. He always said he wanted a daughter. We used to talk about adopting a little girl when we thought I could get better. We don’t talk about her anymore. We were going to name her Miranda. Alex wanted to call her Randi for short.

Miranda Eliza Gaskarth.

I told him I wanted her to have his last name. Because he was the strongest man I had ever known. The strongest, most beautiful and loving man I could have ever been blessed with.

We’ll never get the chance to have a daughter. Or a son. Or a family. Despite the wonderful blessing Alex has been on my life, I have brought so much pain into his.

So I think it is time for me to say goodbye to him—to my life here on Earth. It has been a wonderful ride. A peaceful ride, at least.
I need to let Alex go, though. And, I think my body knows that as well. I can feel it slowly shutting down, and I can feel the pain going away. I don’t know if this is the end or not, but if it wasn’t… don’t you think it would hurt a lot worse? I always imagined finally dying as a relaxing, peaceful experience.
My eyes are getting heavy, and I can barely see Alex asleep in the chair next to me. He has a pillow under his head to mask how uncomfortable that chair really is. His mouth is open and I think I can hear him snoring. I could wake him up and tell him that this is the end.
That we need to say goodbye.

But I don’t want my last moments with Alex to be filled with sadness. Right now, as I watch him sleep, is the way I want to spend our final moments.
I want to spend them peacefully, and quietly. When he wakes up, I want him to remember the last time he saw me alive as the last moments we had while watching “Deadman,” on Netflix a few hours before and how we both passed out half way through.
I don’t want him to see me slip away.

I love you, Alex. I am so, so sorry.
But, everything’s going black, now.

I can’t see him anymore. I can’t see anything.
Goodbye.