Status: A rewrite of a rewrite.
Before I Die
One
The sun is shining through the window but I don’t feel it. In the distance a dog barks, the distracting noise is all I can focus on. I wonder if anyone else has ever felt this way, felt so numb that not even the news of death can knock them off their seat. I wonder if I am alone in feeling this way and I wonder why that damn dog is barking, distracting me from the slew of words coming out of her mouth, my doctor.
I am not so good with feelings, and today it feels as if I have to remind myself to breathe, and with each remembered breath I wish it would all end. Everything, the shining sun and the barking dog, my beating heart and this impromptu meeting. The meeting I was only informed of last night before bed by my worried parents. Worry is not a foreign emotion for them, how could it be? They have spent my entire life worrying far too much but today, their fear for this meeting somehow now seems warranted and that annoys me because I hate being wrong.
My hands are shaking and that damn dog is still barking, who builds a doctor’s office so close to residential housing anyway? And it is close, it is built in the heartland of my small town, built into the same street as rented houses and across the street from a playground, which always seemed so odd to me. After a trip to the doctors the last thing I ever wanted to do was play.
Isabella, my doctor looks at me and it physically hurts, breaks my heart straight in two. I try not to think about the pain of my heart splitting but not thinking is just as bad. I will never understand why the heart was made so fragile, so breakable. My heart has been broken exactly twice, first when my grandfather died, he was a happy small man with a humped back and missing front teeth, he was my entire world growing up and his death broke me so. The second time was when I was first diagnosed, it seemed so strange that I a healthy child, who never caught a cold or the flu, could be sick.
Terminally sick.
But I was.
And I am.
Right now I know my mother is itching for a cigarette I can tell because her hands are fidgeting with her cardigan button, undoing and doing it back up in rapid succession. Like ash tapped from a cigarette I feel like dirt, like the left overs from something great. That great something is my parents love, and I am the only reminder that once upon a time it existed. If it weren’t for the stories my mother would tell me late at night before bed about her and my father I may have never believed in love, now I believe it is not possible for me, but that it does exist.
I am a paradox of never ending thoughts and compulsions, I am both happy and sad, sad that it is all ending and happy that I was right. That I knew deep inside this would be the end of me, this illness and this sickness would eventually kill me. And kill me it will, in a few months, at least that is the gist of what Isabella is telling me and my shaking mother.
That dog barks three times in succession and I wish, I wish with all my mite, it would shut up. That it would stop distracting me because this, here, this meeting is important. More important that I can probably ever fully grasp, because it is the detailing about the end of me, of my life.
‘Be brave’ my mother had told me before my doctor called me into her office, I think I am doing that for the both of us, for my mother and me. Because, my third grade teacher told me to never start a sentence with because but here we are doing just that, she is not strong enough to do it for herself. My mother is not technically weak she is just certainly not strong; she is somewhere in between. And existing in between annoys me, you are either something or you aren’t. My mother is in between a lot of things and that will forever annoy me.
And I guess the end really exists, I never really thought about death and the end of my life. After I was diagnosed I was told I had a good chance of fighting the sickness until it left my body, boy were they wrong. So I never really entertained the idea of death, not fully anyway, I thought of it for only a few minutes at a time, and it never really hit me that it was a possibility. I believed the professionals, my doctors and my parents who told me I was strong enough to win.
I have never been rendered weaker in my life than this moment, when I have been told the hard cold truth. The truth that my cancer is back and that I am dying. Actually dying, like really. It seems so odd to know that I will die, yes I know everyone dies at some point but my death is imminent and fast approaching, it is the oddest feeling and I wonder, once more, if anyone else has ever felt this way fully.
I guess I always thought death was easy, there we no more struggling, no more pain and anger and hurt, there was just… nothing. And that seemed infinitely easier than fighting, that scraping through life bruised and broken. I always thought life was the hard part, death easy. I guess today my beliefs changed, I guess today I realised that death is just as hard as life. I always appreciated the permanence of death, that once you died everything just kind of stopped yet kept going on around you, if that makes any sense, I appreciate permanent things.
But not death.
Not anymore.
I realise belatedly that Isabella and my mother are staring at me, waiting for me to reply to whatever was said. But I can’t. I haven’t been listening and I know that seems stupid, dumb even but it is not easy to focus when a limit has just been put on your life. I know I should probably do something, reply or burst into tears but I have the urge to do neither so I nod my head hoping that is enough. It is.
Bile rises in my throat and against my lips, I gag and realise I am about to barf, like all over myself. So I stand slowly and walk purposefully out of the office we are all sitting in and to the toilet around the corner. My mother yells after me, ‘just where do I think I am going’ and ‘get back here right now Emery.’ My full name never means anything good, but I do not listen to her and I do not pause. I keep walking to the toilet, hand to my mouth holding in the vomit.
I enter the empty toilet and close the door behind me, remembering to lock it, and fall to my knees hard, surely bruising them, I wait to feel pain. I want to feel the protest of my knees of being treated so harshly but I don’t. I don’t feel anything. And I am somewhat grateful and a little disappointed, I wanted to feel pain. To feel something other than this awful numbness but I don’t.
I proceed to vomit twice, gagging and coughing, spluttering the entire time. The bile burns my throat and I am desperate to release it all, this numbness and nausea. I gag once more but no more vomit comes up. I think I have thrown up everything within me, including my fractured heart. I am almost certain I can see it staring back at me from the toilet.
I don’t realise I am crying until I sob out loud, heavy and heartfelt. I haven’t cried since I was seven and broke my leg, I have never had a reason to cry, not even when being diagnosed because I had such a good chance, I realise now as I cry that it was all lies. Everything the doctors told me gave me false hope and I am only now realising the gravity of my situation.
I realise, a tad belatedly, that while they played a part in all of this I am the only one left to blame, blame because I had hope, because I didn’t entertain the alternative of death. There is no one left to blame and I am acutely aware of this, I promise you.
I am not so good with feelings, and today it feels as if I have to remind myself to breathe, and with each remembered breath I wish it would all end. Everything, the shining sun and the barking dog, my beating heart and this impromptu meeting. The meeting I was only informed of last night before bed by my worried parents. Worry is not a foreign emotion for them, how could it be? They have spent my entire life worrying far too much but today, their fear for this meeting somehow now seems warranted and that annoys me because I hate being wrong.
My hands are shaking and that damn dog is still barking, who builds a doctor’s office so close to residential housing anyway? And it is close, it is built in the heartland of my small town, built into the same street as rented houses and across the street from a playground, which always seemed so odd to me. After a trip to the doctors the last thing I ever wanted to do was play.
Isabella, my doctor looks at me and it physically hurts, breaks my heart straight in two. I try not to think about the pain of my heart splitting but not thinking is just as bad. I will never understand why the heart was made so fragile, so breakable. My heart has been broken exactly twice, first when my grandfather died, he was a happy small man with a humped back and missing front teeth, he was my entire world growing up and his death broke me so. The second time was when I was first diagnosed, it seemed so strange that I a healthy child, who never caught a cold or the flu, could be sick.
Terminally sick.
But I was.
And I am.
Right now I know my mother is itching for a cigarette I can tell because her hands are fidgeting with her cardigan button, undoing and doing it back up in rapid succession. Like ash tapped from a cigarette I feel like dirt, like the left overs from something great. That great something is my parents love, and I am the only reminder that once upon a time it existed. If it weren’t for the stories my mother would tell me late at night before bed about her and my father I may have never believed in love, now I believe it is not possible for me, but that it does exist.
I am a paradox of never ending thoughts and compulsions, I am both happy and sad, sad that it is all ending and happy that I was right. That I knew deep inside this would be the end of me, this illness and this sickness would eventually kill me. And kill me it will, in a few months, at least that is the gist of what Isabella is telling me and my shaking mother.
That dog barks three times in succession and I wish, I wish with all my mite, it would shut up. That it would stop distracting me because this, here, this meeting is important. More important that I can probably ever fully grasp, because it is the detailing about the end of me, of my life.
‘Be brave’ my mother had told me before my doctor called me into her office, I think I am doing that for the both of us, for my mother and me. Because, my third grade teacher told me to never start a sentence with because but here we are doing just that, she is not strong enough to do it for herself. My mother is not technically weak she is just certainly not strong; she is somewhere in between. And existing in between annoys me, you are either something or you aren’t. My mother is in between a lot of things and that will forever annoy me.
And I guess the end really exists, I never really thought about death and the end of my life. After I was diagnosed I was told I had a good chance of fighting the sickness until it left my body, boy were they wrong. So I never really entertained the idea of death, not fully anyway, I thought of it for only a few minutes at a time, and it never really hit me that it was a possibility. I believed the professionals, my doctors and my parents who told me I was strong enough to win.
I have never been rendered weaker in my life than this moment, when I have been told the hard cold truth. The truth that my cancer is back and that I am dying. Actually dying, like really. It seems so odd to know that I will die, yes I know everyone dies at some point but my death is imminent and fast approaching, it is the oddest feeling and I wonder, once more, if anyone else has ever felt this way fully.
I guess I always thought death was easy, there we no more struggling, no more pain and anger and hurt, there was just… nothing. And that seemed infinitely easier than fighting, that scraping through life bruised and broken. I always thought life was the hard part, death easy. I guess today my beliefs changed, I guess today I realised that death is just as hard as life. I always appreciated the permanence of death, that once you died everything just kind of stopped yet kept going on around you, if that makes any sense, I appreciate permanent things.
But not death.
Not anymore.
I realise belatedly that Isabella and my mother are staring at me, waiting for me to reply to whatever was said. But I can’t. I haven’t been listening and I know that seems stupid, dumb even but it is not easy to focus when a limit has just been put on your life. I know I should probably do something, reply or burst into tears but I have the urge to do neither so I nod my head hoping that is enough. It is.
Bile rises in my throat and against my lips, I gag and realise I am about to barf, like all over myself. So I stand slowly and walk purposefully out of the office we are all sitting in and to the toilet around the corner. My mother yells after me, ‘just where do I think I am going’ and ‘get back here right now Emery.’ My full name never means anything good, but I do not listen to her and I do not pause. I keep walking to the toilet, hand to my mouth holding in the vomit.
I enter the empty toilet and close the door behind me, remembering to lock it, and fall to my knees hard, surely bruising them, I wait to feel pain. I want to feel the protest of my knees of being treated so harshly but I don’t. I don’t feel anything. And I am somewhat grateful and a little disappointed, I wanted to feel pain. To feel something other than this awful numbness but I don’t.
I proceed to vomit twice, gagging and coughing, spluttering the entire time. The bile burns my throat and I am desperate to release it all, this numbness and nausea. I gag once more but no more vomit comes up. I think I have thrown up everything within me, including my fractured heart. I am almost certain I can see it staring back at me from the toilet.
I don’t realise I am crying until I sob out loud, heavy and heartfelt. I haven’t cried since I was seven and broke my leg, I have never had a reason to cry, not even when being diagnosed because I had such a good chance, I realise now as I cry that it was all lies. Everything the doctors told me gave me false hope and I am only now realising the gravity of my situation.
I realise, a tad belatedly, that while they played a part in all of this I am the only one left to blame, blame because I had hope, because I didn’t entertain the alternative of death. There is no one left to blame and I am acutely aware of this, I promise you.