;

;

I'd been wanting to get a tattoo for some time now
but never did,
for one reason or another--who knows?
I oscillate between passionately wanting one
and thinking it's the dumbest idea.
A friend suggested I get a tattoo of a semicolon.
It's supposed to mean that I didn't choose to end my life
that I didn't put a period at the end of the sentence
that is my existence.
Choose life.
I laughed and said:
"I don't know if I subscribe to that school of thought."
thinking, the whole time
about how I still have this plan
to kill myself should it become necessary.

This is my new norm.
Cancer changed me fundamentally.
The person I've become--
I don't know her,
I don't even recognize when she's taken over my mouth--
I space out and when I've returned
the people around me have lost interest--
all have this look of pity and discomfort.

I realize I've turned into this self-absorbed, 

waxing, maudlin,

walking container of self-pity

until you can smell it oozing from my pores--

this is too heavy--
I close my mouth and scrabble for something uplifting.
There isn't.

This is my truth and it is

the only thing I have to offer at the moment.

What a downer.  Mood killer.

Give that chick a wide berth.

I keep waiting for that feeling of relief--
that feeling of regaining my life
of joy
of victory--
that feeling that I've beat cancer.
But it never comes.

Every month that ticks by
I think: "One month closer to when
this cancer comes back
and I have to do this shit all over again
--maybe.  Or maybe there's nothing to do
and I'll have to think about the train tracks again."

And every step I try to move forward
school, career, dating
I think to myself: "What's the point?"
School means more debt,
that those who survive me will have to carry.
Dating means disclosing that
I'm a time-bomb.  Maybe.
How do you live with that uncertainty?

And when someone points out that
no one else knows when their time will come
I just want to punch them in the face.
"It's not the fucking same!" I want to scream.
It's just an abstract idea for you.
For me, every cold I get--
every blood test--
every time I go to bed late after coming home from work
late, working for the insurance that doesn't seem to cover enough
and my heart races from fatigue
or my mouth is dry
or I feel hot, or wake up sweating
I think, "It's back.  It's back.  God, it's back."

It's living with fear every day.
Living with no hope.  Every day.
Living with nothing to look forward to.
No money to do those things of enjoyment.
Every day.
Trapped.  Just trapped.

Having cancer didn't build me up.
It stripped me of what was left of me.
I stripped me of joy, of hope
of thinking about the future
or planning.

It's like addiction
or depression.
Every time you think you're better
your life is trampled.
You can't make plans because your disease
is just laughing at you.
And every time, you're humiliated
by how you've gotten nowhere.
Your body failed you.
Again.
And again.
And again.
You have to carry it forever.
You have to fight forever.
You stop smiling.
Everyone else is laughing and drinking
and getting married
and having kids
and buying houses
and hosting parties
traveling on their dream vacations
even just working and being fulfilled
and you're just trying
to get through to the next minute
without drowning in the uncertainty.

All I see is Mother Nature.
The things that used to take my breath away
with beauty and power
I now bow to, in awe--not the awe of worship and love
but the awe one feels when you know
you're in the presence of something that can snuff you out
in a millisecond, and nothing you do can change that.
Raze all of your hopes and dreams and plans.
You are powerless.

I used to look at the stars and marvel

at how enormous the galaxy was.

It gave me comfort that no matter how overwhelming my life was 

no matter how terrible it felt

I was just a tiny speck on a tiny blue marble in a millisecond of time.

I used to feel comforted in my insignificance.

And now I just want to scream "Fuck you!

Why?  I don't feel lucky to have been born.

I don't feel appreciative for the chance to exist when none of the other potential

combinations of gametes never came to fruition

I didn't fucking ask for this, but You brought me here--to what?

Fuck me again?

To shove my face in my own insignificance?

Fuck you!"

And when you pause

to draw breath--your tantrum has left you breathless--you get this sense that 

Mother Nature is staring into your eyes
and unmoved by your passionate outburst 

and you're just

fucked.
She doesn't care about giving people hope.
She just is.
She's just the raw power of evolution,

this world of clumps of stardust, pressed together

to millions of degrees, so hot she glowed white with molten lava.

Her waters were here when the surface of the earth was only a Miller-Urey experiment, transmuting water

methane, ammonia, hydrogen

into organic compounds.

And she will be here far after humans are gone,

when our last monuments have long been defeated

by her rain, and wind

and all that is left of us are our teeth.

The earth spinning without you,
taunting you
You are not fit for survival.

How do you go back to living like you did before?
Mitigate this feeling of insignificance?
Why bother?  Why even get a tattoo?
In the end, it's just ink on a corpse.