I Don't Know How (Living Without Hope)

I don't know how I survived cancer.
I absolutely expected to die.
I can't even explain why I bothered
with chemotherapy
(when I did not believe it would work).
I suppose I did it to comfort my mother.

Perhaps it was because I have had
a life of disappointment--
or rather, a life in which I had decided
no longer to acknowledge
the disappointment that was knit into my being
from conception.

My father married my mother
after his first wife abandoned my brothers
and ran away with a plumber,
after he had moved them all to America
with the hopes of opening a restaurant.
He never opened a restaurant.
He was the garbage and dish boy
at a restaurant for twenty years.
Disappointment.

My mother lost faith
when a married Christian mentor--
a deacon, an elder,
who she admired
asked her to run away with him.
He promised to betray his oath
to a God she believed in--
that she thought he believed in.
And then (she never said this, but I suspect)
it is likely he assaulted her
in a moment if obsessed desperation.
To see him tumble off his pedestal--
to see that no man could be as godly
as God--
Disappointment.

My parents married each other,
for twenty-one years--
with no love
no affection.
Only resentment, suspicion,
longsuffering, disgust.
I remember the day I said to my mother,
Mom, I wouldn't be here if you
and dad didn't get married,
but, it wasn't worth it.
I look at you, and I see all of this
wasted life.
If I could trade my life
for you to have a second chance--
for you to have had a marriage
full of love and joy,
even if it meant I would never exist,
I would make that trade.
Disappointment.

I was born into a marriage built upon disgust
into a home embroiled in debt.
A house in total disrepair,
infested, molded, leaking,
In a neighborhood fraught with violence
and poverty and squalor,
and a simmering fury at injustice
over the sweaty stench of desperation.
Parents raising children in a world without hope--
with an understanding that
they were inheriting a life
where they would work to eat, and eat to work.
Living a life where practicality superseded dreams
and survival superseded purpose,
and vacations were imaginary things
that you heard tell
but you'd never been on.
You worked because you woke that day
and you slept because you must work tomorrow.
Sleep, eat, work, sleep, eat, work;
a world without flavor
a life without hope.
My entire life has been a practice
of living without living.
But I am alive;
I just don't know how
or why.

Xiao-bai

To this day, I don't think I have forgiven my parents for not telling me my dog was sick and dying. There is a special bond between an only child and her dog; a debt that a woman could never repay to the furry soul that taught her how to be a good and decent human. I don't think I will ever stop being furious that she was taken by a stranger to the vet to be put down, alone, scared, in pain. She should have gone in the arms of someone who loved her. She should have been kissed into eternal sleep. I would have left school. I would have come home for her if I had known. It was a cowardly thing for my parents to keep it from me. It was dishonorable to think that such a faithful friend did not receive the dignity to die with the person who loved her the most. I never even got to say goodbye. It is strange to think, that of all the things I have lived through, the death of a dog would be the thing that still hurts the most in my 31 years of existence. My friends who are parents--never do this to your children. Let me disabuse you of the idea that you are sparing them any pain by keeping them from a dying loved one. All you are doing is stealing from them their chance for closure.

I want it to be said of me that I was kind, that I fought injustice, and that I died a freed mind.

So Quickly It Fades

So Quickly It Fades

So quickly it fades--
the memories of pain, gnawing at the empty spaces
in the matrices of your bones,
fear sloshing through the caverns
of calcium,
tainted with nausea.
So quickly it fades--
the familiar desperation you feel
shielding the flickering flame,
straining to see into the voids,
following the ripples between stalagmites,
searching for a way out that
simply doesn't exist.
The only thing there is the one
other thing consuming the oxygen
you desperately need--
you need it to see
but the longer it burns
the less you can breathe--
as if there wasn't precious little enough
already.
So quickly it fades--
that deep, sinking feeling of realization
that up here in the air, where you breathe
where you have minutes of life left
(which is not much, but it's more than no minutes left)
is going to be your grave, and the only way
the only way
you might get out--might--
is to leave the air.
You put your face, your head
down
into the water,
when the burn of carbon dioxide makes you
heave, desperate to breathe,
desperate to inhale
you just grit your teeth--
sometimes you can't even do that so you
keep swimming with your mouth open
with the water pushing the air bubble
back into your mouth
and you tuck your chin
and keep the pressure just so--
and you keep, pulling yourself through
deeper and deeper through
the indignities.
Oh, God.  The indignities.
So quickly it fades--
the memory of the indignities.
How to explain the indignity?
First, it's just a fever that comes and goes--
the weakness,
the sweating through your shirt and down your face
like someone opened a faucet in your hairline
and under your pits
and the dizziness and exhaustion so deep
and profound that a single breath more feels too taxing to perform.
They think you're faking.  Attention seeking.
Hypochondriac.  You can see it in their eyes
as they write down your symptoms between pen clicks.
Just a flu.  Just a bug.  Doxycycline
shot of steroids, some painkillers.
Been too stressed.
Get some sleep.  You'll be fine.
Then, come the tests.
They call it poking and prodding,
but what they really mean
is 5 AM lights on
needles fishing around under your skin
and deep into your radial artery--
or at least in the vicinity of the radial artery
--or into the side of your neck
with the large bore needles
again and again and again
failure after failure after failure
until they throw up their hands and go
"fuck it, time to Edward Scissorhands this bitch."
Then when the test comes back positive
they need to check if the cancer
has infiltrated your bones
so they take a little peen hammer
and a large bore needle
pull down your pants
swab your hip
and hammer deep into you and tear your marrow out.
Then, on to the port insertion:
A slice, and a finger inserted into the wound
and wiggled around to loosen the skin
like one would to a Thanksgiving turkey
except instead of butter and thyme and salt
a tube and a port
then a few rough stitches and skin glue
because
"We're radiology not plastics."
Except I'm 28 and the only part of my body
that I like is my decolletage--
my boobs are my only redeeming asset
on an otherwise failure of a body.
But this seems like small beans.
The real indignity begins with the puking--
so much puking, so violently
until you're not sure that what's on your face
or in your eyes or up your nose
or in your mouth
is bile, or food chunks
or tears
or blood
or chyme
or splashes of toilet water
blown back up like a geyser in the wake
of the violence of your vomit and dripping
back down like light percussion.
But even that pales in comparison
to the indignity of the shits.
And the shits are so shitty.
You squirt.  Yeah.
You can't even feel when you need to go
until you go
and sometimes you go when you sneeze
or stand up.
The shit just squirts
and the real winners are when
you vomit and the force of the
vomit causes the squirt.
And then the real winners are when
you get a little golden trickle in there, too.
All while your bald, pimply,
eyebrowless, eyelashless head hangs in the toilet
getting a fecal chaser.

So quickly it fades, these memories.
The vows to live life
are quickly consumed by the necessities to live
to eat, to house oneself,
to buy insurance (oh, the irony).
And school.  And work.
And your identity grows
as your strength grows
as your hair grows
as your brain grows back--

and then--
and then...

The fevers and night sweats, and nausea
and exhaustion so deep and profound that taking
another breath seems beyond you
start up again
and,
every minutia of the absolute terror
that is the cancer
that is the indignity and fear
and regret and sadness
and fury at the unfairness of the world
slams you right onto your ass
and you are just--humbled
by your absolute powerlessness,
and it's like the hysterical coward that was within you
was never triumphed over at all.

Priorities: A Reflection on Christianity

I delayed this post to avoid diverting attention from the memory of one of this country's most iconic (if not the most iconic) Civil Rights leaders, but this resonated so much with me that I had to write something. I literally got into a shouting match last Thursday, during which I called pious Christians who were praying for God's second coming as terrorists--as in, if your goal is to end life on earth, and if your goal is to cause the end of this world you are a terrorist. You're praying for millions of people to die due to circumstance, because they don't believe what you believe, or live the way you want them to live. If you believe that you are better, that you are chosen, that you are predestined by virtue of your birth, and that the rest of the world is rebellious and stubborn and unaccepting of your god's ways and therefore should burn and be ended you are a terrorist. Don't talk to me about the goodness of God until you preoccupy yourself with practically caring for those around you. Don't tell me about the value and necessity of believing in God and accepting him as your savior. I am not concerned with your threats. I do not need the threat of Gehenna or the reward of the New Jerusalem to live my life in a way that is kind and generous and honorable to my fellow humans. And if your god and your afterlife is actually real, but filled with sanctimonious shits, I'd rather go to hell and be with my people who are fighting day in and day out to bring social justice now.

Happy Two Year Remission Anniversary To Me

'Nuff Said.

New Years Resolutions

We're fast approaching the season for new years resolutions, gym memberships, starvation, and self-flagellation, so before we get to Jan 1st, I want to get this message out there.

There is no shame in trying to improve yourself.

I do want to stress, however, that when you make your new years resolutions, it is important that you come to those decisions out of a place of love and not self-hatred. (I'm particularly focusing on the dieting and the working out frenzy that inevitably occurs, but this applies to everything--to school, to your career, to your relationships, etc.) I have struggled with body image most of my life, and I will tell you this: even at my thinnest (160 pounds in college, whereas now I'm around 215), and my stomach was flat, and I had no back rolls, and I had a thigh gap, I was still unhappy with myself.
I was starving all the time, and sleeping 2 hours a night. I was losing hair and bleeding from my gums, and I stopped getting my period from the sudden weight loss, and still I wasn't pretty enough or skinny enough. I was never fast enough, strong enough, muscular enough, athletic enough, even when I was swimming sub 7 minute five hundreds, which was something I never thought would happen, even when I was playing water polo, even when I was able to really run a full mile, and do handstands--I was never good enough for myself. The self-hatred would have been impossible for me to shed. In fact, even when I was diagnosed with cancer, I hated my body. I felt that it was a traitor--that for some reason it kept holding me back and this weakness--this cancer--was the final, bitter betrayal--a mere 28 years of mediocrity before biting the dust. I felt that my soul and my heart and my brain deserved a better vessel. But then, I started undergoing treatment, and I watched as my body became the only protection for my soul and my heart. My body is the only anchor for me to this plane of existence. My body is my vessel, and it, in all of its fat and jiggliness, in all of its aching joints, and imperfect skin, in it's thinning, stubbornly straight hair, in its fat calves, and flat feet--it fought tooth and nail to keep me here. I watched chemotherapy cut through my cells. I puked blood. I watched as my white blood cell count dropped precipitously. I shed all of the hair. I closed my eyes and huddled in bed and my mind and my heart surrendered to death, but my body did not give up. My body refused to die. Yes, it is fat. Yes it is old and sore and I take way too much Ibuprofen, and I have to ice my knees and shins multiple times a day. Yes, I now need 9 hours of sleep a night instead of 4, and even then I still have to snort espresso beans to wake up. Yes, I may never be as strong as I was at 18, but this vessel of bones and muscle and sinew is the only home I've got.

Maybe you won't understand this. Maybe it's impossible to understand something like this until you experience something as humbling as cancer. But I implore you, when you make your resolutions, make them out of love.

Do not hate yourself. Do not hate your body. It's the only home you have.