Please don’t take this the wrong way but you must be the worst thing that happens every 6 days. I know it’s not your fault that you are such a drag. Honestly, I too would have a hard time competing with Friday Saturday and Sunday. Have you ever taken note of how relaxed Sunday is? She doesn’t rush people; instead she lets them do as they please and more importantly, at their own pace. Funny how she doesn’t even come with a dress code. But you my friend are the classic example of sibling rivalry, always stealing Sunday’s thunder. Even before she’s ready to depart, you hurriedly let yourself in. That’s just rude!
As if that is not enough, you arrive with all these expectations of early mornings and keeping people on their toes. You should give some serious consideration to a smoother transition given Sunday’s grace and elegance. By the way do they pack extra hours into you or why do just keep unfolding infinitely? You never seem to end.
Anyway, at least you only come once in 6 days, otherwise we’d have to impeach or assassinate you. Do me a favour will you, if you happen to bump into Friday on your way out, let him know that I really miss him? No one knows how to give a good ‘pick-me-up’ than Friday-especially in the evening. Kindly ask him to move it along and get here soon. If you can put in a good word for me with Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to speed things up for Friday, I’ll be really grateful. It would also mean you are not so bad.
Ps# take your time coming back when you leave this time.
Yours truly.
.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
So life goes.....
Here I am today at the end of my rope, I know the end is coming but I still won’t give up the hope that a miracle might just happen. I feel like one hanging over a cliff, at its foot thousands of feet below are jutting rocks against which raging waves crash. Up here with me is a hand that’s a few inches too late out my grasp. All I have to clinging on to is grass whose roots are embedded in moist soil thanks to the humidity. I can feel the fall coming, I know it’s coming, in a few seconds the grass will give. I see myself falling through the air, I imagine the agony of my body crashing into the waiting rocks below, I just hope it will be over soon.
*****************************
"The results came back, I’m sorry but I don’t have good news." These were the words that shattered my life as I knew it and got me where I am today. Breast cancer. That’s the monster I have been fighting for 3 years. I can’t quite capture in words, the precise moment when someone makes it know to you that you have a terminal illness, but I’ll try.
It’s like you take a walk out of your being, so when it’s all broken down to you, you are like a spectator. You can hear all of it, but it sounds like it’s addressed to someone else. Then there’s the blood rush that makes your head feel like it’s about to explode. Your stomach feels like it’s just been turned upside down too fast for your liking and at the back of your head you’re clinging on to a hope that all this is but a dream.
I didn’t know who tell first, my mum, my best friend, my girls, my boyfriend. I wanted to keep it to myself, to protect all of them from it. That’s how I always deal with things. I retracted to myself in the hope that if I didn’t tell them, I would wake up one day and find it was gone and no one will ever have to worry about it. With time though reality dawns on you, the treatment, the cost and the mere fact that your life isn’t just yours alone.
Being my mother’s daughter, she was the first one I told. I have had my heart broken before to a point where I thought I would never recover but I always bounce back, but the pain I saw in my mother’s eyes that day, my heart is beyond repair. She’s a mother; she masked her pain effortlessly and promised me that we were going to fight this thing to the end. "No one is taking you away from me before you give me grandchildren, not even some darned cancer." The fierce in me, I got it from mama.
With time I told my friends too. In itself, trying to fight a terminal illness is enough pain and strain. However when you see someone who genuinely cares for you struggle with the fact that they might lose you sooner than later, it aggravates the pain to another level. We all know death is a certainty but it always seems so when it’s far from us, when it’s someone else dealing with it.
*********************************
It is hard to believe that something that brought me pain, embarrassment, pleasure, attention and ultimately defined me as a woman is now eating away at my life.
At the beginning, it was in one breast and so the doctors recommended a mastectomy. They said we’d caught it early, though chemo wouldn’t really help. Cutting it off was the only hope at saving my other cells. Tell a girl to give up her breast before she even gets to nurse her first baby and she’ll call you crazy. I wish I had the choice. I was the first to say we go for it, but when I came to after the operation, I wanted it back. It comes with the promise of better health but nothing prepares you for the trauma, the awkwardness and the pain that comes with a mastectomy.
The thing with cancer is once it lives in your body, it never really goes away. One year after the mastectomy. The doctor found another lump. This time round, he promised chemo and radiation would do the trick. A good friend of mine has been spotting a bald look since I started my chemo sessions, God bless her soul. I kept asking the doctor why we couldn’t just chop off the other. Chemo is a nightmare that I wouldn’t wish even on my worst of enemies. You stomach won’t hold anything and you basically feel like an alien in your own body.
Prior to this last 3 years, I thought I had lived life. I thought I was doing everything anyone my age should be doing or would want to be doing. I lived life on the fast lane; I didn’t put much thought into issues like the future. I mean life has a way of working itself out, so I kept telling myself. There’s so much, I wanted to do but never did get round to for one reason or the other. However you sit in a hospital bed knowing your life is just about over and you wish you had done so many things differently.
**********************************
They found a lump in my lungs; the cancer’s breaking up and moving to other parts. I have already eaten into enough of my mother’s savings. My friends came together and put up a fund for my treatment and I feel that I have overstretched their generosity.
I am ready to give up now. It doesn’t matter how hard I fight it, it is worse than my doctor will let on. I have accepted my fate. The sooner I let go of the people I have held emotionally hostage owing to my situation, the sooner they can get back to their lives and live out what I couldn’t.
I have a chance to reach out for that hand, but I chose to let it go. I chose to let every one go. This is my fate, and I have come to terms with it. I am ready for the jutting rocks; I know their love will cushion my fall. It will be over soon.
The pain I leave behind is immense, but I can only pray that you do me one favour. Live your life now, don’t wait till you are dying to realize you have just been existing. Don’t make excuses.
*****************************
"The results came back, I’m sorry but I don’t have good news." These were the words that shattered my life as I knew it and got me where I am today. Breast cancer. That’s the monster I have been fighting for 3 years. I can’t quite capture in words, the precise moment when someone makes it know to you that you have a terminal illness, but I’ll try.
It’s like you take a walk out of your being, so when it’s all broken down to you, you are like a spectator. You can hear all of it, but it sounds like it’s addressed to someone else. Then there’s the blood rush that makes your head feel like it’s about to explode. Your stomach feels like it’s just been turned upside down too fast for your liking and at the back of your head you’re clinging on to a hope that all this is but a dream.
I didn’t know who tell first, my mum, my best friend, my girls, my boyfriend. I wanted to keep it to myself, to protect all of them from it. That’s how I always deal with things. I retracted to myself in the hope that if I didn’t tell them, I would wake up one day and find it was gone and no one will ever have to worry about it. With time though reality dawns on you, the treatment, the cost and the mere fact that your life isn’t just yours alone.
Being my mother’s daughter, she was the first one I told. I have had my heart broken before to a point where I thought I would never recover but I always bounce back, but the pain I saw in my mother’s eyes that day, my heart is beyond repair. She’s a mother; she masked her pain effortlessly and promised me that we were going to fight this thing to the end. "No one is taking you away from me before you give me grandchildren, not even some darned cancer." The fierce in me, I got it from mama.
With time I told my friends too. In itself, trying to fight a terminal illness is enough pain and strain. However when you see someone who genuinely cares for you struggle with the fact that they might lose you sooner than later, it aggravates the pain to another level. We all know death is a certainty but it always seems so when it’s far from us, when it’s someone else dealing with it.
*********************************
It is hard to believe that something that brought me pain, embarrassment, pleasure, attention and ultimately defined me as a woman is now eating away at my life.
At the beginning, it was in one breast and so the doctors recommended a mastectomy. They said we’d caught it early, though chemo wouldn’t really help. Cutting it off was the only hope at saving my other cells. Tell a girl to give up her breast before she even gets to nurse her first baby and she’ll call you crazy. I wish I had the choice. I was the first to say we go for it, but when I came to after the operation, I wanted it back. It comes with the promise of better health but nothing prepares you for the trauma, the awkwardness and the pain that comes with a mastectomy.
The thing with cancer is once it lives in your body, it never really goes away. One year after the mastectomy. The doctor found another lump. This time round, he promised chemo and radiation would do the trick. A good friend of mine has been spotting a bald look since I started my chemo sessions, God bless her soul. I kept asking the doctor why we couldn’t just chop off the other. Chemo is a nightmare that I wouldn’t wish even on my worst of enemies. You stomach won’t hold anything and you basically feel like an alien in your own body.
Prior to this last 3 years, I thought I had lived life. I thought I was doing everything anyone my age should be doing or would want to be doing. I lived life on the fast lane; I didn’t put much thought into issues like the future. I mean life has a way of working itself out, so I kept telling myself. There’s so much, I wanted to do but never did get round to for one reason or the other. However you sit in a hospital bed knowing your life is just about over and you wish you had done so many things differently.
**********************************
They found a lump in my lungs; the cancer’s breaking up and moving to other parts. I have already eaten into enough of my mother’s savings. My friends came together and put up a fund for my treatment and I feel that I have overstretched their generosity.
I am ready to give up now. It doesn’t matter how hard I fight it, it is worse than my doctor will let on. I have accepted my fate. The sooner I let go of the people I have held emotionally hostage owing to my situation, the sooner they can get back to their lives and live out what I couldn’t.
I have a chance to reach out for that hand, but I chose to let it go. I chose to let every one go. This is my fate, and I have come to terms with it. I am ready for the jutting rocks; I know their love will cushion my fall. It will be over soon.
The pain I leave behind is immense, but I can only pray that you do me one favour. Live your life now, don’t wait till you are dying to realize you have just been existing. Don’t make excuses.
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