2 years, 3 weeks, and 6 days. That's how long it's been since I was diagnosed. That's how long it's been since I'd been poisoning my body for my parents' sake more than mine. When you're a kid, you always think that you're gonna do something special. That you're gonna be remembered. What you don't think of is all that could go wrong.
So you might've guessed it. I have terminal brain cancer. I mean, it doesn't impact my ability to think, it just gives me constant migraines and sometimes makes me dizzy. The doctors say I could live out the rest of my life with no troubles if the chemo continues working. But that's the thing: it hasn't. I mean yeah, it's still shrinking the tumor, but the process is slowing down and the tumor grows in between chemo treatments. So I guess technically the tumor is growing faster than the chemo can treat it. If you couldn't understand that, and I need to dumb it down even more for you, it means that I'm dying.
Let's get some background in. God knows that's a conversation starter. I grew up in church. It was a family church, so it was small. I got saved at a young age, when I didn't even really know what it meant to be 'saved,' so I was basically just telling people I was saved by Christ when really I wasn't changed in any way, it just made it sound like I was a better person, so I went with it. Getting older, I don't believe any more. There's so much evil in the world. If there was a God, He sure as hell wouldn't have let it get this bad. Unless he was just too busy and gave up on us. So I guess I'm atheist. But I still go to church. It makes my parents happy. I guess they think that I'll be magically healed by the hand of Jesus or whatever. I'm just ready to die.
I don't technically mean I'm completely done with life, because I'm not. There's so much I wanna do and see, but I won't be able to. I just want to end the suffering, and that doesn't just mean mine. I want to end the suffering of my parents, my friends, and anyone else that might notice I'm dead.
It's not just cancer that separates me from the rest of the world. I was an outcast before I was diagnosed. I'm just different. I've always been different. You have most of the world that would give anything to fit in, to be noticed by someone. They would go so far as to sell their soul to the Devil or whatever in exchange for fame and riches. I'd rather be in the background and not be seen. Privacy is heaven when you're sick.
My family isn't exactly what someone would call wealthy. I mean, we get by, but it's not exactly the easiest. Back when the chemo started, my mom had emergency funds put back, but after 2 years, the money's drained, and I'm to blame. It's not like I chose to get cancer, but it happened.
So last week, my mom read a bunch of articles about how to decease tumor sizes or whatever and came up with the idea that I should go back to school and make a bunch of friends and live happy and the tumor would apparently, with the help of chemo, disappear. But there's a few problems. First, I'd rather jump off of a bridge rather than bring myself to talk to someone first, and nobody wants to be friends with someone who's diseased. I learned that the hard way, when I told one of my best friends about the cancer about a month after I was diagnosed. It went a little something like me crying when I told her and her asking me to leave and then proceeding to ignore my calls and texts. Oh what fun that was.
I tried my best to convince my mom that going to school was a terrible idea and would just make everything worse, but she wasn't having any of it. The choice wasn't mine to begin with I guess, because it wasn't my life or anything like that, note the sarcasm. So it was settled; I was going back to school. This should be interesting.
