Categories > Original > Drama
STOP
Silence has a sound.
I realize this as I wait for my heart to stop beating, for my eyes to slowly close.
Red, I decided, is going to be my new favorite color.
It is the color of life. Or rather, of life rushing out of me. Forget the fact that I had hated that color ever since I was diagnosed with APL. I think it is beautiful now.
Rivers of red that once flowed through my veins seeped through my nightgown, and I am fascinated. Transfixed. Spellbound. Enthralled by the purity of its meaning, its simple meaning that life is only temporary, and can be gone with a slash of a blade. A blade, or the few words of an oncologist saying I won't live to see my sixth birthday. And you should know; I am not the only one cancer killed. It inadvertently, slyly, deviously killed my parents, too.
They had fought this battle with me of course, and it is because of them that I survived and am still here, at sixteen years of age. But to be fair, they are also why at sixteen years of age, I am choosing not to be here tomorrow.
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Hospitals are depressing. When I'm not in one, I am waiting until the next time I have to go back. It's hard to think about the next year, or the next month, or even the next day when hospitals are a second home to you and lymphocytes, granulocytes and peripheral blood stem cells are part of your vocabulary. Everyday, every hour, every minute and second, we are scared shitless of what is to come. Scared that I am not going to live long enough. That I'm going to have to go back to get blood transfusions and bone marrow transplant and undergo another round of chemotherapy and lose all my hair. That after all those times I've been going to the hospital, they're not going to work anymore and I'm going to have to stop waiting to go back there, because I'm going to have to wait to go to an entirely different -though certainly still scary- place.
It's scary, too, waiting. Waiting for the next hemorrhage, the next puff of hair on a clenched fist, the next time a doctor suggests another procedure that MIGHT cure my leukemia. Waiting for me to reject every treatment, for every organ to bail out on me, for the doctors to tell my parents to just let me go.
It's killing them, I know. But sooner or later they have to accept that I am not going to live to see my prom, or my graduation, or my wedding. I am going to die. And you know what? I'm sick of waiting for something that's going to happen anyway. I'm sick of waiting for my life to slip away. And that was why I decided to stop waiting.
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My mother loved me, I knew that. That was why every time I underwent chemo, she's there to hold my hand, why every time I threw up, she's there with a basin, why every time I wake up to hemorrhage, she's there to wake dad up to bring me to the hospital.
My father loved me, too. He was there to look after me and to look after my mom who looks after me. He is our rock, the one solid thing we know we can cling to when we find no strength to hold on, and the one who holds us when we feel like there is nothing left to cling to.
So you see, they really, truly, loved me. Only too damn much. Too much, that they forgot that I am not something that can be fixed. I am someONE that can never be fixed. Ever. No matter how much they try. Doctors told them that, yet they would not give up, would not let me go.
And as silence pounds onto my ears, as I lay waiting for darkness to claim me, I ponder this. It is true that I cannot be fixed. My parents just have to see it. It is quite sad that I got to see it first. Because really, how can you fix someone who's made to be broken?
As time passed, I got sick of hoping for the impossible. Of waiting for the inevitable. Can you blame me? Remission, relapse, remission, relapse. It has always been like that, and I don't want it to be like that anymore. Is it a crime to not want to wait for the time you die? I don't want to go back to hospitals and see the same doctors and the same nurses that I know so well, because of spending so much time in their presence. I don't want to see an empty bed in one of the rooms; that would mean a kid went up to heaven. I don't want to see strained smiles of parents waiting for their children to finish treatment and see bald kids in hospital gowns. I don't want to see my parents struggle to get some money for my infinite number of surgeries and chemotherapy and radiation. I don't want them to help me keep going around and around in the rollercoaster of life til I get dizzy and throw up.
You see, all I really wanted was for it to finally STOP.
And so I made it.
Silence has a sound.
I realize this as I wait for my heart to stop beating, for my eyes to slowly close.
Red, I decided, is going to be my new favorite color.
It is the color of life. Or rather, of life rushing out of me. Forget the fact that I had hated that color ever since I was diagnosed with APL. I think it is beautiful now.
Rivers of red that once flowed through my veins seeped through my nightgown, and I am fascinated. Transfixed. Spellbound. Enthralled by the purity of its meaning, its simple meaning that life is only temporary, and can be gone with a slash of a blade. A blade, or the few words of an oncologist saying I won't live to see my sixth birthday. And you should know; I am not the only one cancer killed. It inadvertently, slyly, deviously killed my parents, too.
They had fought this battle with me of course, and it is because of them that I survived and am still here, at sixteen years of age. But to be fair, they are also why at sixteen years of age, I am choosing not to be here tomorrow.
=================================================
Hospitals are depressing. When I'm not in one, I am waiting until the next time I have to go back. It's hard to think about the next year, or the next month, or even the next day when hospitals are a second home to you and lymphocytes, granulocytes and peripheral blood stem cells are part of your vocabulary. Everyday, every hour, every minute and second, we are scared shitless of what is to come. Scared that I am not going to live long enough. That I'm going to have to go back to get blood transfusions and bone marrow transplant and undergo another round of chemotherapy and lose all my hair. That after all those times I've been going to the hospital, they're not going to work anymore and I'm going to have to stop waiting to go back there, because I'm going to have to wait to go to an entirely different -though certainly still scary- place.
It's scary, too, waiting. Waiting for the next hemorrhage, the next puff of hair on a clenched fist, the next time a doctor suggests another procedure that MIGHT cure my leukemia. Waiting for me to reject every treatment, for every organ to bail out on me, for the doctors to tell my parents to just let me go.
It's killing them, I know. But sooner or later they have to accept that I am not going to live to see my prom, or my graduation, or my wedding. I am going to die. And you know what? I'm sick of waiting for something that's going to happen anyway. I'm sick of waiting for my life to slip away. And that was why I decided to stop waiting.
=================================================
My mother loved me, I knew that. That was why every time I underwent chemo, she's there to hold my hand, why every time I threw up, she's there with a basin, why every time I wake up to hemorrhage, she's there to wake dad up to bring me to the hospital.
My father loved me, too. He was there to look after me and to look after my mom who looks after me. He is our rock, the one solid thing we know we can cling to when we find no strength to hold on, and the one who holds us when we feel like there is nothing left to cling to.
So you see, they really, truly, loved me. Only too damn much. Too much, that they forgot that I am not something that can be fixed. I am someONE that can never be fixed. Ever. No matter how much they try. Doctors told them that, yet they would not give up, would not let me go.
And as silence pounds onto my ears, as I lay waiting for darkness to claim me, I ponder this. It is true that I cannot be fixed. My parents just have to see it. It is quite sad that I got to see it first. Because really, how can you fix someone who's made to be broken?
As time passed, I got sick of hoping for the impossible. Of waiting for the inevitable. Can you blame me? Remission, relapse, remission, relapse. It has always been like that, and I don't want it to be like that anymore. Is it a crime to not want to wait for the time you die? I don't want to go back to hospitals and see the same doctors and the same nurses that I know so well, because of spending so much time in their presence. I don't want to see an empty bed in one of the rooms; that would mean a kid went up to heaven. I don't want to see strained smiles of parents waiting for their children to finish treatment and see bald kids in hospital gowns. I don't want to see my parents struggle to get some money for my infinite number of surgeries and chemotherapy and radiation. I don't want them to help me keep going around and around in the rollercoaster of life til I get dizzy and throw up.
You see, all I really wanted was for it to finally STOP.
And so I made it.
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