Here’s a new story for you all as promised! I haven’t got a title for it yet, but maybe you guys can suggest one for me. I hope you enjoy, it’s pretty rough, and I’m open to revising.
My throat burns and acid is forced up and out of my mouth. It splashes into the toilet, little, wet drops land on my face. I cough and slick, leftovers fling off my lips. Nothing makes it go away. My friends compliment me, my boyfriend loves me, my mom cries, but I can’t stop thinking that it’s easier this way.
Melanie looked like she was fading away. She looked like the wind could pass through her skin and fall on me when I stood behind her. Her thin wrists proudly showcased the bluest veins I’d ever seen. The bruises beneath her eyes gave her the appearance of gentle decay. Melanie made her choice, but she didn’t make a pretty corpse.
When I met Melanie, she could’ve already been dead. It was clear she was at the end of her road, while I was just beginning my trip. Everyone thinks there’s hope, that there’s a light lurking behind each week that passes. The secret is that there is no getting better. There’s just surviving long enough to get your family’s hopes up.
I’ve been in and out of the hospital for two years. The doctors keep trying to shove my body into remission, but the cancer keeps coming back. The chemo is a time bomb in my stomach, I can’t keep any food in for long. I refused to shave my head so I look like a doll who’s been loved too much by a child. The bruises that paint my body are crayola marker explosions.
When someone with cancer dies of cancer people say they’ve “lost their battle” and they “fought bravely.” When someone with cancer decides they want to end their life, only other cancer patients go to their funeral. We drag our oxygen tanks out of the white world that is the cancer ward and sit in silence during their services. Where’s their family then? Where are the people who admired them before? They are sitting home, disgusted that the cancer patient “didn’t even want to try” upset that they “chose to leave them rather than fight.”
No one but other patients understand why we would decide to commit suicide rather than try and beat cancer. Even the hardiest of patients who chose to keep going through the same chemo routine year after year, have thought about ending it on their own terms once or twice.
That’s because while non-patients see it as giving up and leaving, we know that it’s the ultimate fight. It’s ending our lives with dignity, it’s being ourselves till the very end. The choice to end our lives is something the cancer can’t take away. It may take our vanity, our autonomy, our job, our strength, but it can’t take our choice to die the way we want to.
I won’t be alive to see my own funeral, but I already know what it will look like. My family won’t put an obituary in the paper, too ashamed. It will be a private event, but a few of the patients in the ward will make it anyway. The patients will be jealous and love me. My family, the few members who show up anyway, will be full of hatred. Behind those opaque tears rests the disdain for me. I left them. They loved me as best they could, and I left them.
At first I tried to get my family to understand why I wanted to die. I gave up after a few months of begging and pleading for them to truly step in my shoes. They kept saying that if they were in my position, they would stay. My shoes are just too small for them to try on.
I stand up from the tile floor as a nurse rushes in and fusses over me. I never push the nurse call button. If I’m going to vomit, I’m going to do it alone rather than with someone holding a plastic bin under my chin. The nurse helps me back into bed and asks if I need anything. I don’t answer. She knows my answer. I need to die, and I’m going to. In nine days I will be dead. I’ve already stopped living though. I haven’t spoken to anyone in days, and I’ve barely eaten. Maybe I’ll die before the physician even has a chance to do his job. Thankfully, you can’t regret anything from the grave.
-AcuteAnimosity
AcuteAnimosity 