Living with it. Living is the operative word when you feel like you're dying inside. But there is breath in my lungs and my heart is still beating. The thing that makes me feel the most alive though is the anger that has filled my being, tingling throughout my fingertips and toes. The way the voices around me sear through my brain, eroding it in painful ways. I can laugh, fully, heartily, but my heart is breaking in unimaginable ways every second. And the worst part about living with it, is either feeling so much of everything is suffocating, or feeling nothing at all.
I guess that the hardest part is that all of you aren't living with it. "How are you?" and I know you don't want to know. You ask out of guilt but I could lie and you're fine with that. Dues paid. But I'm not okay, I am so far from "okay" it scares me.
"How's your brother?"
"He's okay but-" and sometimes that's all I can let out before you are enunciating how good it is that he is still breathing. But I can see every heartbeat beneath his pale skin, he's hollowed out, all ribs and hips. His hair thinning, looking 50 instead of 15. His once active body lies stagnant under fleece blankets while he gags down nausea pills only to throw them up again. We were rewarded with a positive prognosis so you change the subject because you aren't watching the good being leached out along with the bad.
Stop asking if you don't want to hear it.
Because just like us, he has bad days, and my fears don't get put to bed when my professor hands me an article on the origin of cancer. Or when you tell me that treatments have come so far so I have nothing to worry about, but he has defied every normal thus far. Every cough, sneeze or speck of dust causes me to cringe. I am living in amongst you but far enough away that even with your questioning I am alone. I am achingly lonely in the idea that we are dealing with this alone.
I'm sorry, for not being myself and available for anyone and everyone all the time. I'm sorry for the test scores that show how little I studied. I'm sorry that I kept you up till two am because I was too loud. And I'm sorry for not being present.
And lastly, I'm sorry for being angry.
