Tonight, I am one of those people I can’t stand that look at sad things and read sad poems and listen to sad music and be sad.
I suck. I hate it when I do this.
The problem with being someone who “suffers from depression” is that you can’t tell the difference between sad or down or blue and depressed. You don’t know how to just be down because there are so many times when you got down and didn’t get back up. You end up being scared to be sad and suspicious of your own emotions and paranoid that this is more than just ‘regular’ sad so that every time someone asks ‘are you ok?’ you shoot back from the hip with ‘OF COURSE I’M OK-WHY WOULDN’T I BE OK-WHY DO YOU KEEP ASKING ME IF I’M OK!?’.
That’s usually when your inner-jerk whispers “only unstable people scream things like that through their teeth”.
Can you even imagine being stuck in here with this inner-jerk and my logical self arguing all the time? I wish they would just make out and get it over with.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Crazy Can't Save You From Cancer
There was no end to the excuses I would let my grandmother get away with. I would nod when she told me stories, nod when she got them backwards, nod when she called me by my mothers’ name.
I believed everything she said – every time she spoke, because she was an anomaly to me. She was fascinating and strong and beautiful. She was amazing and scary and strange and comfortable to me. There were days when she would tell me with great clarity of her love affair with my grandfather and days when she couldn’t remember his name.
When I was little and I would visit her, she would transform her entire house into yellow heaven. Yellow was my favorite color, so naturally, she would throw everything out that was anything but yellow. Soap, coffee cups, rugs, peas, toilet paper, bedspreads – every un-yellow thing had to go in the trash.
She ordered candy bars by the case. She called 800 numbers to see if someone named Ben would answer – because she wanted to talk to a Ben. She fed me cucumbers and chocolate syrup and Coca-Cola for lunch and orange-flavored cough medicine for desert. She kept a picture of Lee Majors hanging on her wall because she thought he looked like Jesus.
There was nothing on God’s earth that could have extinguished her like cancer did. It crept in unnoticed and unannounced and swept her away before she had a chance even to battle it. I held her cross when I got married and clutched her rosary when I was baptized last December, and I think about her when I see yellow in unexpected and unexplained places. She was my hero – cancer her villain.
My uncle – her son – was invincible. He was made out of pure steel – unbreakable and unsinkable. He fought in wars and in bars and was never afraid. He loved his wife madly from the minute they met until the minute he died and he never let her doubt it. There was simply nothing on earth that was strong enough to break him like cancer did. It was fast and violent and painful and we all deal with the guilt of thanking God for ending it when He did.
My grandfather wore his dress uniform to both funerals and saluted his son’s casket when it passed. I remember thinking that I’d never seen him look so handsome. I remember thinking that he looked so tired and so sad. Both times, I prayed that God would hold onto his heart and not loose all the pieces if it shattered. Both times I prayed that God would not make me see him cry. Both times I prayed that this timewould be the last time that cancer stole from my family.
My mother and her twin have both seen the shadow of cancer on their doorstep and they both check and check and recheck to see that it’s really not standing there anymore. We’ve all been told we should check and check as well, and we do.
Today, though, it feels like no matter how vigilant we’ve become, no matter how many motes and canals we dig around our castle, or how many dragons and monsters we chain to our front door – cancer keeps finding a way in. The shadows all over my grandfathers’ lungs is cancer. His heart condition has progressed to the point that a pacemaker is a necessity, but the aggressive nature of the cancer treatment he’ll need will destroy it.
Well played cancer – you fucking win again.
I believed everything she said – every time she spoke, because she was an anomaly to me. She was fascinating and strong and beautiful. She was amazing and scary and strange and comfortable to me. There were days when she would tell me with great clarity of her love affair with my grandfather and days when she couldn’t remember his name.
When I was little and I would visit her, she would transform her entire house into yellow heaven. Yellow was my favorite color, so naturally, she would throw everything out that was anything but yellow. Soap, coffee cups, rugs, peas, toilet paper, bedspreads – every un-yellow thing had to go in the trash.
She ordered candy bars by the case. She called 800 numbers to see if someone named Ben would answer – because she wanted to talk to a Ben. She fed me cucumbers and chocolate syrup and Coca-Cola for lunch and orange-flavored cough medicine for desert. She kept a picture of Lee Majors hanging on her wall because she thought he looked like Jesus.
There was nothing on God’s earth that could have extinguished her like cancer did. It crept in unnoticed and unannounced and swept her away before she had a chance even to battle it. I held her cross when I got married and clutched her rosary when I was baptized last December, and I think about her when I see yellow in unexpected and unexplained places. She was my hero – cancer her villain.
My uncle – her son – was invincible. He was made out of pure steel – unbreakable and unsinkable. He fought in wars and in bars and was never afraid. He loved his wife madly from the minute they met until the minute he died and he never let her doubt it. There was simply nothing on earth that was strong enough to break him like cancer did. It was fast and violent and painful and we all deal with the guilt of thanking God for ending it when He did.
My grandfather wore his dress uniform to both funerals and saluted his son’s casket when it passed. I remember thinking that I’d never seen him look so handsome. I remember thinking that he looked so tired and so sad. Both times, I prayed that God would hold onto his heart and not loose all the pieces if it shattered. Both times I prayed that God would not make me see him cry. Both times I prayed that this timewould be the last time that cancer stole from my family.
My mother and her twin have both seen the shadow of cancer on their doorstep and they both check and check and recheck to see that it’s really not standing there anymore. We’ve all been told we should check and check as well, and we do.
Today, though, it feels like no matter how vigilant we’ve become, no matter how many motes and canals we dig around our castle, or how many dragons and monsters we chain to our front door – cancer keeps finding a way in. The shadows all over my grandfathers’ lungs is cancer. His heart condition has progressed to the point that a pacemaker is a necessity, but the aggressive nature of the cancer treatment he’ll need will destroy it.
Well played cancer – you fucking win again.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)