Cancer
#9 of Psyche
Written from a time where I think my innocence was lost. Part of The Furry Mind series dealing with hard issues. This is based on events that, very sadly, actually happened.
So, this is something that I never spoke up about, about twelve years down the line. It still feels like yesterday.
Story (c) Amethyst Mare (Arian Mabe)
Cancer
One more book, one more page. One more website, one more scroll.
Come on, you can do this. I believe in you.
It's late at night and, still, I'm up, reading and reading, the light from the laptop screen illuminating my face. The bedroom surroundings are familiar but they've never looked so different, alien and foreign in a landscape that I never expected to traverse.
Not yet. Please, not yet.
I don't know what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, why things are like this. All I know is this pain, this ache in my chest, the hollowness in my gut.
Eat? I can't remember the last time I ate. I push food around my plate at dinner and make it look like I ate something. I don't know why no one's called me on it, cutting all my food up into tiny pieces just to drag it out, to make it look...real.
Another screen. Lung cancer. A cure? I don't know if I believe them anymore. You don't see the depth of the scams until you delve into the ones that prey on the vulnerable.
Only, in a way, I've become one of the vulnerable. I'm one of those now staying up late into the night, the early hours of the morning, coursework left undone, because I want to find a way out of this. I want to make it go away, to make it not real, to fix it, for everything to go back to the way it used to be.
Only, it's not that easy. It's never that easy.
Fuck.
What am I doing? The library in the day. I seem to be here in the blink of an eye with little to no recollection of the time spent in getting here. They know me here but they've not seen me take out books like this before, books on cancer, what it is, how cells mutate. You could say that it was never a topic that I'd had any reason to think all that much on before. But now I have to, because this is the world that has snatched me up, the jaws of a beast clutching bearing down.
Did the teeth pierce my skin yet? I'm not so sure that I would even notice.
A beast, a monster, all to be defeated. That's what cancer is. And neither is there any shame in losing the battle, for it is a fearsome monster indeed. It's the pain, however, spreading far and wide, in the triumph of cancer that is the true penalty, the cruelty that lies beneath the skin of the initial fight.
Where one may be at peace, knowing no pain, cancer's pain lingers insidiously in every crack of every fractured defence.
I feel it now, the impending loss. I turn another path, looking for a new book. I don't know why I think there's something in the library that will make things better when scientists and doctors have not found a cure for everything, but I still have to try. It's all I can do, the very act of it forcing air into my lungs and breath out.
Breathe in, breathe out.
It's not so difficult.
But it is.
The pain, it lies with me every day. I don't want to sleep, I don't want to eat. All I can do is be with them, to try my best, even when I think everything is failing and fading and crumbling away from my fingertips. The world that I thought I knew has broken and fractured and is shattering before my eyes even as I slice my hands up trying to get it back, all to no avail.
Is this how all was supposed to end? Is this how the day comes to a close?
Lectures. I lean against the wall, frozen, stiff, not feeling. And feeling everything at the same time. The dull roar of pain throbs through me with every beat of my heart, something that not even I can escape. When the beast is inside, there is no running from it: it comes right along with you.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Try, just try. You have to.
Only, I can't. Every day is a struggle and just what is my struggle in comparison to someone that is going through it? What is my struggle compared with the one who has cancer, who has been given three months...
No. Don't think like that. Do what you need to do. Do everything. You have to.
I have no choice, carrying on. The act of life must be kept up, even if it is merely a farce to me by this point. Breathing, walking, talking, doing the bare minimum. Things have to carry on, one way or another. Yet I don't know how to keep up the pretence when the world has taken on so many shades of grey.
Colours have faded. Times have changed. Can the world ever go back to the way it was?
Some notice me, some don't. But I don't need to be noticed. This is my burden to carry alone, researching, trying, doing all I can to make the days...maybe a little bit better for them.
It's all I can do and yet it is still not enough, nothing will ever be enough. I could spend all day and night with them and it will never be enough, never enough. I will never be enough for someone to fill their time in the last months of their life, the failing of the closing days of their life. How did this responsibility end up on me? I'm sixteen, only sixteen, just sixteen... And no one knows, no one can know, because I don't think they'll understand.
I don't have the energy to explain it to them. So, I must go on alone.
Turning the page, reading, researching. Maybe if I try this, maybe if I send them that, maybe that will make a difference. Maybe it'll be the one thing that will work and I won't have to face this alone anymore.
Maybe, just maybe.
Keep walking, keep reading. Forget sleep. Time is short.
So short.
Ignore the pain. It's not real. It's just something in your chest, an ache in your stomach. Stay up, do more, be more. If you do more, maybe you can save him. You know why he's upset with you, anyone would act differently, strangely, if they had cancer. Ignore it, keep going. It's not real.
But it feels real. It cuts and it burns and so many tears have been shed. But I must keep studying, researching, a tiny pebble against a tidal wave that will sweep me away sooner or later.
If I try, maybe it'll all be okay.
If I try, maybe he'll be okay.
If I try...maybe...
Maybe.
Just maybe.
Please note, this was written about a time when I was in a relationship that was later realised to be abusive. The partner (ex-partner) of the time is assumed to have lied about having terminal cancer after seeking further information from those who have gone through it. I hope this provides useful context.