Dead Wishes.

When you get sick life changes... When you get diagnosed everything turns around, and all your plans fall down. Like when you get a death sentence... and there is no hope left. 

There is two kind of sick people: patients willing to fight and patients willing to give up. But then, how can someone fight against a death sentence? You can only let it be... and suddenly every single day starts to count.  Every. Single. Day. Because you are not free like the rest anymore, you can not tell you will do something next year, or next month, or even next week! Let's don't talk about the next day, there's no such thing as "tomorrow", all you have is today. And you start wondering constantly if your life made any sense... if you can look back and say "I did well" and smile, at least me when I looked back I still don't know if I've done the right thing. Probably one of the few things I feel proud about is having been able to let people go... not because I am happy letting people go, but because it's healthier for them. What can someone do for you when there's no salvation? They only get frustrated, and you feel that your life ends up even sooner while they're too busy trying to keep you breathing. That's not for me.

If there is something I have learned well is to bear with my sadness on my own, I may not know how to handle other feelings by myself, but sadness has always been my forte. I have had to cope with depression for way too long not to know how to. One more thing added to the list of reasons to be in such state doesn't really make the difference. 

Still, I wonder why in movies, it seems once you get sick, everything turns to be perfect, everybody loves you and you have no other worries than your illness and suddenly faith recovers you and so, and so. In reality, life goes on, as usual, and the difference is that you listen to a clock in the background, that keeps on striking the time in a super rude way, like... it's super noisy. I mean, we all have a clock in the background, but when you have counted hours earlier than you thought, earlier than others, then the clock seems to be merciless, it seems the volume gets to its maximum automatically. 

Oh and your body! It turns into a real pain, in fact, that's the hardest part to hide... How to excuse the changes in your weight? Your skin color? Your energy? It's a bit hard to make up excuses all the time and convince people about everything is well... staying away from people helps them not to notice though... I wonder if they really don't notice or just close one eye, I guess I'll never know.

But then again, as you breathe, life goes on... and things hurt the same for everybody, but your clock being noisier than others dispose you to be in a constant hurry, you don't have time anymore to make decisions... at least not the time you used to have before. Suddenly you ask yourself "Should I call him?", "Should I explain to him?", "Should I let him know?", "Should I apologize one last time?", "Should I let him know one more time how much I've loved him?" but all these 'Shoulds' are useless, at the end one last question turns down all the previous ones "What for?" On the verge of collapse, you realize any move you do will end up being absolute nonsense, then you become a passive being... you become an observer... and you feel lifeless before you life end even, because there's nothing waiting for you, and there's not certain about anything anymore...  

I wonder how other people go through this, and I wonder how the fighters, fight it. My own experiences have taught me that fighting doesn't really lead me anywhere, so I ended up becoming a coward and a surrendering. I guess I don't even have the right to live anymore... I wish I could have had more time, I wish I could have done things better, I wish I could have been less weak, but all those are just wishes... dead wishes that will never come true now... Wishes that will die with me the minute my illness will decide to bring me completely down, wishes that will get buried with me... Wishes that were destined to die the day I was diagnosed, or even the day I was born. I guess the doctor was right... I guess cancer is not a joke and I guess my blood is not good enough for this world.

Still... all I care about.
[Photography by Madelaine Bustamante]