A ten point update
Ten short love letters to the people and things I lost to my cancer
One: I won’t use names. You will know who you are. If you are still reading. For you, I made some writing I consider some of my best. I gave you a character in my fantastic westerns. I did you wrong once, and you took me back, only to have me do you wrong twice. I had wanted more than you could give, and at the time, I did not have the courage to admit it to myself. I wanted so much more. I still think about being inside you, about how we upset the roommates and the neighbors with the noises we made. About the lantern we set off from the roof of your house, how I did not believe it could fly, but it flew after all. Up and up and up into the sky.
Two: Your departure upset and bewildered me most of all. It had been so unexpected, and I knew — and I hope you know now too — that it wasn’t about me. It was about you. You were my Boston Wife — I wrote some of the gayest shit to you. Handwritten, sprayed with perfume (as you requested), and sealed with a literal kiss. Your home had been my home too. I thought I was going to have you forever, but I guess forever isn’t long at all. I still think of the way the salt water beaded up on your skin the three days in a row we went to China Beach. I will take you back any day. Please let me have you back one day.
Three: You were always gone. And in my time of need, you showed me just how far away you are. After all these years, you do not listen. All I ever wanted was for you to love me. All you ever did was hurt me. This was the final straw. Now there is no more.
Four: You continue to be a complicated part of my life, only now, you are a scarred ghost of your former self. You remind me of a baseball, stitched up and round. When I was a girl, and you protruded from my chest — I hated you. I was not ready for the leering gazes of men that you drew — I was just a girl. I was just a girl and you forced me to become a woman. You forced me to know shame. You forced me to know self loathing. And then … And then I really became a woman, and I embraced you. You changed. You changed a lot. I had always planned to surgically improve you, but this isn’t exactly what I had in mind. Insurance paid for it. So I guess I can’t be too mad. So I guess I can’t be too mad that after all that, here I am, mutilated, maimed — mastectomy — reconstructed (quite beautifully, I might add) and yet … at what cost? What will you cost me? Haven’t you taken enough? Will you take more? How can such a dumb slab of flesh be so vengeful?
Five: I did not know I would miss you, and I still don’t miss you, but sometimes I am sad. It was a hasty decision, and part of me feels like I was not adequately made aware of my options, but ah well — there is no going back now.
Six: All of you who became quiet. Maybe you just had nothing to say. Maybe you were embarrassed that you had nothing to say — especially since some of you could never quite shut up. I haven’t quite shut up about you. One might say I am resentful of your silence. That I am hurt. But actually, I am relieved and spiteful. It’s petty and undignified. I should grow up and get over it.
Seven: Your own cancer took you away from me. You were younger than I am. I only ever knew you on Twitter. You made me laugh when everything else just made me cry. You inspired me, and when you died, I mourned. Fuck cancer — cancer takes the best and leaves the worst.
Eight: You still float around and I am not sure what the hell to do with you.
Nine: You! Silly, stupid, naive, and youthful you! You thought you would live forever, so you smoked cigarettes and mixed your uppers with your downers, and burned the candle at both ends with a blow torch. You thought you had all the time left in the world, so you idled it away with self destructive romances, too much pot, and an indignant sense of entitlement. You thought you knew everything, and yet everything was still a heaving obstacle. You were blissful because you were ignorant, and you were ignorant of just how blissful you were. It was easy and you made it hard. And I miss you every goddamn day.
Ten: I saved the best for last. Tonight it is over. I never knew I could fall in love the way I fell in love with you. I grew up a lot with you, and then, I don’t know what happened, we grew apart. It happens. Right now it is easy to be angry, to be hurt, to feel betrayed and exploited. One day you will forgive me, and one day, I will forgive you. I don’t think either of us has ever done anything like this before. One day all the hurt feelings of tonight won’t matter because I think by then, all the dark stuff will have faded away, all the strife and all the anger, and all we will remember — all that will matter — is your hand on mine, as we sped home on your motorcycle along the coast. Good-bye, my lover. May the years melt away our foolish transgressions of trauma and of pain, and may you remember me fondly — the girl with cancer who kept her hair, but who could not keep you.
Never Tell Me the Odds is a series of short nonfiction based on and surrounding my battle with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer at the age of thirty-one while keeping my hair on my head.
