the timeless passages of my mind and soul

This is unconventional. But cancer has that quality too. Maybe that’s why it chose me, because we are both unconventional. Instead of writing a long article, here are the emotions and the thoughts that consumed my mind while I had cancer from ages 11-12, with my limb-salvation. And ages 14-15, with my hip disarticulation amputation. All un-edited. Still here like the irksome ghost of Christmas past, haunting me. No, the passages are not in any specific order. Memories do not come in order, they come in the moment you are reminded of them. I hope some part of you can relate to at least one stanza, or just a couple of lines, and feel a little less alone today.

This is my mind and soul, timelessly.

•••
Every now and then I think about shaving my head again and
how maybe if I shave my head again,
flowers will start to grow out of my eyes, blinding me with the beauty
I wished the real world could look like.
Maybe if I shave my head again,
I’ll be able to act like I did back then.
Maybe if I shave my head,
the change will be enough to change how this ends.

•••
autopsy on the stars
To heal is not to travel to space and smile.
it’s not to make it to the final star so that when you get there you’ll be over it.
You’ll be okay.
To heal is to forgive yourself and keep forgiving yourself every single day.
on nights when the air is thick and the sky is so close we can reach and touch it.
We put a knife to the sky and we climbed inside.
When we close our eyes we see only colored lights.
an autopsy on the stars.
I think we’ll make it out alright.
because when tragedy strikes and the daytime twisted right, if we close our eyes and stop for now, the night tells us that “it will be fine”

•••
I am the “happy” character. I am the side character with the abnormal backstory. I am the “funny” character, who says something in between conversations that make you laugh until your stomach hurts. But I can’t laugh about this anymore, I just can’t. I did it the first time, believing everything was going to be fine– because I was one of the ones who survived to tell the tale. But then I went to war again, and I feel as though if I laugh once more, the universe will write the script for me to wear my uniform again.

•••
My legs are made of glass.
They’ll shatter as soon as I take another step, and leave me
lying on the floor with the broken pieces of myself, drowning me in my own wake.
Moments like this, it’s hard to pick myself up, and the crutches I turn to
seem to shatter me more and more.

•••
We are pages in a book we wish someone would annotate.
Some chapters we wish we could rip out.
Don’t read. Blur the sentences.
But someone will give you certainty when you’ve only lived in doubt.
Some words we cannot seem to understand.
Like “strength” and “hope”
Like “shattered” and “unraveled”
It never begins to surprise me.
When the story rewinds, past chapters blur and
forces me to relive those dying moments
again.

•••
replaced anew
You cannot change what already happened.
You cannot glue your hair back to your head.
Accepting who you are to be means changing the definition of you, of your “me”.
Because hair grows back over time.
Each part of you, that you lose, is replaced anew.
And though your edges might be frayed,
your straight now curly,
your brown now blonde,
even though it’s different,
your roots are still holding on.
Though it feels so tough when you’re weak and torn, tomorrow will come.
You must move on.

•••
My hair is starting to fall out. Instead of waiting until chucks and chunks of my hair are left on my pillow when I wake up, reminding me of what’s happening, I decided to shave my head early unlike four years ago, right after the first round of chemotherapy. I cut my hair in my room, with the help of my aunt as emotional support. My dad shaved my head. Again. While he was, I was taking mirror selfies (as a teenage girl does in a crisis) and whispered to me: “You’re a good sport”. I love my father, I really do. He’s a smart, funny-ish, loving father. But newsflash to everyone: I don’t want nor wish to be a good sport.

•••
intoxicatingly angry
I am angry
I am intoxicatingly angry at her.
It’s poison, filling my body, suffocating me until I cannot breathe,
cannot even function
I loath everything about her,
I notice everything
she does that’s so stupidly wrong.
I hate her teeth: the crooked,
bleeding when brushed,
never quite white teeth.
I hate her hands: the uncounted jagged scars,
bulky size,
insanely shaky hands.
She’s a fake.
A liar, a con-artist who gives no attention
to anyone but herself.
A greedy, selfish,
undeserving being
who doesn’t deserve the second chance
she was given.
The second chance that so many others
could’ve done better things with, than her.
I cannot help screaming
the criticism at her when i see her.
But what I hate even more is that sometimes
when the shower is on, I intentionally fog the mirror,
to spare myself from seeing her again.

•••
I remember hearing I got cancer again. It was straight after school and both of my parents came to pick me up. They said I couldn’t go to the library with my friends so I knew something was up. Because of recent events, I felt like it was something bad. And I felt correctly. Because my biopsy results came back: I had osteosarcoma. Again. 2 years later after finishing treatment. What. A. Fucking. Joke.

•••
I hate being different, looking different, having different needs. Sure I constantly joke about it to everyone, it’s fine, it’s funny, and people laugh off their discomfort of me simply existing in front of them. But I curse myself and pinch my skin and pull a couple strands of hair out of my head, irritating my scalp to burn in retaliation. I want to be normal, look normal, have normal needs. But that’s impossible at this point– and whose fault is that? Only my own.

•••
I was diagnosed with osteosarcoma when I was 11.
I was a sweet little girl during treatment, I was nice, respectful, quiet. I didn’t swear. I did all my homework on time. I think it was after treatment I became a typical type of “antsy teenage-dirtbag”. The doesn’t-like-the-lights-on, always wearing headphones, blasting music, doing homework at 2 AM, type of teenager.

Relapsing, however, made me angry. I am not sad. I am not mourning, or any of the other bullshit sad feelings, I am angry. At everything. And everyone. I know when my family found out about my relapse, they were all looking at me to start crying and throwing things at walls and locking myself in my room, but I don’t want to do any of those things. I don’t know what I want to do but it is definitely not that. So I lay down. And I stay down until I have a reason to get up again. It took me a long time to have a reason, and sometimes, I wonder when I wake up if it still is a good enough reason.

•••
Don’t think because of this I have the most negative teenage-mindset to exist. I swear, I have feelings.

This was a moment in my life where childhood didn’t feel the same for me as it did other kids. I felt like the only people I could talk to were adults, and those adults were paid to be there. It stung me every time I realized that fact when they left the room.

I’m now 16, and it still stings when I lay awake at night, thinking back to the friends that I had in the boundaries of my white walls, knowing they get paychecks for assuring me that I would be fine. I feel guilty for feeling this way about the people who helped me so much during this time, but part of me wants to see them again and still be their friend, even though to them I am just another kid that was their patient.

These words, these passages that have been kept in notebooks and documents and scraps, I felt like I couldn’t ever speak these words out loud, not to my parents, friends, therapist. It felt dirty. Almost a pick-me persona that isn’t like me. But these words will never be read out-loud by me, only in my mind and in yours.

Timelessly.