Don't Think Twice It's All Right

Since I was diagnosed in Sept my boyfriend and I have not been intimate in anyway. I wrote about my frustrations with cancer and my feeling of loss.

  “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”

 

I’ve learned that over thinking can over complicate. I have perfected this. Over complicating is how I achieve.  I simply desire a warm embrace. To achieve this I demand you no longer care for me, or that you no longer desire me. You see I behold this capability because I have cancer. Everyone is afraid of the girl with cancer. What if it were their girlfriend. They are all afraid of having to commit to death. I am death looking you eye to eye with my moon pie face. I don’t fear death. I just fear the journey. If you want to kill me, shoot me. Quick, blindsided.  Please don’t make it a slow death. That’s just what my life has become, a slow, poisonous death.

         Every three weeks I commit to a voluntary poisoning. I slowly walk into 725 S. Ludlow and vow that this time will be painless. I let the same worn out nurses poke me without latex and I smile through the ride. My smile is a scream that everyone sees. I wait for the dickhead with the brown plastic bags and listen as the phone rings. Eventually the nurses remember I am awaiting a painful death and they shower me with questions and ungodly affection. I just want to eat. How I miss the pleasure of food. Eventually they connect my I.V to the machine and it’s a count down of each lethal drop.

                  Forty minutes for Carboplatin.

                  Fifty minutes for Taxoteir.

                  One hour for Herceptin.

         I slowly indulge in the words of Duras. I hold the 118 pages of The Lover near to my breast. I long for someone to desire me in gold lamé shoes and a man’s fedora. Instead I am the bald woman in clothes too tight, and misshaped, n****e less breasts. I seductively refer to them as tits, but I acknowledge these balls of flesh attached to my chest are nothing more than balls of flesh. To call them tits would be assuming they were tools of Seduction. Cancer took that from me long ago. Seduction has packed its weekender full of Calvin Klein panties and Frederick’s thigh highs. The only trace of Seduction left behind is a purple rubbery d***o, with which I am afraid of.

         I religiously bathe in lavender salts and compulsively smoke Marlboros. I sit in the candlelight and imagine Provence. I see the golden yellow of Van Gogh and the perverseness of the Marquis de Sade. I try to touch myself. I feel two folds of unwanted flesh. I imagine you bending me over the bed, pulling on my auburn hair. My body refuses Seduction. Raw yearning pulls at my loins. Tears well in my eyes.  Your induced broken heart has robbed me of Seduction.

            

Reviews

[Marie Anzalone]

I have no words with which to leave a review. I greatly admire your courage and honesty and humilty. Thank you, and Godspeed.

[Fabian G. Franklin]

My seventeen year old niece has cancer; non hodgekins lymphoma to be precise, my baby cousin aged 7 weeks just died...and I'm still around and kicking when I should have been by all counts, dead long ago. Sometimes I think life is just a crap shoot and some folks get craps. I read the pain and sorrow in your words and I'm deeply moved by it; just want to reach through the screen and give you a big hug...not a pity hug but an "I care and don't even know you" hug. I once had a sex life myself...many years ago. lol I know it can be missed. But I choose to vent my energy and longing into my art and writing these days. I'm bi-polar so finding someone who "understands" me is out of the question unless they are looney as a shithouse rat. lol And I'm about all the kinds of crazy I can handle. My dog loves me. I've had him since he was 6 weeks old and now he's six years old he still wants to jump in my lap. Perhaps writing and an animal to pet might be of little comfort to you but they help me cope day to day. Plus, animals don't judge, they are loyal, loving and never argue or say the wrong thing. Maybe it's something to consider as a different type of mental therapy? I'm just babbling on about nothing I guess. I hope you recover from your disease. I wish you only well-being and good luck; plus I'll say a prayer for you in my heart (just in case anyone is listening to the weird sounds that emit from that most remote of lost locations) Bless.

[Lauren]

Thank you so much. Yes I plan on structuring this. Right now it's a big deal that I can even write about it, so getting anything out is a big accomplishment. I broke up with my boyfriend of a year yesterday. I can count how many times I let cancer make me cry over the past six months, but he made me cry too many times. This hurts much worse than the cancer ever let me hurt. I am staying away from love for a while like yourself. ha