One of the things they don't tell you about cancer is how isolating it can be. More often than not, with people I just act like its fine, as if we still had hope, as if his chemo didn't utterly fail, as if they were still things we could try, as if my dad really wasn't dying.
I put up this front mainly to save other people from making the effort of knowing how to rightly react. And, it works for the most part, except when you do it so convincingly that they really do forget. So, they make jokes about dying. Or take you to idiotic pubs where they sit across you and giddily sip vodka hooked up in saline bottles as your dad lies in the hospital the exact same day hands red and swollen, being pumped up with antibiotics to counter a blood poisoning. Or, people tell you the big tragedies of their life like parking woes or salary hikes and expect you to sympathise.
For a while you try. You try to explain this new world you live in - where everything feels surreal, like you're in a loop and everything around you is either speeding or has slowed down. Where everything is shaky, and you are constantly trying to keep afloat, stay in the sun, and not go under. Where you see a person slowly disintegrate and with them, take you too.
No one get's it. Not even the people who say they're closest. Every day, you realise you're slipping farther and farther away, and no one's noticed. Then, one day, you wake up and see that you're alone, in your own raft, and there's no saving you.
I put up this front mainly to save other people from making the effort of knowing how to rightly react. And, it works for the most part, except when you do it so convincingly that they really do forget. So, they make jokes about dying. Or take you to idiotic pubs where they sit across you and giddily sip vodka hooked up in saline bottles as your dad lies in the hospital the exact same day hands red and swollen, being pumped up with antibiotics to counter a blood poisoning. Or, people tell you the big tragedies of their life like parking woes or salary hikes and expect you to sympathise.
For a while you try. You try to explain this new world you live in - where everything feels surreal, like you're in a loop and everything around you is either speeding or has slowed down. Where everything is shaky, and you are constantly trying to keep afloat, stay in the sun, and not go under. Where you see a person slowly disintegrate and with them, take you too.
No one get's it. Not even the people who say they're closest. Every day, you realise you're slipping farther and farther away, and no one's noticed. Then, one day, you wake up and see that you're alone, in your own raft, and there's no saving you.
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