Purple Mountain's Majesty

I remember that day. I was only a little girl in my pretty white dress. I had the shiniest black shoes I had ever seen, even more shiny than Samantha's shoes, and a whole basket full of flowers all to myself. I had long chestnut brown hair that was always in my face, even when Mommy tied it up in a bun really tight on the top of my head. Somehow, my hair always managed to escape.

Daddy said my hair was wild, just like me. I had eyes the exact colour of B'dazzled Blue, my favourite crayon in the whole box. It was a big special event because my Auntie Reese was getting married and I got to be the flower girl. Samantha, Auntie Reese's daughter, was mad because she had to be a brides maid. She was 13 and I was only 7 so I got to be the one to skip down the long red carpet and throw petals at everyone.  

That is the day that I wish I could relive over and over and over. Not because I was flower girl or because everyone kept calling me a cutie.

I want to wear those shiny black shoes again. Even if it's just for one day. Because when I wore them everything was happy and warm, nothing could go wrong and my shoes could never dull in glossiness. Those shoes were my childhood, the childhood that ended on my 12th birthday.

When I found out that I had cancer.

Suddenly the ice cream cake tasted like soggy cardboard and the presents were just empty boxes. I felt like the whole world had stopped for a few seconds and I was stuck in limbo. But then it sped up into a rapid downward spiral, racing faster and faster as I fell deeper into a black abyss.

I'm 16 now but I'm not a normal teenager. I don't go to school or talk about biology homework or even chat with friends. When you're diagnosed with cancer, people act like you're contagious. A few sympathetic smiles here, a few gentle pats on the back there.

But they'll go on with their lives and one day say "Hey, do you remember that one girl? You know, the one with... cancer?" They'll whisper that last word as if it was as contagious as they believed me to be and then they'll forget that they ever spoke about "that girl". 

Now my only friends are the ones dressed in pastel coloured clothing with neon white shoes, the ones who constantly smile at me, who tend to me day after day bringing me hospital food that tastes like plastic. One nurse was especially nice to me.

Her name was Rita.

She had long Razzmatazz Red nails, Mango Tango eyeshadow, and huge lips that I would call Razzle Dazzle Rose. Every time she came to my room we would have a dispute about her lipstick colour. She would always insist her lips were Ogogoro Orange or Pina Colada Pink - I think she made up names based on her favourite alcoholic beverages - but Rita was a party girl and I liked her for her spirit.

I noticed one day that she didn't come in to work but assumed she must have taken a day off. A few more days went by and finally I asked the new nurse where Rita had gone. The larger woman pinched her lips together and squinted at me for a while - I think she needed glasses.

She told me that Rita wasn't coming back to work, that she had partied a bit too hard and died in a car crash. And so, I closed my heart off from everyone. I build a tall brick wall around myself and made sure there was no door. No one could get in and I couldn't get out. That is until I met Blitz Al Fresco.  

Blitz was a teenager with cancer, just like me. He was 17 years old when I met him and he was extremely cool. He wore a leather jacket and had messy blonde hair. He wouldn't take radiation therapy because he didn't want to loose his locks, he told me his cancer was temporary.

How he knew that, I have no idea. But I believed him.

His eyes were bewitching. I only saw them once, because he always wore dark sunglasses to hide them, but there were only two words to describe them: Cerulean Frost. They were every crayon lover's dream. Blitz courted me for a while, we became close friends, but when my cancer went into the next stage Blitz stopped talking to me.

I think he believed he was too cool to talk to a girl who was "temporary", so to speak. Or maybe it was because he had encased his heart in ice to protect himself, just as I had built a wall. He ended up moving hospitals and I never saw Blitz Al Fresco again. 

I always feel sick. Not just because of the cancer but also because of the radiation therapy, the so called treatment that is supposed to rid my body of the horrible virus we call cancer. It stole my beautiful hair and made my skin itchy, dry. No matter how many pretty smelling lotions I applied to my skin, it always dried up like the desert. And just like the desert, there were creatures hiding in the shadows

 Although I could not feel the cancer, I saw it in my mind's eye. Dark, gnarled monsters tearing at me from the inside out, taking over the parts of my body that were still healthy and hopeful.

I had hope when I was younger, but now I'm too old to even consider having a 17th birthday.  

 Now I wear a white dress, just as I did when I was a flower girl. But this dress is not long and lacy with a delicate sash and millions of tiny buttons running up the back. This dress is papery and loose, kept partially closed by three flimsy strings.

My hair is less than three inches long; short, dull brown stubs like dead grass cut too close to the dry earth. My eyes are not the same brilliant blue, now they are a dull grey like Manatee or maybe Smoke.

I wanted to wear those shoes again, to smile in the sun and see my reflection in them once more before I died. And if I died, I wanted it to be outside in my backyard where I could smell the spring flowers unfurling their tendrils of sweet scented perfume.

I wanted to be filled with sunshine and overwhelmed with colours: Fuzzy Wuzzy Brown, Carnation Pink, Atomic Tangerine, Jazzberry Jam, Mountain Meadow, Purple Pizzazz, every colour imaginable.

But that is not how I died. I died in a cold, devoid room on a rigid white bed with the suffocating smell of cleaning products choking me. There were no greens, blues, reds, oranges, or browns. Just the bleached white walls closing in on me as I took my last quivering breath of air.

My final lingering thought was that I wished I could go back to when I was a little girl again. To when I was healthy and strong.

I wanted to go back in time to see the world once more as a box of crayons.