The Maia and Ross Diaries 2

C62 - Cascading Failures

Dear, Mom

Would you believe me if I told you I've finally hit rock bottom? You probably would... and if that doesn't say enough or more... I have cancer now. What a bitch. Cancer established this fatal ending for me and the people I love. The person I love. I'm just another ending, a predicted death and my life isn't my life became someone else's. I feel like I'm already gone.

It's like when a plane goes down. It's a chain reaction. Cascading failures, that's what this feels like. Losing everyone, over and over. I thought I could at least get better in the reaction over chain. Because I've been really mean. Really hard on myself. Still there's no way that after everything that I have given up, that the sky would get brighter and the roses would plunder over me, or that I would see the light and give it my life in charitable fashion.

I haven't wrote to you in a long time since you passed away. I was getting better, I was. Someone told me to stop whining and feeling sorry for myself through multiple journal entries. She sounds like a bitch to be honest. That girl I used to be, optimism - had to believe there could be something good to come out of the empty hole. But there will always be more and more reasons to feel empty, and you will carry that with you above all.

I'm now going through what you went through, when I wasn't even remotely there for you as you tried to be for me - you were only making me stronger for this time in my life where the infection was in me; and all I can do is wish I ate more salads, and had more sex, now I'm laughing while writing this because the irony is obsessive. The joke was always on me.

Bad things came my way. Eventually I took it as a sign of a warrior's calling. But then it became this deep, uncharted inescapable hole with demons I have revisited early on - demigods, in fact - and I might've not handled it with the grace you gave me. Precise, polished, and not repetitive. I took what the bad gave me and tried to be a better person, and now I have a disease in my inner bones.

I don't feel much pain with the pills I'm taking, but I have to take them - or else I could damage a bone in either my arms or legs and let it spread to my heart, risk open heart surgery and I could die. The sick thing about that is I'm ready to go, but at the same time I hold on to stay.

I'm ready to go in whatever path that is meant for me after all of those near death experiences I still remember so coldly to where I get chills even when I'm hot. I feel pain even when I'm okay.
At night, sometimes I do get scared to fall asleep before I get comfortable and realize that I should wake up the next morning because of my treatment. I don't want to live the last few months or estimated years of my life in fear.

My body is a ticking time bomb, I understand that much. And I try to reach out to myself. I'm better than this and so are you, I tell myself. Ross does attend to me and my friends, even the ones that have left. They try to get it. How it feels to know you have a time attached to your ass. But they don't know what it feels like to be attached to machines and receiving new blood units through them, consequently with pain. I try to understand how I got here too, but truly I know you never understood me Mom. How I could turn out this way after all the compassion you showed me. How I could become so cold to people like Laura or Ron. Just because they hurt me.

The worst part is this guy at work Kevin... he was flirting with me persistently despite everything I told him about Ross. He knew I had the kids, and the husband, he knew. I knew too. And that's when I write this, I want you to know if you're out there somewhere... that I'm going to tell him. He kissed me. And he's not a bad guy.

He was funny. He was barrel chested, built and brawny. He had these facial features that make you smile when he does. He was adorable, but he wasn't mine. Maybe he got the wrong message but I know I wasn't leading him on because I didn't accept the kiss... You are what you allow, Mom... and I'm not a cheater. I don't allow secrets.