Lost

Charlie is Alive and Well

I can't recall the exact moment my thoughts had slowly drifted away from praising my cancer, my willingness to sacrifice myself, into not slipping the pills under my pillow, throwing them up, swearing up and down it was in the name of Charlie.

Charlie was my tumor, presumably naming something I have to live with might actually make living with it, a little more bearable. Charlie became my best friend, he knew secrets no one else knew, he knew about my prayers for death. He knew when they stopped, and when her name entered my mind and when it wouldn't leave.

I didn't know in that moment, how much she would affect my life. I thought she would pass by, another thought of happiness, she'll smile and I might smile back, and then we'll go our separate ways. She'll return to the world, blessed with health, and if I'm lucky, i'll walk back to my room without help.

I was wrong, and till this day, I don't know if I'm grateful for it.

I'm grateful for her, she's changed the saddest moments in my life to meaningful ones. I don't see life as something passing by without me, or spend hours of my day wishing death upon me.

Like I've always said, no one can change you, they can only show you, who you're truly meant to be.

She didn't change me, she let me see the greatness everyone else saw in me.

I recognized the smallest, most irrelevant ideas of myself, and I learned to laugh at them. To smile at the way my lips turn into a lopsided smile when I talk about her. How I laughed at the unfunniest jokes ever created, and how it happened to make others laugh. I realized I was more than the tumor, that Charlie was apart of me, but he wasn't me. We were twins, who sat on the opposite sides of the room. People who got mistaken for one other, but never able to be one. We could never conjoin to be one.

Charlie was my twin, in a sense, he would always be apart of my life, even after I was long gone.

When I lost the battle of trying to out smart the evil, he would still be a piece of me I held dearest to my heart. But even though, Charlie seemed to control my brain, just because he was a big part of me, having Charlie didn't define who I was, nor would it ever.