The Moments

Chapter Eighteen

MADELYN SHEEN

It's cruel, but I am somewhat grateful for the fact that things just keep happening. I want to be distracted right up until the moment that I die, and the constant series of events taking place around me, are a horrible, yet effective way to take my mind off things.

The cancer is metastasizing. Spreading. Making me not only have crappy blood, but also crappy lungs, crappy bones, a crappy lifespan. Obviously that sucks, we don't need to discuss it because from anybody else's point of view, it is incomprehensible. For me however, it isn't as upsetting as it maybe should be.

I want a perfect future, but I can come to terms with the idea that I won't have a future at all, let alone a perfect one. It sucks, but if I've learned one thing from the boy I've come to love, why stress over what you can't change? Make yourself busy instead. So in order to keep myself focused on something other than my own mortality, I want to make a perfect future for him. I want to leave some sort of mark, no matter how small, and I want it to be that I helped one of the most incredible people I have ever had the honor of knowing. I just don't know how.

I'm going home on hospice care, so I should have a lot more free time. I got to stop chemo for good, so I'm feeling better, but it's only a matter of time until my health decreases. Rapidly. I don't feel like crying when I think about it, it doesn't bother me. Maybe I just haven't had a moment of full realization. I hope I don't live to feel that moment because I'm sure it will hurt unlike anything else. I guess even I can't comprehend what it's like to know you're going to die. I don't think that's a thought somebody can ever truly grasp.

I sit in the passenger seat of the car, watching trees pass in a blur, trying to ignore my father as he cries silently. This must be so hard on him, and even harder on my mother who can't even be there for me. I dread the calls I will have to have with her. I dread every encounter with people who feel the need to express their immense sorrow towards a situation that is not their own. I do feel bad for them. I also feel guilty. Guilty of being too wrapped up in my own affairs to have any kind of urge to comfort anybody besides Jordan. That said, I fear what he'll do if I go too long without seeing him. In a way, I also fear what will happen in my own mind if I go too long without seeing him.

To put it simply, I guess I don't really feel sad, or scared, or any of that. I just feel really pissed. I'm pissed because I'm just so fucking confused. But he is clarity. I like that about him. I love that about him.

My dad is kind enough to let him come over, kind enough to let him lay in my bed, kind enough to let us close the door. He probably thinks we're having sex. He's not a bad guy for allowing it, he's just trying to let me make the most of my time and I applaud him for that. We aren't having sex, though. We're just laying together. Breathing. Ignoring the fact that we could stop at any moment.

"Are we gonna talk about everything?" I whisper into his chest. I say everything, but I mean anything. Talking about literally anything would be nice. Just talking.

My hand is resting over his heart and I feel it beat. That's another thing that I love about him. His heart beats.

"Why should we?" he replies, his chin resting on the top of my head. I'm trying to think of ways to get him to open up to me when he says, "You know, you'll probably start getting hair soon."

I hear his words and I let them dissipate. I think them over and I try with everything in me not to let them get to me. He's right, without the chemo, my hair will grow. Unfortunately, I won't be alive to see it reach a significant length. I feel like I'm lacking any kind of significance right now. I feel like I'm just waiting for something to happen that makes me feel less lost. It's like I don't have the power to be the event that changes things. I just have to wait for it. Right now, it feels like I'm waiting for something that will never come.