About a boy

I’ve blind to the fact that you can do just about everything “right” in a relationship and still wind up devastated. Unfortunately, the same goes with cancer. You can be living your best life in a daze of health and happiness only to find that a life-altering decision has been made without you. Relationships end. Lives end. You’re left with the sad reality that the people you love can hurt you and your own body can betray you. Heartbreaks suck. Cancer sucks. Most of the time I think my life sucks.

Four years ago I was lucky; I was in the kind of love that people long for their whole lives. The whirlwind, swept off my feet, constant-belly-butterflies, hopeful, “so this is what love is” kind of love. The truth is, I was in it alone and I hadn’t the slightest idea.

I have always tended romanticizing things; I know this. As a believer in magic, finder of the good in people, unconditional lover, and friend, and someone who understands the fact that we are all just human- I was happy in my bubble of positive naivety. I had found a handsome, charming, funny, sensitive man who I thought could grow with me, teach me, adventure with me, and push the limits of my comfort zone. He was everything I knew I wanted and I had myself convinced that I meant the same to him. I suppose that I had to learn eventually that in life and love, you can’t win them all. It was then that I realized, though, that I refuse to lose at both.

As I lay despondently on my hospital bed, strapped to machines of all kinds, I realized that my body was attacking itself, my life was in pieces, and my heart and mind were with him and not where they needed to be. This time, I couldn’t seem to figure out what I was suffering more from. Was I nauseous and hurting because now I’m all alone. Three years ago I had lost him and other things I so truly believed in, and suddenly I can’t stop thinking about him, or was it because of the poison being pumped through my veins?

I was afraid to sleep most nights, wonder if I ever shared a bed again, wishing to see other eyes before I closed mine forever. I couldn’t fathom how someone who was suddenly so lost and broken could ever find the strength to fight for any of what I was supposed to be fighting for. I guess that’s why when “life” happens, we tend to reflect (or in my case over-analyze) to try and find meaning or some sense of comfort in it all. We are haunted by this existential plague of needing to understand what has happened and why. It took some time and clarity, but I can accept that he was trying to do the right thing, just as the rest of us wake up and do daily. If I had to hurt for him to be truly happy, I’ll have to learn to be ok with that. If I had to fight cancer to truly find myself, my strength, and my voice, and accept that he’s gone without explanation, I’ll undeniably appreciate that. This experience has taught me that we can’t just insert understanding in the “un-understandable”. We have to accept that maybe life is just about how well we handle being suspended in a seemingly-perpetual state of “What the fuck is happening right now?” Above all else, we need to realize that none of us really know what the hell we’re doing. Most importantly, I have come to terms with the fact that is because of cancer that I’m here thinking of him not because I miss him, I simply miss the feeling of a home, he was my home and when he left me he also left with hollow uncertainty or a deepening fear of the unknown; that’s just one of the perks of being alive. We can’t live in the happiness of the past, or worry about what will or won’t happen in the future. We can only be here now, enjoying each moment as we can, as they happen.

I knew those moments whit him couldn’t last forever. But that’s just it… With relationships and life, we can never know which moments will be our last. We can never know which are the moments of truth and glory or which ones will mark our defeat. These moments define us, shape us, stay with us; these moments are us. Each one of our lives is comprised of moments- of strength or weakness, the slight or meaningful, the fleeting or lasting…and sometimes these moments touch us differently, even when we experience them together. I may not be the most graceful, but I’ve learned that not everything ends cleanly. Even the most fulfilling chapters of our lives don’t come packaged with neat bows. We have to be ok with an abrupt black screen no foreshadowing preludes or expected fade-outs. We may not always get the closure we think that we want or need. We may not always get to say goodbye in the right ways or stick all of our landings. We certainly can’t undo what’s been done, but we can sure as hell start over.

Breakups are messy. Cancer is messy. Life is messy. At the end of it all, at least I can say that I tried my damnedest. He didn’t, and for that, I’m glad to be alone right now. So here I am living without him, having chemo, losing my hair, crying my heart out, almost every day, and feeling alone, thinking about the past, the future, afraid of being in love and at the same time starving for love someone again. But today I found strength and resiliency I never would have known existed. I certainly didn’t want him again, is just that fighting for your life makes you feel like you need someone to lean on and forgetting you already have you.