Cancer
Cancer, a six-letter word that doesn’t mean much to most people.
Then the word suddenly has more power than a shot to the chest.
You think, am I still breathing?
You go to the bathroom to try to pull yourself together, to share the pain with someone else.
As the phone rings, you think you can do this, then they answer and the tears start flowing and it’s hard to breathe.
The coldness of the hospital bathroom floor never grounded me so fast.
Breathing coming easier, reeling in my emotions.
Now to be strong for everyone. Brave talk, brave face but inside you are falling to pieces. Feeling numb, but the world is just pushing me along, like faking being strong will make me survive.
Sleep gone, living off so little anymore. Feeling numb as if the whole world is now only grey.
Medicine turning skin that was my warm comfort is now fading, always cold. Hair falling faster than snow in January. Eyelashes floating away with the touch of a light breeze.
How I wish the pain, hurt, and anxiety would be gone, my love. Day by day, I build a brick wall waiting for it to start crumbling, wondering how long it would last before breaking again.
Days, weeks, months, and years, it becomes easier to hear the news. To know you have to be strong for the one you love. The feeling to try not break in front of people, especially your love. You find yourself questioning, why me? But the truth is God was there all along with you, He didn’t abandon you after you heard those six letters. He held you when you cried in the chapel during multiple hospital stays.
After too long of a journey, healing comes and finds its place, the light at the end of the tunnel. Slowly stitching us back together from too long a rocky road.
How that six-letter word cut so deep, the scars left behind will always be present in our memories. You’ll hold your breath at every appointment you go to, waiting for the shoe to drop over and over again.
Copyright ©
Maria Mastay
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