Cancer is not unlike war.
For the few and the proud, imminent threat comes suddenly
and immediately. Scared shitless, we are enlisted for battle with promises of
victory and defeat. We blindly subscribe to the battle cry. We are thrust into
a sort of perpetual boot camp that includes endless internet searches and
doctors prognoses/ diagnoses in a land far from our home, surrounded by strangers
that speak a foreign language. We are taken from our loved ones and thrust into
a world that will leave us scarred and broken. We are the Walking Wounded and
we will leave the battlefield knowing, that someday, some way we will be called up to fight again.
In the meantime, we arrive
home frightened, damaged shells of our former selves and pretend that we are
heroes. We attend parades and walk proud amongst our supporters all whilst
remaining silent prisoners of war. We make believe that we are indeed fine.
Pretend that things have not changed because we know that for those who have waited
terrified for us at home, things have to remain the same. We reluctantly get up
every morning and move through the memory of our lives as ghosts. Daily
activities seem to pass through us like the morning mist….cold, damp and
threatening to completely swallow us up.
We pray for relief.
The mirror now reflects faces and bodies we do not recognize.
Strangers in the place of ourselves. We practice our smile knowing that that smile
is the key to the survival of the hopes and dreams for others. Our deceitful promise
of the future we know will probably never come.
We have gone to war, returned and we will never be the same.
Mere visitors in a life we used to call our own.
We pray that the quiet stops being quite so loud and we
wonder if it will haunt us forever. We go to bed at night dreading the darkness,
fearing that which we cannot see. Knowing that it’s there. Waiting. Hoping that
if we close our eyes real tight, it will cease to exist.
Knowing that it won’t.
Knowing that the irony lies in the fact that we fought so
hard to preserve a way of life that is no longer a possibility. Knowing that our loved ones have unsuspectingly lost us to our enemy in a way that they will never quite comprehend. Because though they remained here, holding on to the idea of home, we now live in another place. A place far away. An unforgiving land where they speak a foreign language. And though we have returned home, we will never truly live here again.
