LIFE SENTENCE

Some of you will know what I’m talking about here. The ones of you quiet in the audience who have had a gun placed to their heads. The one out of three women that have been raped. People who have survived car crashes. The victims of child abuse. Anyone, anywhere, who has had a death sentence imposed on them from outside – that moment where the world stops, and all the things you think are so important every day fall away, and it’s all you can do to whisper a prayer for your parents, your lover, your children, you get this one moment to regret all the things you said you’d do and never did… and then it’s over. You die or you live. If you live, the look in your eyes is never the same, and when the normal people around you complain about how terrible some slight on their ego is, all you can do is smile, and even be thankful that there are people out there who don’t know how precious life is, not to be wasted on such bullshit.

Cancer is like that. One minute, everything’s normal, you’re worried about paying the bills, what your boss said at work that day, if you’ll ever lose that weight/take that class/get that job/toy/dress/man whatever, and the next thing you know some stranger in a lab coat is telling you your life expectancy is less than a year. And nothing is the same ever again.

You think you have problems? Things can _always_ be worse. I kept a photo of a woman being wrapped after a radiation treatment from breast cancer over my desk for ten years, to remind me when I got sad or upset that I didn’t have any right to complain… until I now have joined this sister. And while I may still have both my breasts, and my hair (at least for now), think.. I’ve had to give up my job, my apartment, my car… I’m on 16 kinds of pills, have to inject myself twice daily with blood thinners to make sure no blood clots slip up to my brain.

I can’t worry anymore about imagined offenses someone might have made. I can’t fuss over not being properly kissed for the last two and a half years, I can’t pretend I’ll be the next Tarantino or JK Rowling.  Most days, my job is breathing, making sure I eat enough calories. I’ve gone from selling a tv show to having a bowel movement being the biggest event of my day. Morphine is just aspirin to me, and I can tell you the best way to the hospital cafeteria from the Infusion Center, the pharmacy, or the lab.

And it might be true. Maybe I won’t live until September. And you know what makes you different from me? One blood clot. One defective gene. Maybe that one cigarette or the next beer you drink, your liver will finally give up on you as well. We never know when it will come.

So I ask you – what are you waiting for? Why are you not being everything you can be, right now? Why haven’t you asked that crush you have out on a date, or applied for your motorcycle license, or told your family that you’re going back to school to become the one career you’ve always wanted to become, whether it’s sensible or not.

I know, you’ve heard it a thousand times. “You only get one life.” Let me rephrase it for you in a way that will make more sense. You’re going to die. Sometime. Somehow. The only difference between me and you is that I may have a closer idea of when and how. And I’m lucky, you know? I get to tell my parents I love them every day. I get to say goodbye to everyone. I’m in hospice, I’ll never be in pain, I’ll just drift away like a feather in a dream some day while you’re stuck in traffic, going to a job you never really liked, cursing the people around you, dreaming your “if onlys”.

Please. Take it from an girl who’s already half-angel. Do. Not. Wait. If you don’t start today, get up, walk out that door, and change your life to the best it can be, then when? Are you hearing me? Don’t’ wait for that moment, when you almost lose your life. Don’t you dare waste your time. I’ll be watching. Whether from the front row or somewhere a little higher. I’ve got your wings. The only price is letting go of your irrational fears. I’m keeping them right here for you. Come find them.