Inside Out

Hit. They don't get me. Hit. I hate it. Hit. I hate me. Hit. Hit. Hit. My hands hurt from the position they've been for the last couple hours, my knuckles are bleeding through the bandage. I know I have to stop, but I also know that when I do I won't be able to get out. It's consuming me. My father used to say that my anger was my fuel; if that's true then I'm about to burst in flames.

I'm close, I can feel it. I'm so close to giving in, but I'm a fighter. I take out the bandages and head to the dressing rooms, thank God for 24/7 gyms. It's way past midnight, but I don't have anywhere else to go, so I take my time.

Water. It's incredible the way it floats away with the dirt, too bad it can't float away with my messed up cells. Hot. It's burning me, but it's nothing compared to the burning inside me.

They all think I'm crazy, helpless, or clueless. They're wrong. They don't understand. I don't want to talk about my problems, or deal with them; I want them to go away. I don't want to hear how others cope with it or how the ones that can survive lived to tell their story. I didn't decide to be biologically and genetically messed up. The darkness is luring me in. It's as if there is no more light and my head is under water, on the verge of calling it quits and letting my situation suffocate me. Instead, I kick my legs, pushing myself upwards to keep myself from drowning, drag myself across the angry river and pull myself up and out onto the bank, bruised and cut, coughing up the water in my lungs -but I'm still alive. Each struggle is classified by its own stage, when I pull myself out of it, I'm exhausted, drained, scattered in metaphorical bruises and cuts that sure will scar but overall is not important. It's trivial. Unimportant. Because I'm still alive.

An overwhelming sense of pride engulfs me and floods through me like adrenaline, because I remember how it begun and how scared I was; but I have fought and I will keep fighting until I'm no longer here.

It started off inoffensively, first Were the pains, the the headaches and exhaustion. Then I passed out in the middle of the corridor, the school nurse said it was probably because of my lack of breakfast that morning. Until my parents decided to take me to the real doctors. After so many tests and nurses poking me around I found myself waiting for Dr. Stevens to bring my results, little did I know what he was about to say. 'I need your parents to be here today Andy, the news I'm about to give you... Well, I need your parents to be here'. At that moment I knew something wrong was happening to me. That was the day I learned what multiple metastases meant. I'm now on stage 4 of ovarian cancer, and it's spreading through all my body. I'm one of the 'unlucky ones' this is one of those rare-close-to-impossible cases because of my age.

I curse this disease, it's eating me, poisoning my organs and making my insides rot away. It's killing me from inside out. But I'm a fighter, and no disease, psychologist or doctor is gonna tell me how I'm gonna die.