there are two types of cancer.
there's the kind that's caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells; we call them malignant tumours.
and there's the kind that's boys born on july 9th - 5'11'', with expressionless brown eyes, and in desperate need of a haircut;
we call them malignant *******.
i can't shave my head in preparation for everything he will ruin, and requesting time off to cope with the fact that i loved this person is not a valid option.
MRI scans won't show you what happened to my brain after he told me i made it hard to hate the world or what happened after he told me i was the worst person he met in it. they won't tell you what it looks like to be told you're loved, hated, and then not cared about at all.
side effects include:
mood swings, triggered by those who are as infuriating as they are infatuating
loss of sleep because he wants to rant to you about socioeconomic structures until 3 in the ******* morning
dissociation of time because it doesn't exist when you can make someone laugh and tell you about his favourite jewish children's book and why he doesn't like big dogs and that even though his family is full of jerks and idiots, he'd still do what was needed to support them.
more severe side effects include:
writing about him months after he's made it harder to breathe, but willing yourself to talk about it to a room full of strangers
being crippled by the fear he might stumble lost in manhattan again and find the cafe you are complaining about him onstage in
i want this to be a survival story and tell you that i do not have business cards for being a tragic event organizer who throws the best pity parties in town. i want to tell you that i had enough self respect not to call him when i got re-diagnosed, despite the fact that he once told me diseases like cancer exist to **** out little pests like me and because he was the only person who told me i was going to be fine, live longer than him maybe, and to stop talking like it was the end.
but that was really hard because there's two types of cancer, and he's the one that did a significantly much better job at making me feel like i was dying.