Dear Nobody (19 page)

Dear Nobody,

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I feel a lot better. My lungs are almost like a normal person's now. I want to stay this way forever. I'll still never be fully free from the illness, though. I have to take all of this medicine and do treatments. But at least I can breathe now. Although I'm happy to be feeling better, I could do without everyone lecturing me. The fucking doctors and social workers here need to mind their own fucking business about my personal happenings. I didn't come here for counseling—I came here to get rid of my pneumonia. They keep hinting that the reason I'm here is because I don't take care of myself.

That's the most bullshit I've heard about myself since the last time I went to school—taking care of my disease has become my fucking life!!! Who are they to say something like that? They are not there every fucking morning when I wake up and choke down thirteen pills, then do a breathing treatment and physical chest therapy. They are not there when ten hours later I take thirteen more pills and repeat the process.

Fuck them.

I really wish they could have my disease for
just one week.

FUCK THOSE FUCKERS!

Dear Nobody,

I've been in the hospital for three days. My lungs hurt from all the coughing. They are full of scar tissue and bleeding flesh—wounds from coughing and treatment.

Every day I try to walk through the halls of the hospital pretending not to know how bad things really are. Trying to smile. Trying to ignore how much it really hurts and how scared I really am. It's not hard to pretend; this has been my life since I was a baby. So much of my life has been taken away as I rot in hospitals, emergency rooms, doctors' offices; wearing this horrible loud vest that monitors my breathing.

Every day I walk around knowing that this horrible poison is in my body—growing in me like a cancer—eating my body like leprosy. And my family and friends treat me like I'm already dead.

I think of all the friends I've known, that have slowly died right before my eyes. I see people like me every few months, and sometimes—if it's been a while—I say to myself, “Damn, he's really starting to look horrible!”

Sometimes I'll think how awful and destructive sounding someone's cough has gotten. Or how much weight someone has lost. I'll notice that so-and-so's got more machines dragging behind them—barely keeping them half alive. I wonder if when people see me they think the same thing?

Sometimes if I'm very, very sick and feel like I'm dying—I make it a point to gather all of my strength and stare at myself in the mirror. I've done this over the years and over the years the reflection that looks back at me has gotten more and more frightening.

Last night I saw my chalk-white pale skin; my grey chapped lips and my heavy teary eyes. The veins in my face looked ripped and bruised. My skin was so dry that it seemed translucent. My ribs could be seen plainly through my chest, even without me sucking in. Somehow the oxygen tubes seemed to have taken up my entire face—overpowering all of my features.

Dear Nobody,

Geoff visited me in the hospital today. I looked at him as if it were the first time I had ever seen him—though I knew it'd be the last. It was raining, but we still went for a walk. The cold was crisp and refreshing to my body; it caused a bearable pain in my joints that reminded me to be grateful that they still even work. Geoff was walking next to me—absentmindedly and aloof. Maybe that's the reason I love him; he always seems so distant, so dreamy. I never ask what it is he's got on his mind—instead I try to imagine it in my own. Undiscovered planets? Mystical worlds? Me being gone? It doesn't bother me that these worlds of his sometimes take him away from me for a while—I just hope that eventually he takes me with him.

We walked outside on the grounds around the hospital and then I had to go back in again. Back to the hell that had been so wrongly apportioned me. I asked him to come inside and sit with me for a while—while I got my treatment. I pleaded. But he said no.

I laughed the first time I heard I him say that he couldn't bear hospitals—just like everyone else he doesn't know what the word hospital really means.

In the hospital, we wear our IV scabs and scars like they are badges of bravery. We flaunt our paleness as one would flaunt beauty. In the hospital, each coughing fit is like a dutiful performance by the orchestra of viruses in our lungs—and we are obligated to do encores. Our frailness and weakness are signs of beauty—and suffering. In the hospital the machines and IV poles that you wheel along are like the status symbols the popular girls in high school wear around their necks.

In the hospital—the closer to death you are—the closer you are to sainthood.

Dear Nobody,

Geoff called me tonight and broke up with me. He said he couldn't take it.

I hate him.

I want to find the sharpest, biggest knife and stab him in the face.

Dear Nobody,

Oh well, Geoff was a great distraction—while it lasted.

Dear Geoff,

Very late at night, when I can't sleep, and feel kind of lonely, I think of you. I remember about you, what you look like, what you feel and sound like. I remember interludes when we were together—and then it happens—I start to miss you in a painful way, and then I want for you to be mine again.

Then I soon realize that you are mine. I have you, trapped in my mind, until I decide to forget you. In my mind, I can see you whenever I want, staring or smiling at me. In my mind, I can make you laugh whenever I want, simply by recalling times that you did when we were together. I can feel the care and concern you showed me once, at a time I thought could never end; just by remembering.

If memories are all I'll have, I will still be thankful. In my memories I can distort you, and change or filter you to my perfection. Your touch is absent, but in my mind I can feel you everywhere, all around me. I close my eyes, enjoying the dark solitude, wishing that hope can be enough to force a memory of me to your mind.

Are you lonely? Am I in your dreams and constant thoughts? Do you hear a song—a sad one—and think of me?

I've got you trapped in my mind, but I know you are really gone.

But for now, I think I'll just hold this key in my hand, and only let you out every once in a while, and as long as my memories are vibrant, you are always mine.

Love forever,

XOXOXOXO

Mary Rose