Real talk

The summer that I was nineteen my body decided to kill itself for no reason, and had to be talked out of the notion with massive amounts of poison and burning. That was the beginning of my cancer journey, and the end of the illusion that I had a dependable, solid bodily form with which to journey through this life. Our bodies, in fact, are so fragile that they can start killing themselves for no reason at all, just a mutation on a chromosome. We like to think we control the inevitable physical breakdown, but we can’t. It will happen in it’s own way and time, and the souls inside can’t do much about it. Chances are I won’t die from this cancer, but for a few months it was killing me, and I had no idea. This is terror, but it is also freedom, because I have realized that I am bigger than my body. I cannot be contained within it. Its faults are not my faults, and its demise will not be mine. I believe this. Sometimes, on stormy nights or perfectly still mornings, I believe this so fiercely it hurts, as if I am straining to become the ocean, and my fingers are entirely too small to hold the world.