apple of my eye, apex of my soul
Cancer runs in my family. My dad had it, my uncle died of it, my grandmother never lived past her daughter's 13th birthday because of it. In all likelihood, I, too, will one day probably be afflicted. When you have cancer, there is a massive increase in the number of cells in a certain portion of your body. The cells keep replicating and multiplying, spreading and charting new territory and configuring maps to figure out just which part of your formerly healthy body they can ravage next. They come, they grow, and then they consume you.
Chemotherapy can save you. So can radiation, if you have a milder form or if the cancer hasn't completely manifest destiny-ed your body yet. They cut off the piece of your body that is killing the rest of you. Cancer is so deadly and so despicable that it can't stand having just a part of you. It doesn't want to share what it has come to think of as its domain. Cancer usually spreads quickly and permanently. It causes irreparable damage, and sometimes, if you detect the cancer too late, it has caused all this irreparable damage and caught you unawares. You don't know what's hurting you until it's just too late.
Nobody blames you for cutting off the cancer. Everyone generally agrees that it is a positive process. Okay, it sucks that this body of cells continues to expand within your body and fight everything good that's within it, but yeah, you're disposing of it, you're slicing it clean off, you're losing part of yourself but it's okay because you'll be whole again someday. You just have to realize the part you're losing is losable. People send gifts to those recuperating after the removal of a tumor. No one blames you. You didn't ask for it; you knew when to get rid of it. It was killing you. You needed to cut it out of your life in order to save your life. Cancer is a poison, it will bury you if you do not bury it, there is nothing wrong with cutting cancer out of your life.
You are poisonous, you are my cancer, and I am cutting you out of my life.
I hope I run into you on the street in five years and we can find out how much better I turned out than you.