I wrote this last year after I had been at the doctor, getting checked up to see if my cancer screen was coming back clean. At the time, it was and I thought after getting my DUI that maybe I was going to turn my life around and find some inspiration to begin to do things for me; to live my life for myself and not to care about how others thought of me. Shortly after, I self destructed, I wasn’t healthy again, in my body or mind, and almost was successful in ending my life. As hard as it is for people to discuss suicide and depression without mocking it or turning it into a joke to ease the uncomfortability, I have always been honest with the ones I love about it. Why not be open and honest with everyone? It might just help them. This is a story of a little girl named Britt and how our waiting room relationship spawned into a friendship that ended way too soon for me.
Whenever I’m at the doctors office to get bad news, I look around.
Today, I see the eight year old girl there in remission from battling lymphoma. Her parents, grandparents and extended family are all there in the waiting room. We’ve talked a few times as spending abnormal amounts of time in the same area of the hospital usually leads to seeing familiar faces.
“Hi, Z. You look sad today. Are you going to be okay?”
One time when we were talking about things that make us feel better, and we got to things people say or do. I told her that whenever I was upset as a child, my mother would call me “Z” and either hold my hand, pat my back, talk to me in a soothing voice and my mom has consistently been the only one to call me that (except when my college roommate and our friends would hear my mothers voicemails on my landline) The little girl is the only other lady in my life that I let call me that and respond to, it somehow comforts both of us.
“Hi, Z. You look sad today. Are you going to be okay?”
As she asks me this question, I look up and over her head. The gathering of family she has behind her is visibly upset. Her mother is crying inaudibly. What I can only assume are her grandparents, are embraced with their faces buried in each other’s shoulders. The little girl seems rather oblivious to it all and is more concerned with a random stranger she has met a half dozen times.
“Z? Z? What is wrong?”
I look at the genuine look of concern in her face. The glazed over shine of her now watering dark brown eyes. How do I tell someone so innocent, young and someone that has clearly been through a hell that I don’t know that I just got told they found a mass in my prostate? Does an eight year old even know what a prostate is? Is it even appropriate for a grizzly looking thirty-two year old man to indulge in a conversation about this to a child?
“Well, B. I am sick again. I’m here to find out what I’m going to have to do to get better again. How are you?”
“Oh, well. I am sick again too, Z. I don’t know what is wrong yet, but my mom is very sad.”
“Well, B. I am glad that you have all your family over there. It’s nice to have people to be there for you. It always makes me feel better.”
She looks at me, with this puzzled look as she plops into the chair next to mine;
“But Z, how come you are here alone?”
I hesitate for a second. I already know the answer to this in my own head: I’ve turned away my girlfriend, friends, and continually held off my mother because truth be told, I didn’t want anyone to see how vulnerable I could be. Society taught me vulnerability is a sign of weakness. I already thought I was less of a person by having one testicle, already ashamed of my body because of the imperfections, stretch marks, scars. Why would I want Kylie or Hiram or my own mother seeing me in tears every day while going through treatment?
“I just think it’s easier for me to be alone, B. Everyone has other things going on and I think as an adult that I can’t make them be here.”
She furrowed her brow and said something I never thought would come out of an eight year olds mouth to me;
“That’s stupid. You’re an idiot. No one should be alone when they are sick enough to be at a hospital.”
I actually let out one of my classic giggles. This eight year old is smarter than me. She grabs my hand, and squeezes it tight;
“You won’t be alone. I won’t leave you until I have to.”
I looked at her and instantly I knew. I was being stupid. That’s the whole point of your significant others, family, friends. I still never completely let anyone sit with me through radiation this time but I let Kylie drop me off and pick me up, it was a step towards opening up. Friends dropped off meals, sent gift cards. My mother was happy that I was letting others help her stubborn, closed off son.
The time came, the nurse called my name, and as B and I stood up, she looked over, pulled me down and gave me the biggest hug an eight year old girl could and whispered into my ear;
“Don’t be an idiot.”
This girl showed me what an idiot I was for thinking I had to fight alone.
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