The Letters
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It’s horrifying. Every sniffle and cough — someone else’s. Every unusual twitch and shot of pain, and I begin to feel, this is it; this is my time. I’m dying. I still haven’t told my mother. I don’t want her to live in this fear. To be subjected to further pain and anxiety than she already grapples with as someone who is both chronically ill and a black woman. It is too great a burden to keep silent about the silent killer. To know that I’m doing everything I can and nothing at all to fight it. I am dying. I know the decisions I made in my youth, the carelessness of my fun and survival resulted in this damned path, for which daily — at 1:00 pm eastern standard time — I am reminded. I remember the sound of my cry on February 7, 2012; handed this sentence and how, then, I knew it would be a hard journey. It has been longer than I thought. Some days, it is simple, it is easy, it is just life. But too many days, days like these, I cry. Alone and aloud. Wanting someone to tell me it will be OK. Those are letters I can live with.
