i want to be fearless.

I've been doing okay so far. Sometimes I do you know.. miss.. but it's nothing I can't handle so far. When he agreed that we shouldn't be talking to each other anymore I was a little hurt that all he could say was, "ok, sorry." But putting myself in his shoes, there's nothing else to say really. I wasn't important enough to say much and I get it and it's okay. I'm learning to let it go and keep moving because maybe one day it will be possible to be talking as friends again, and maybe one day when I hear something like a wedding announcement, I want to be okay, and I want to be happy too- and happy for him. I want to be able to say, "good for you" with a genuine smile plastered upon my face even if he won't be there to hear me to say it. At least I'll be able to hear me say it and that's more important, I think.

Anyway, I think whats been ironically helping me up right now is that I have more important matters to worry about than my petty little broken heart. After dinner, because I had felt that I was ready, I had just started to discuss the next steps I planned to take with my life like work and/or study when Mum says, wait,  you can't work yet and before I had time to even look baffled, Abah lays down some sad news. You know, I'm starting to believe that good news comes with bad news, and bad news comes with bad news but good news rarely comes with good news. That's just not the way the world goes round. It's just not how the cookie crumbles. And what Abah was about to say, was going to crumble our world.

You know, the only time Abah, or Mum has ever really sat us down to discuss his disease was when he was first diagnosed with it. I think around 6 or 7 years ago. Everything else was a blur. Every time it came back, we'd never really know about it. We'll, we did know about it but no one ever really talked about it. No one ever told anyone what was happening, when it come back, or what was going to happen next. Every thought we had were mostly guesses, pieced things together to come to a conclusion. I guess that was because talking about it made it seem more real but today, after dinner, Abah sat us down, and laid the whole situation down. He said that starting Monday next week, he was going for Chemo. He was going to be in the hospital for 3-4 weeks. This only means one thing, that it's back, again. And Abah says it's worse than it's ever been before. He said that it's going to get ugly, that there's going to be nausea/vomiting, he was going to lose his hair, he was going to grow unbearably thin. "I know", I whispered to myself. I know, because I've seen it all before.

I, of course was going to be the one responsible for taking care of Abah while he is in the hospital. That's why Mum told me I couldn't start work yet. I didn't mind it. But then Mum and Abah were talking about how I was going to have to learn to drive from here to Monash (to pick up/drop off Mum) and then to HKL ALL BY MYSELF. That was super scary. I mean, me, do all that? me? It sent shivers down my spine. I was a loser with remembering roads and routes and I still think I'm a terribly bad driver but I guess I'm gonna have to look at this as a way of practicing. How was I ever going to improve if I didn't practice, right? besides, I'll be doing Mum a big favour. I hated to see how tired she got driving around last time when Abah was in the hospital. Now, with her bad knee, she gets tired just from driving to work every single day. By driving to the hospital myself, I think I'd be doing my part in trying to keep everything intact, running smooth and considerably stable while everything else inside us just starts to fall apart.

 

This news has left me trembling inside. I am trying not to be so scared but even if I've been through it a hundred thousand times before, the fear, it never gets old. The feeling that I might lose Abah will never leave. Like the cancer growing inside him, it just hides in a corner of my body waiting to silently destroy what ever I have left of me. All that's left to do is pray, and hope for the best.

i am learning to appreciate what i have, before time makes me appreciate what i had.