Then, Thanatos

I found a two-inch lump two finger breadths below my left breast. That was of all times, last December-- birthmonth, Yuletide and all. Being of Samurai stock I just festered in my neurosis and delayed the reality of a doctor's appointment which I had managed to dodge for the past two years or so in the land of Westerns. I droned through work and rapid eye movement and in the quite of my half-waking hours I obsessed over the disturbing piece of bulging flesh.

To those whom I had allowed to glimpse my proverbial innards, I had never truly been Little Miss Sunshine. The name I go by could be at most times well, ironic. The Miss Grade One always had an epic battle with the Goth Girl on a monthly basis. I was the Cheerleader with the wooden stake and the medieval arsenal and had always preferred myself to be. To the chagrin of my favorite writer friend (my ONLY writer friend), Shivaun, I aligned with Team Jolie.

My favorite pieces of lit were by Neil Gaiman's Death: The High Cost of Living and Piers "there's no such thing as a writer's block" Anthony's On A Pale Horse from The Incarnations of Immortality series.

There was a time I would practice signing my name as Mrs. Eric Draven or Mrs. Ashe Corbin.

At certain phases of the moon I play Black Hole Sun and ovulate to Chris Cornell in Burden In My Hand over and over and over and over and ad infinitum.

When you're faced by the infallibility of one's mortality wether it's of the people you love or yours, there's no better spark to light the fuse that sends a whistle bomb into a tailspin of a downward spiral (that's about five cliches right there btw). I embodied that whistle bomb very well: the mental screams of why me, the planning of my own funeral, the incapacitaing fear of just losing one's dignity and being a burden. And yes, there's the question, "Who's gonna take care of my family?"

Suddenly, death itself seems easier but the ones that you leave behind becomes the shittiest aspect of it all.

You know you need to get a life when the people you work with in 12-hour shifts three to four time a week are the people you share a life and death crisis with BUT you know you have snapples from the Man Upstairs when the very same people rally to pray for you and then kick your ass to a clinic to have your neoplasm probed and ruled out. My friend the Mickster forces herself out of bed early in the morning to pull me out of the chaos that is the C8 Gudelsky during shift change and drag me across the street to University Physicians. A friend in need indeed. Thank you doesn't even begin to encompass it, Mickey.

So, as the patient table gets turned on me after ten years of my youth catering to sick people, I fidgetingly await the doctor's verdict as she works through my family history and palpate me agonizingly.

As I step out onto the waiting area where Mickey sat anxiously, "Which one is not lethal lymphoma or lipoma?" I ask not caring about sounding stupid granting I should know the difference between the two.

"Please lang Juy-juy LIPOma hindi LYMPHOma. Don't confuse the two ha? Makurot kita sa singit!" scolds the Mickster as we walk down Paca St., just before we go our separate ways, just before I give her a HUG while mulling over what has happened. In hindsight, one may come out like an overaged drama queen but despite black days and morbid ideations one can be surrounded by angels.