Breathe Me - C.R. Jane Page 0,2
dreams I thought I would accomplish with them at my side. Another pained chuckle leaves me as I slide down to the floor, leaning against my fridge for support as I look at each smiling face, taunting me how when I was twelve years old, I had everything and everyone I would ever need or would ever want. I had a family.
Family.
I’ve heard that word a million times over in the last year. That's who everyone tells me I should rely on during this sensitive time in my life. When you’re sick, people react in two ways. Either they offer their condolences, shying away from you as fast and politely as possible, or you get a wealth of curious questions added with an abundance of uninvited advice.
“Why do you always come alone to your doctor's appointments?”
“Don't you have anyone who can hold your hand through your treatment?”
“There must be someone you can lean on during this troublesome time.”
“Don’t you have any family? Friends?”
“You should seek comfort in the people who love and care for you, Valentina.”
“Now is not the time to hold on to family feuds or grudges.”
“Don’t you have anyone?”
At first, when I was bombarded with such intrusive questions, I made excuses as to why I was always alone. But that was when I still had the energy to lie. After a few months of unsuccessful drug trials, the will to placate their curiosity with civil replies went out the window.
“No, I don't have anyone.”
“Yes, I am alone.”
“My family is gone.”
However, seeing their pitying looks made it so that I stopped telling the truth, too. At least when I lied, I didn't get those. I can deal with people’s inquisitive natures. It’s their pity that I can’t handle. So now I feign ignorance to their probing glances and questions, and change the topic as soon as someone brings family into the conversation.
Family.
Yes, I used to have one. I had a father I adored more than life itself and three best friends who meant the world to me. I lived and breathed for them, until I couldn’t do it anymore. My gaze falls back onto the photograph in my hand, where those same three beautiful boys were all smiles and joyful gazes, and me right smacked in the middle of them with my own goofy grin shining brightly at the man behind the camera.
That was my family, and until I take my very last breath, they will remain so—even if only in my heart.
I wonder if they’re happy.
If leading the lives they aspired to when we were children gave them the fulfillment I couldn’t offer.
Against my better judgment and to my heart’s chagrin, over the years, on those lonely nostalgic nights that I desired to feel close to them, Google had been the one friend I could rely on. It gave me small glimpses of all my boys’ accomplishments. Now men with established careers, they were able to succeed in all the goals they set out for themselves, while I failed mine so miserably. Pride and sadness breathed simultaneously in one hollowed breath as I got a small peek into their lives. Lives I had been deprived of sharing with them, because of one decision that separated us all.
God, we had so many dreams back then. A bucket list of things we wanted to do in our lifetime. I even wrote mine down and forced my three best friends to do the same, just so we could lie down on the San Antonio grass, look up at the summer sky, and daydream about our lists together. We were so confident we were going to take the world by storm, hand in hand, and that nothing would ever get in the way of our happiness.
It’s funny what the memory latches onto. How it chooses to keep some memories so vividly intact, while distorting others so ruthlessly. But those summer days, of whispering our wants and desires to each other, are as much a part of me as is this disease that’s killing me.
Those same ambitions seem like nothing but pipe dreams to me now—unattainable and hurtful to recollect.
As expected, the vodka is starting to do its job, pushing my mind to wallow on what could have been if things had turned out differently for all of us. Images of all the places we would have traveled to and visited together, of all the exotic foods and cultures we would experience and delight ourselves in, dance in my head as a cruel