December 12th

December 12th, 2013 

My Disease. 

It was nothing special at first; a dull throbbing pain in my right leg. It fluttered in, and then out. Nothing but a growing bones, they said. Nothing dangerous; just the unstoppable, but who knew it was the improbable. 

The computer. 

It was given as a gift; a token of pity for my suffering, the disease was working it's way up my limbs by now. Pain rocking me side to side, delicate lashes of gray lacing around my vision like the forgotten web of a spider. Before this they would've paid no attention. But their morbid fascination got the better of them- masochists, I say. Doctors, they retort. They don't get my tongue and sharp language; they figured it is because it's my end of the line is starting to fray. My simple rebellion in the face of the Grim Reaper, a glove thrown into his face by refusing to submit and shave my hair. 

To all their theories; I laugh. 

I only hide because I'm afraid of dying, just like everyone else. 

And now you're stuck with me- my very own digital diary. A gift that pales against my life, but that is all they can give me. My philosophers mind's haunting me now that I've reached the last road, all the thoughts that I've never said are chewing at my mind and throwing themselves at the barrier of my lips. It's all on the tip of my tongue, but when I open my mouth, the radiation forces my stomach's contents instead of words out into the open. 

Writing I've found is a better remedy than crying, tears can speak their own words, but none as loud as a written document of my pain. What I'm suffering through can only be described to a smoker drowning in his own lungs; it's like watching your body eat itself while you're trapped inside. 

Hodgkin's. That was the word that escaped the Doctor's lips before I could push it back, but by then it was too late. That word, that dreaded word, floated out into space and dirtied the air as my Mother started to wail. 

Child's Hodgkin's, stage four, terminal. 

Of course they tried to save me, but in a sense I've given up. Although I've refused to shave my hair for my own pride, I've realized that doing radiation treatment will do nothing but fog what little time I had left. I want to enjoy eating without it rushing from my mouth later, I want to keep my hair, and get rid of this accursed bandana that's now leashed to my scalp like a flag marking the rebellion. 

And now it was Christmas, and if my calculations were right, my last. 

I'm afraid of dying, but I don't want to do it on their terms. A neat and clean exhalation alone in a dark room, surrounded by stuffy flowers for the pitiful soul who regret my suffering but don't feel my pain. I felt claustrophobic, like I was already on the metal table inside the morgue, but my mind was lashing out at the steel container that contained her before they cut her open and measure the cancerous cells like some spectacular prize. 

If they want to dissect me, I don't care. But I'm not dying on their terms. Period. 

If they want to make my death a report, make it into an article about Children's Hodgkin's and how it affects the body, I'm perfectly fine with that! 

But they can't trap me here much longer. 

Because I'm leaving.

December 16th, 2013

As I look back on what I wrote I realize how foolish I may have seemed.

Writing a half-baked plan for all too see. All they had to do was search my computer and seize what I've been writing to take a peek inside my brain. But my suicidal thoughts are provoked by their actions, if they caught it earlier... If they only took the right action, if my Parent's had given me medical attention when I needed it...

My parents, ah, that's a sight for sore eyes.

Mother's face is pinched in retribution, her only daughter, (her only child at that!) lay sick in her death bed watching the clock's hands turn onto her death day. The calendar flipping through page's without giving a second thought, and time going on without anything but a glance in my direction. People die every day, why would time stop for me?

Father's face is a different story though, his anger is taken out on the doctors that hold me captive. I liken myself to him, my personality and temper coming after his side of the family like the hot Irish blood that thrives through my veins and caused the bitter cancer that would spell my doom.

The first visit they ever had was after I flung my own feces at the nurse when she tried to give me an anesthetic. 

How monkey-like, but I don't regret it.

They found me huddled in the corner; the Doctor's that watch over me like white-coated angels with their clipboard halo's standing out in the hall, screaming at security for even having the idea to throw tear-gas into my room. "She's dying!" They say, "She's suffered enough!"

I'm a pig, I admit it. I was an ungrateful child before my death was spelled out in front of me. But at that moment, I felt a little gratitude towards the pesky white coats.

Mother entered the room after a scuffle went down outside my door. Her nose in the air, that pinched mouth puckered in disgust at the smell and state of the hospital room. Her eyes catching sight of the feral daughter in the corner, her face smeared with her own discretion, a bitter smile brilliant white against the brown. 

The normally clean walls were covered with muck; I had thrown my lunch tray with my liquid-like food onto the wall to the right of me, near the doorway. Pudding dripped down from absurd places, and spotted the floor like quarter sized drops of old blood. She looked at me with plain disgust written across her face, "What have you done?"

I gave her a feral smile, one that made shivers run down her spine and ice to fringe the glass of water on my desk. I didn't answer her though, I sat cross legged and at the top of my lungs I started to sing. Or screech, it depends on whether you like my 'singing' voice or not. Either way, I wasn't going down without a fight, and my Mother gasped as I took off the red bandana that was folded oh-so-neatly over my balding scalp and caught sight of the hair that came off with it.

"Are you seeing this?" I laughed bitterly, my white teeth flashing in the fluorescent lights as I waved the red hankie through the air like a child with a ragdoll. "Are you seeing it?"

"Campbell!" My voice wasn't roared, but instead whispered. My Father with his stiff face and subtle stubble watched from the doorway in repulsion on how wild his little girl had become. Campbell, or 'Cam'. I was told if I was a boy instead they would've named me Stanford. I grinned in his direction, and he cringed as if bitten.

"Campbell Emeline Ross," The pinched nose woman who expelled me from her womb watched as I cackled in the corner, "What on Earth are you doing?"

"What any child in my disposition would be doing, Mason." I answered back coolly and coldly, I could imagine from my corner that ice was starting to frost over the pane that was my window to the lobby. "They'll throw a tantrum, scream, and if they were five they would throw their own expulsions at other people." I smiled; my tufted head with its bald spots must've made me a wretched sight. I was never pretty to begin with, but now, I was a monster. 

They made me this way.

December 20th, 2013

Merry Christmas too me, oh, Merry Christmas too me...

Now if only Santa Clause could give me back my life, or even better, a quick death.

Ha. 

Either way, I don't care. My Mother and Father aren't going to visit me at the Hospital for Christmas, looks like I'm on my own once more. Of course I was the one that told them not to come, it's not like they'll listen though. Christmas day they'll be here bearing pleasant masks and pretend that their daughter is fine, her mind uncracked and flawed with the disease that had ripped her apart, and bring flowers for my future grave. 

I've even mapped out my funeral on this little machine; I have a planner and everything. It's the one big party I'm allowed to have, being that I was never permitted to have one.

How ironic.

I find it funny that my friends that I've known since elementary will see my room for the first time only after I'm dead. 

Let's just hope they don't find the pink drapes juvenile, that's the last thing I want after I'm dead; to be pegged as a little girl.

 December 21st, 2013

My arms look like the plucked wings of birds. The hairs were raised to give the appearance of a dead chicken's pink skin, avian wrists with bones jutting out with flesh stretched to show off small tendons working underneath the skin. But I couldn't fly, like those birds.

A frail but steady heart was still drumming up against my ribs, and blood was starting to pool where the tug-of-war between gravity and my bones came across the barrier of my skin. Bruises puddle along my hips where my bones rebel and stab the skin to free itself of its self-made container.

The signs were easy to interpret as I laid there watching people be wheeled into the hospital, and never wheeled back out. I was going to die. The earth was begging for my body to take into it's bowels, it's demand so strong it was hurting me with its call. 

The red bandanna that marks my sickness like a flag is still wrapped around my scalp like plastic around a dead turkey's corpse. It was stuck to what remained of my hair with my sweat, the same sweat that woke me up.

Those were the symptoms, they had said. Night sweats, anorexic-like weight loss. The malignant cancer was working its way through my body and making havoc; my own personal tapeworm, gnawing away at me while I sleep. Sampling the food that I eat, the drink that I drink, and nestling inside my intestines too far too reach.

All at once I regretted cutting off my parents. But every time I reach for the phone, my Mother's pinched face appears in my mind's eye.

She used me as a social climber, her fourteen year-old daughter (Now Fifteen, my birthday transpiring after being submitted into this cold hell. The Doctor's whispered it was my last into my parent's deaf ears, but did they care?) was played like a pawn. The Queen with her cold white smile standing in the corner waiting to strike after I fall, and the King sitting naively on his black and white throne.

The cancer only gave her more popularity; she had gone to the press with it. Charity events were taking place in my name without my permission, all for a cure that wouldn't come. The Doctor's pity my situation; I see it in their eyes as they pass by, regret, regret, and regret.

If I was born to a happier family, one that wasn't power hungry and manipulative would I be in this position now? Would they have taken me to the hospital before it was too late? When they found me soaked through the sheets crying out, when the spikes of pain started to travel up my leg, and I got out of bed like a newborn foal, legs buckling out from under me and I crying out in pain.

They ignored my howls.  

 November 12th, 2014. NBC News Station 

"Christ," she muttered under her breath. Flicking through the papers with long tapering fingers, she looked up at the woman who brought them to her with a raised eyebrow, "This is it? The girl... Campbell, this is her final statement? This is why she...?"

The woman looked away, her dark hair breaking free from a cap. She was a journalist, only blooming in her career, but slowly making rise in the Station's eyes. In her hands she was nervously twirling a pen. Her eyes flicking back and forth as she spoke quietly, and quickly. "Killed herself, yes. You know the story, but this is the truth. She didn't go out to see the snow on the ceiling and fall last christmas, she committed suicide. This is what was found in the pillowcase when they were cleaning out her room, I want to bring it to the police but... They're not taking it; the coronary office already said it was accidental. Cammie -that's what she called herself- went through a lot. I did some background research and made a report already." She nodded towards the file in my hands, "Mother used her for 'social climbing', if you know what I mean."

I did, wincing I flicked through the files. The mother, Mason Emeline, had been using 'Cammie' as a prostitute, letting younger boys sleep with her to be introduced to their fathers... "This is..."

"Tragic," She answered for me. Nodding, "Nothing more than I can do, though. I got a few statements out of them, but I think there's more you can do for this case if you make it go public."

"And the father?"

"All in the file," She waved a hand, pale skin flashing the light back into my eyes, "He's innocent, as far as I know. Didn't know what the mother was doing behind his back, he has a fiancé, and even a kid on the way. A boy. The court's gave Cammie to the mother because of her 'charitable' status, supposedly she went to church, did volunteer work, and even made a few generous deposits for the City Council. The Father wasn't even mentioned, and didn't even exist in their point of view."

I flicked through the file and grimace, "Thank you, Kani. I'll take it up to the office and see what I can do with it, how did you get this, anyways?"

She just shrugged, "It was gift from a friend."