Waiting...
Sometimes, I wait. I wait and wait and wait. I'm on the phone right now, waiting. I just hung up, and was told to wait...wait for another phone call. But that's not the end of my waiting. I'm waiting for a job opportunity at some point to just pop into my lap. After ten thousand resumes I've sent out. And another thousand phone calls. I'm waiting on results from friends' biopsy reports to say that it's not cancer. And then when it has been cancer, I'm waiting to find out how bad it is. I'm waiting. I heard a man the other day tell me that he's a professional "waiter", and not in the restaurant way, either.
It's been a tough time. And not even for me, personally. All I've had to do is wait. I've just gotten to stand on the sidelines and cheer on, or hold a hand, or just be alone...which isn't so bad, really. It's okay to be alone, so long as I don't get terribly lost in my thoughts.
Last week I met a man in the hospital who found out that he has cancer. He's 31 years old, and has esophogal cancer. He can't eat, and after two weeks was allowed to drink (he did have a feeding tube in his tummy during that time, of course). He's just completed a six-month program at a three-quarters house for drug and alcohol addicts. He did it! And now this. Is this fair?
And at the same house (my mother-in-law is the director), another man, the house manager, who has been there for two or more years, and has been clean for just as long...walked into the office and announced his resignation. Why? my mother-in-law asked. To go back to the streets. To go back to the drugs. To go back to the alcohol. To go back with no place to lay his head, with no place to call home, with no security, with no friends, with no money except what he steals or has to work for. He's old, and is sick. He's tired, he says. If you ask me, he wants to die. Looking at him standing there, was like looking at death itself. It was like looking at hope lost. I've never seen that look before.
It broke my heart.
He's still there at the house. In fact, he gave a ten-day notice. He said that he's waited this long without the dope; he can wait another ten days. I thought about saying something to him, but then thought better of it. What can I say? I'm 26 years old, have never even SEEN drugs (except what the cop showed us in middle school and the marijuana the Brits smoked on the dock while we were on our honeymoon in Jamaica). I'm just a little southern girl with nothing to offer, no words of wisdom, no hope to give. Perhaps a little more lost faith in mankind, but that's it.
Another woman I talked to today is going through radiation starting in September. Nine months. She's got a 40% chance of making it. I hate it when doctors give out numbers. Nine, forty, this, that, making it or not. It disgusts me. Really! But what can I do? I have no money, I don't run (isn't that what everyone does these days...is run for money?), and I don't have a job. I just took a career test online and it told me that scored lowest on the "realistic/doer" part of the test! Isn't that hilarious?! Sort of an oxymoron.
I think that I'm going to DO something though. What, I don't know yet. But I'm going to work on it. If anyone has ideas, let me know. In the meantime, I'll be waiting...
Tags:
drugs, cancer, alcohol, donation, radiation
