I swipe my hand over the mirror to clear the fog after taking a hot steamy bath and look at my reflection on the glass . It stares back at me but I can hardly recognize the woman in the mirror , with bald head and heavy dark bags under her eyes . I reach up to touch my face and she mimicks my move , tracing the wrinkles on her skin the way I do , with just the tips of her fingers . I run my hand through the few strands of brown hair that were left here and there , barely holding to my skull and a chunck of hair tangles itself in between my fingers . Panicked , I shake my hand back and forth and the hair falls to the bathroom floor , some even land on my feet .
I look up to the mirror and see the woman , still there , looking right back at me , the expression of her features mirroring everything I feel inside . But something in her eyes makes me hold her gaze for longer , and suddenly , I feel a rush of relief overwhelming my heart recognizing that look and what it means . I am not alone , I whisper through chapped lips . She understands , and she is with me in this . We will make it through . She says and I nod . My lips curling up in a weak but genuine smile .
I look into her eyes and bits of memories come back rushing through my head . I remember the day I was diagnozed with cancer . I remember sitting on a high hospital bed in the exam room , my feet dangling down impatiently as I waited for the doctor to be back with my results . It is just a nose bleed , I kept telling myself . And the minute he walked in , I saw the sympathy written all over his face , and I just knew .
Denial was the first stage of accepting an illness , I read online . And it lingered with me the longest of all the five stages . I went weeks without telling anybody about my diagnosis . I felt detached from the memory , like it had happened to someone else instead of me . My brain refusing to process the reality and I started to actually believe it , taking comfort in the relief I felt inside . But it was short lived before anger , the second stage , took its place . I was mad at the world and mostly at myself . Thousands of questions filled my head for which there was no right answer .
How ? Why ? And why me ? What have I done to deserve this ? Why couldn't it be a terrorist , or a rapist , or , I don't know , there were millions of people who derserved it more than I did , why did it have to be me ?
Then fear creeped its way into my heart . Fear of my life ending so soon . Fear of having to say goodbye to the people I loved the most . Fear of missing out on so much when I'm no longer apart of this world . Fear of the world moving on after my death , like I was nothing , like I didn't matter at all .
And that's how fear turned into grief and depression and nothing was worth fighting for anymore . My life wasn't worth fighting for . I wasn't worth it .
But then I looked into the eyes of the people surrounding me and I remembered why I had to fight . I saw unconditional love and support that could lift mountains . They were my life , they were worth fighting for , and for them , I couldn't give up .
Letting out a shaky breath , I dare to look at myself in the mirror , this time , truly looking . Seeing myself in the glass and recognizing the woman's reflection as my own and make her a promise that I would never break . From now on , I am going to start to live . Truly live . Cherishing every second of every moment , with absolutely no regrets and filling my life with positive energy , living every day like it was the last , something I should have realized a long time ago , on my own . Before cancer made me realize it .
And that was the fifth and last stage ; acceptance .
I reach for my husband's razor and cock my head to the side before I start peeling off the remaining hair . And while I watch it fall to the ground , I see the woman's face split into a huge beam , once again reflecting exactly how I feel inside . Content .
