Falling Daisies

Chapter 24

DAISY

I hurt.

Everything just hurts. And I’m tired. I’m so, so tired... Tell me; when this is going to end?

She doesn’t want me doing the dishes. But I need to. I need to do... something. I need to do anything I can to remind myself I’m still breathing. That there is breath coming from my lungs and I’m not gone; yet.

There’s this one pain, inside my chest and it’s different from the rest. It’s not a pain of hurt; I think... I think it’s a pain of loss. Not loved lost. I lost that a long time ago now... But loss of my life – because this isn’t my life any longer...this can’t be my life. Can it?

I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take the looks. I can’t take the judgement. I can’t take the pity. I can’t take the people staring at me, day in day out - knowing what’s running through their minds. Knowing they feel sorry for me... But no, not for me - for my condition. I’d shout back but I’m too weak to do that... I’m too weak to care... But yet I do care. I care so much.

The dish water is hot. Scalding even. I can feel it burning through my skin, ripping at the flesh. Not that there’s much flesh there anymore to rip at. But I let it. I let the water blister my hands because it’s a feeling. It’s a sensation. I feed off this pain because, even just for a moment, it’s taking away from that ache in my heart and I like it.

I reach out to pick up a glass.

Smash.

The shards fall to the floor and so do I.

This is what I am.

A fragile glass: one false move and I will shatter into a million pieces. Reduces to fragments of my own self. I cut my fingers on the littered, broken glass, as I scramble to gather all the pieces.

Stupid. How could you be so stupid?

The blood runs freely like my tears and so I just... sit here.

I slide feebly across the titles and rest my head against the hard wooden draws and I sob.

I sob silent tears as I watch the pulsing blood fall from my finger tips. I’m reminded of Fairytales from my childhood like Snow White or The Goose Girl where the dripping blood on the pure white cloth was a symbol of protection; yet here it just felt like a warning.

It starts to clot and so I rub my fingers together until they open fresh, wincing at the stinging sensation running through my cracked skin. There is something relaxing in seeing the blood though. The blood tells me I still have a heartbeat. It’s weak and pitiful but it’s there. Fuck, it’s there.

But how much longer is it going to be there? How much longer do I have to do this?

I haven’t been having chemo for months. I stopped because it was useless... Everything now was useless.

Stupid.

Pointless.

Useless.

Just let me go.

“JUST LET ME FUCKING DIE!” I scream at the nothingness.

My Mum runs instantly into the kitchen and sees the scene before her yet I barely register she’s here. She takes in the broken glass and my broken face and my broken heart and she breaks too.

Being a mother is another thing I remind myself I will never get to be and then I remind myself of all the things I have and will deprive her of. She never going to see my buy a car or buy a house, get a job... Get married, start a family... She’s never going to get to see me grow up.