Against The Dying Light

June

My name is Marnie Vivienne Durand and I'm 19 years old.

Summing yourself up as a person is difficult to do because objectively, what you think of yourself won't be another individuals perception of you.

It's best I suppose to start with your likes and dislikes- find out what you have in common with someone before you decide if you like them.

So if I were to sum my interests/life up I suppose I'd start by saying that I support Man United to an almost obsessive level. I love music (who doesn't though?) But I especially adore old music, like The Beatles, Buddy Holly and Elvis. I used to collect scratched up old vinyls that are stored in a beaten cardboard box in my grandads attic.

My favourite actor is Johnny Depp and my favourite actress is Winona Ryder. I'll never ship another couple harder, even though I wasn't born when they dated.

The country I'd love to visit more than any other is South Korea, although I hate K-POP.

My favourite food is Hawaiian pizza. My least favourite is peanut butter- I just hate the texture.

I suppose my politics are centrist, a little to the left, a little to the right.

... And I'm terminally ill.

And there, right there, it happened didn't it?

No matter what you thought of anything else I said, that last sentence overwhelmed everything else about me. My interests, my perception of myself or your perception of me doesn't really matter now. All I am is a walking death sentence. To you now I'm a terminal cancer patient and that's all you need to know.

I'm not a person to you anymore, (please, don't think I'm criticising you), I'm no longer someone that you can disagree with on the basic things. I'm different. I'm going to die, so you have to be nice to me, you can't debate or attack my thoughts like you would anyone else.

A year ago, when I was first given the terminal diagnosis, I won a writing competition. It was for a magazine and I wrote some short piece about how staring death in the face makes you appreciate life and blah blah blah. Even while I was writing it, I was fully aware that it wasn't for my benefit. No one wanted to know how cold and bleak and scary it is- how most nights you don't want to sleep as you're aware of how few, precious moments you have left. How you wake in the middle of the night and the sheer terror of death looms over you. How your parents/doctors/nurses- all of the people you've been taught can mend anything- can't fix it for you this time. They can't tell you that it's going to be ok because they don't know. The abyss looms before you and it's terrifying and there is nothing, not one single thing that anyone can do to save you from it or stop it from happening to you.

No one wants to read something like that. They want a clean, sanitised version of cancer. The one where the frail teen is brave and inspiring, where she has beautiful, profound words to inspire you to live your own life more fully. The one that you can read on your lunch break and shed a tear over before heading back to your day feeling better. It could be worse, you say to yourself, look at that poor girl!

I was aware of all of this when I wrote the article. I don't want you to think that I'm selfless and I bravely wrote it anyway, wanting to make people feel better, because I that's not true either. At the time I was in denial. I didn't really believe that I was going to die... Surely, I told myself, surely they'll think of some way to save me. It's impossible that I'm going to die. I wrote the article knowing full well that I sounded like a perfectly cliché victim of cancer, knowing I sounded just how I was supposed too, playing the part to perfection.

Now, of course, there is no denying it. It's a year on and sometimes we get media enquiries, requests for follow up interviews- but I would never do one. I can't play the part anymore. I'm not tragic or inspiring. I'm angry.