Designated Doodler

Growing up with a Dad who has cancer, I think I've always been hyper aware of how precious life is. And it concerns me, how in this day and age, it seems like everyone is just out for themselves. Or just out for themselves and their family…when there are people all around us who are struggling, who are hungry, who are lonely. Having experienced anxiety in my life, I try my best to tune in to those around me, even if I barely know them. You'd be surprised how many people are out there…just longing for a friend, just longing for a shoulder, for a truthful, reliable, beautiful soul to care about theirs. At one point in college I was so lonely that I'd get out of the apartment and hang out at Starbucks, just so that I could be around other people. I had plenty of friends, but that doesn't mean that you can't still be lonely. I have no idea where this post is coming from. I didn't necessarily set out to write what I've written… I just feel that it...

Your heart whispers things in an unknown language It murmurs and beats And keeps you here with me I want to make sure you stay Even after they take the murmur away We are inseparable You are a part of me And nothing can change that Not even surgery 

What does it mean exactly I don’t want to know I don’t look it up I want to let it go Another medical mess I can’t handle the reality Or process what it means As you say it and look at me With earthy brown eyes That hold a love of oil and earth Your heart murmurs Secret things in Another language Your smile is firmer The determination in it Is your advantage ------- My father is a walking miracle Caring, passionate Hard-working and satirical He has fearlessness That I strive for And I’m the carrot on the stick The motivation, and the kick The one he’s stayed alive for.

Three days of driving Three days of riding In the backseat To the middle of nowhere Where the air is brown with dirt Crusted and thick it sits in the cracks of trees and chokes the sun Black mist spews from smoke stacks I climbed a tree wearing white And when I came down My clothes were black From Pittsburgh To this tiny town With no movie theatre And one high school I wanted out of here The Dairy Queen shut down The bowling alley reigned supreme With buzzing neon lights An ancient witness to smoke-filled nights It's where I first felt What it was like To not be able To breathe That was the night that asthma found me And I choked in the dark And panic flooded my heart Here...Take an ice cube to calm down But it didn't and... I couldn't breathe In that place In that town From point guard To the bench Asbestos filled buildings sag in disrepair In the air there's a steady toxic stench Like rotting eggs or burning rubber Cracked side...

One thing I do when I'm stressed out or need to think...is take a shower. An absurdly hot, peel your senses off shower. Tonight I made a b-line for the scalding hot water. My clothes, all snaps and buttons, end up haphazardly on the floor. It's almost criminal how I treat my delicate clothes. A thin navy blouse, beige corduroy pants, blinding white shoes all make a trail, like breadcrumbs to the shower. Everyone's always telling me I'm so young, but sometimes I feel so old. So worn out, so scared of the future that it paralyzes my present. I wasn't particularly thrilled to find out today that Dad's getting surgery on his leg next week. I tried to enjoy dinner. I didn't even voice my distaste for meat, like I usually do around my parents. I sipped the red wine and engaged in witty banter. And then that moment happens and my heart drops into my stomach and all the air gets sucked out my lungs. I'm sure that no one would enjoy watching their Dad...

If brown recluses are called recluses why did one show up and bite my Dad? As if he doesn't have enough to deal with, you know, with the whole cancer thing and compromised immune system...that stupid brown recluse had to go and bite his leg. So now he has a sort of "hole" in his leg. The spider bite occurred in October and he still has this open wound. So naturally I'm a little more worried than I normally am. Spider/insect bites are especially nasty to those with cancer and Dad has gone down many avenues trying to get this thing "fixed" or "closed" or healed. And it's not going that great. They took him off the cancer medicine to try and jumpstart his immune system into healing the bite but his platelets are going too low and if they get below a certain number, he won't be allowed back on the cancer medicine (which was working well for him). And every time he goes to some new doctor they want to scrape stuff and take samples, and t...

My parent's day lasted from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. A long drive in the dark, hours and hours and hours of waiting and treatments and a long drive home during rush hour. For them it was just another trek to MD Anderson. Another day lost trying to attain more days. I'm just so frustrated. Cancer is not something anyone should experience but the fact that it's terminal cancer makes it that much more unbearable. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. There aren't masses of people wearing orange and having fundraisers for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. No specials on TV like there are for breast cancer...no conversation about it. And yet it is a disease that has no solution. You can't cut out your blood...it's not a tumor...it's every cell in your body. I don't understand how we are a society who reinvents electronics every two months, a society that can land on the moon and build engineering feats; and yet we can't cure cancer. And if we could do you t...

On nights like this, I wish I had someone I could run to. Someone I could fall apart to. Someone who would wrap me in his arms and not even try to convince me everything would be okay, because he was smart enough to know that it wouldn’t be. But who would sit there in the silence with me. “Is there a cure?” is one of the first things people ask when you tell them your father has cancer. And I hate the answer. I had a nightmare last night, one part of which involved me knowing that I was only going to live for one more day. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what it must feel like to not be certain that you’d be around tomorrow? I experienced that feeling in a dream, for a brief amount of time. And it was an awful feeling. Yet, every night when my Dad goes to bed, he’s not sure if he’ll wake up the next day. And as I sit here with burning eyes, the most painful throbbing in my head and that familiar ache in my chest, it breaks my heart to think of how my Dad must feel. Occasionally h...

I was thirsty. That’s how the rest of my life started, by being thirsty. I was thirteen, and my family had just moved to Houston, we had been there for four months. Everything was going so well. Houston was a leap and a bound above the small refinery infested town we had just left in the Panhandle of TX; the middle of nowhere. I have such a clear memory of standing in my room, the walls a blinding white, the sun setting beneath the large empty field that lay behind our house. I picked up a roller and pushed it through the soft blue liquid that pooled in the plastic tray. We painted my room blue that night. Blue like the thirteen year old me dreamed of flying in. I wanted to be a pilot. But that’s another story. Needless to say, I was an interesting 13 year old and if you don’t believe me when I say that, just take into consideration that JAG was my favorite TV show. Anyway…so I was thirsty. My feet thumped down the stairs as I took them almost two at a time. The late afterno...