in 6 months

As a regular patient, I am always in the VIP room since my stepfather was a doctor and owns a hospital. Dominated by a bed. Usually has a bedside table, comfortable chair, and one or more dining-type chairs. Decorated in colors designed to be restful but come off as akin to a decorator's choices for a funeral home. Cold, institutional tile floor. A window that looks out on the beautiful landscape. A private bath that conceals its functionality. Handicap railing on the toilet, shower, and tub. Entry to both hospital room and private bath is a large heavy door engineered to open quietly and won't slam. The bed is somewhat lumpy with padding and sheets that are trying to mask the thick plastic covering the mattress. Sheets in sterile white with a pale blue blanket. Phone attached to the bed with a cord. The call button is also attached to the bed. Several different lighting options (fluorescent for the most part), light for the whole room, light for just the entryway, light for just the bed, bedside light. The room is never completely dark. Emesis basin, plastic, again in restful colors, with a matching plastic pitcher on the bedside table. The little table attached to the underside of the bed that you can move around the bed, to keep everything handy. Depending on how long the patient has been in residence, there could be quite a few personal belonging scattered about. IV pole with a digital monitoring system that tends to beep every time you move. Walking in the other morning, the first smell was the pungently acrid odor of cheap cigarettes, from the group of patients smoking outside. Nothing matches that to get you coughing in the morning. The doctor's office smelt mildly of coffee like most mornings, with that slight must of the dust that settles in there hanging on the air. Later it would smell quite richly of the spicy tuna someone brought in for their lunch. The Cardiologist entered my room to have a little discussion regarding my heart disease, I'm somewhat nervous but instead, I felt comfortable because these things usually happen to me every 2 months. Dr. Castro came in with another person who looks like a cardiologist too, but why- "Lia, it's been 2 months" he smiled. His smile was like a sudden beam of sunlight illuminating the darkest corners of the room, that may be the reason why every staff in this hospital calls him, "Dr. Charismatic". "This is Dr. Marie Grey, she's a cardiovascular surgeon doctor" DR Castro introduced. I'm getting surgery? "Lia I have bad news" Dr. Castro stated, bad news? surgery? what is happening? The other day I remembered Samuel's mom was the one who killed my late father... Then, what now? "I checked your x-ray and esophagus, your heart hole has unexpectedly gone swelling, I hate to admit that I have to diagnose you with Atrial Septal Defect, and..." Dr. breath heavily... "You have 6 months time limit until your heart... You know what I mean." he looked down. I smiled, I know this would happen. I'll just resign with my fate, right? I wanna be happy for the rest of my 6 months, without Samuel in the picture. "You have to find a heart transplant if you want to live more, Dr. Grey will have to assist you if you may have a heart transplant" his final words. It's sad, thinking about how did my life ended up like this. I should blame no one, it's the deadly disease that was given to me. All I could do was to accept it and live my life. I've lived with depression, despair, and anxiety forever. Since forever I've tried to describe what it "feels" like to be depressed to the mentally "healthy" people in my life and I've never felt that I've succeeded. How I envy their incapacity to understand. Having anxiety and depression is like being scared and tired at the same time. It's the fear of failure, but no urge to be productive. It's wanting friends, but hate socializing. It's wanting to be alone, but not wanting to be lonely. It's feeling everything at once then feeling paralyzingly numb. Do you understand that? I was unable to get help. I tried, I swear. I tried fighting my own instincts, I tried reaching my hands extended. But no one came to pick me up. The anger, rage, and sorrow that I carried till my very last breath, all of the suffering and loneliness, made me want to give up and not reach the light. The fatigue I've gathered year after year and stored inside now heaves a muted cry of helplessness. Nothing but fatigue, rounding my shoulders, heavier than ever on this late autumn day with a useless sun, a world of unforgiving disasters. So many struggles and tragedies, so much sorrow and egotism in this dark, in this rotting century of hate. But whether we think about it or not, hope is a part of everyone's life. Everyone hopes for something. It's an inherent part of being a human being. Hope helps us define what we want in our futures and is part of the self-narrative about our lives we all have running inside our minds, we just often sit and still in the dark, covering our mind and soul to not let the light pass by. Most people associate hope with a dire situation. People hope to get out of difficult circumstances. That is often when people do find themselves hoping fervently. But hope also can provide the key to making everyday life better. I don't want to hold on to negativity this time, it's time for me to see the light in the darkest time. In fact, I'm way luckier than every child in the slums of my country. I have every privilege that not every kid has, I have access to the things that are relevant these days, I attend private school, compared to other kids my age who travel 3-4 hours just to learn and respect education. I am way luckier than them, but being luckier than them doesn't mean that I have to act arrogant and conceited. I just have to be grateful for what I have, for every individual in this world has problems that they have to come up with. To be honest, we don't know what everyone is going thru by just looking in their walk or how they react to things, we have to look and experience their problems just to feel what they feel. We don't have to dwell in the darkness thinking how unlucky we are, we don't have to think about the things that we don't have, we just have to be grateful to feel relaxed and contented. We are created fairly in different ways. In 6 months before I leave this world, I want to feel happy and contented about myself, with the people I like, love, and comfortable to be with.

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