I never thought I’d be home for Christmas.

Two weeks on, one week off. 

Two weeks on, one week off. 

Two weeks on, one week off. 

Two weeks on, one week off. 

Two weeks on, one week off.

And on and on it goes, this repeating viper. Curiously my mind hasn’t dried up yet from repetition, just a methodical regurgitation and inhalation of recycled thoughts. My months have been lined up like pews. Doctor visits have become confessions and the voices in my head get louder after each “hail marry”. Like an empty cathedral my positivity gets lost within the arches and stained glass walls. Sometimes an echoed thought will come back in a different octave. When I fail to recognize that it’s my own projection, I laugh at its awareness’s of my current state. It will make me chuckle and I’ll hear my self say, “Haven’t heard that laugh in a while.”

It seems as though each injection, whether self induced or nuzzled in by the beaks of motherly nurses, has more than just life altering chemicals. They all burn but the skin only feels a fragment of what the rest of my “body” feels. Every single injection of this liquid cure burns like gunpowder. My veins might as well be dry grass as I feel the fire crawl under my skin and peel my insides like burnt bark.

On days when I sit in the treatment room’s chairs I’m struck with a reflective silence. I play a quiet game. 

“You’ve been sick for years, you found out last year, oh and you over there... well it looks like you don’t give a shit anymore”. I’m quiet while I watch “my peers”; separated by decades, receive the same type of treatment. I wonder, are they jealous? I make up conversations in my head.

“You’re so lucky. “ They’d say, “You’re so young. Here we are, wrinkled and gray while you ink your skin, playing for big gain and new dreams.”

Sympathetically I’d reply, “But aren’t we equal, we both dream of flying. “ And perhaps they’d call my dreams a niche in this mortality market, or maybe they think the same thing as I do: I didn’t know what it was like to dream till I lost sleep over... my mortality.

My safe place, whether you believe me or not, is on my bathroom toilet. No, nothing crass; it’s just me sitting down on the toilet lid. I’ll prop adjacent window open allowing the breeze to swirl within my pearl cream-white tomb, light a candle and stare out my window. Sometimes when I have it too I’ll smoke a little pot. Takes the edge off my nausea, chemical fatigue, self deprecating thoughts and I found out that I smile a bit more as well. Can you blame me? I can sit there for what feels like hours because I can’t hear anything else going on in the house. It’s hard to not be alone. I’m a magnet. One half will follow a friend to space and the other feels the need to repulse to a distance where they can never touch me. Even on that toilet I can’t decide if I like people or not. Sometimes, if I have my record player on, I feel like I separated my self from a cool party. “Oh hey, they’re playing Built To Spill... those must be some rad people. I wonder if they have any Otis Redding records” It helps me feel normal again, that sort of music snobbery that I used to use to separate my self from freshmen girls.  But my safe place is not always my safe place. On days where I have to inject my self I find my self-staring into the reflection pool of my bathroom mirror. 

My mental check list becomes a military battery. Or if it's not a bundling of rations, it's as if I am stuck in the film Trainspotting, just waiting to freak out. Luckily, none of my medication has any sort of hallucinogenic properties, so my concept of reality is still stable.  Either way, my mind is racing every time. 

Rubbing alcohol, check.  

Cotton ball, check. 

Cap off the needle, check. 

Love-handles clean, check. 

Okay, go.

I lock eyes with this dude looking straight back at me. He looks scruffy and uncomfortable. He holds the needle in his side like a pen, but his sides... His poor sides, they look bitten by a farm of red ants. And then I feel it burn and burn some more. The needle withdraws from his belly like a wasp and a droplet of blood wells up like a teardrop. Oddly and recently he’s smiling back at me. He whispers, “I’ll be home for Christmas”.

Over the past six months friends, family and strangers have blessed me. I have been experiencing Christmas since July. Its moments like that I wonder if I can ever effectively communicate my thankfulness. It reminds me of the speech from “The Great Dictator”, and how befuddled Charlie Chaplin’s character was. But at the end he was able to express one of the greatest gifts that God has given us, the ability to create happiness.

“In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure...”

In October I thought I’d be in Nashville for the holidays. I was originally going to be crammed into another hospital while every one I knew would be back home. But that has all changed when I had the blood clots at the beginning of November. Perhaps it was a miracle in disguise because I got to have Thanksgiving with my family. Now I’m home for Christmas. This month is important for me. On Christmas day I’ll be celebrating life. Back in July the doctor told me that I’d have six to nine months to live if I didn’t receive treatment.  Well here I am in December looking forward to not only 2014, but also 2015 through 20...70 something.

I hope that everyone has a blessed Christmas. May the light of our Lord shine down upon you no matter who you are, for if you have given me joy then you have brought joy to the Lord as well.

Also here's the full speech below with awesome music by The Album Leaf.