This Is Me

This Is Me

I look in the mirror but I do not recognise the person staring back at me

Sunken eyes, the colour faded, dried lips, cracked and sore

Cheek bones protruding where once there was flesh, pale and pasty like a piece of unbaked dough

My head an odd egg shape no longer covered in layers of pretty auburn hair

My ribs on show for all to see, as easy to count as one, two, three

My arms black and blue, dented and bruised – wounded soldiers in this war on me

My stomach, which was once, deemed to big, now a saggy mess of unwanted flesh

My shoulders droop under the weight of stress, my legs barely support me they are so frail and thin

My wedding ring adorns a stand on the dresser, a reminder of all that I have lost

My heart is broken into two, loss and grief ripping at its very being

My wardrobe once full of elegant dresses and the finest of suits replaced now with standard issue grey tracksuits and comfy fitting jumpers

High heels buried at the back, not much need for those any more

Photos of the life I once had thrown into a box on the floor – I cannot look at the painful reminders, the wounds cut too deeply

Once I was happy and madly in love, I had a full life ahead of me with a man who offered me the world on a plate

He promised before friends and family to love me in sickness and in health, to take the good times a long with the bad

When the doctors told me I was ill he stood there in shock, literally frozen to the spot

As my world came crashing down around me I didn’t think things could get any worse

I tried to be bright and pretend things were ok, smiled in all the right places and kept my chin up

The doctors said my diagnosis wasn’t a death sentence things had come along way

Drugs and determination were the key to beating this evil thing that had invaded my body and destroyed all the good in me

The questions were endless, the appointments tiresome

I guess something had to give!

I had to resign from my job, give my carer prospects up, life was permanently on hold

For a few months he stood by me watching me fall apart

He walked around like a robot saying and doing all of the right things but the love we once shared in abundance just wasn’t there

One day he was my husband the next just a man in a faded photo smiling without a care

I have seen the statistics; there is a good chance I will beat this cancer

I touch the glass, my haunted reflection – this is me, there is still life in me yet