I’m far too old for this body.

My hands create words

far too wise for this cage.

My body walks with a gait, that could only be obtained through struggle.

My shoulders roll doubt down their back.

My head shakes off insincerity.

My eyes see through confidence.

I am fully educated in bullshit.

I’ve spent my life creating it.

For once- I am real.

The notion I have control over my longevity is too much for my meek mind,

Overstimulated mind,

Toughened mind.

The idea people can vote on a leader of a nation,

and not walk ten minutes through my thoughts

is a reality check,

It’s what you make it.

I’m exhausted. Repeating my positive salutations is demoralizing.

I’m completely desensitized.

Tuesday Night

I have the sudden reminder.

An empty bottle still sweating from the heat

I can only glance,

wishing my night had be spent any other way

but this.

A cheap THRILL

An offer for a Bud Light is grounds for a date.

A promise of an unordinary life is a relationship.

A guarantee for ache is lifelong.

Constant self doubt is whats the draw. I cling to the smallest insult.

Reassurance of your doubt-

Undoubtly mine

If you love me, don’t offer your love.

I need to do this on my own.

Your pity love will never sell me.

vice VICE vice

Pause. I’ve let myself stop. I leep a perpetual motion all day to maintain the stiffness of my life. Its begun to tremble. Conversations are replayed in my head. Questions. Why can’t I be successful?

Truer words have never been spoken when he said I’m drinking my life away. I’m one hangover from giving up. I’m able to laugh. I get everyone to join in  my laughter about my illness. It’s a riot when I lose a nipple.

No one knows me. I don’t even try.  The days of dreaming of a lust filled life such as de Beauvoir and Sartre are over. I no longer allow myself to dream of lavander fields and vichyssoie in Provence while pruning in tepid bath water. I’m too close to breaking.

My ideal life: A sunny May afternoon. Lavander, tarragon, basil, and sage have been planted. I am lying on the chaisse reading L’Immoralist. Vast country side absorbs me. Each exhale rustles the growing grass. Complete silence.

Although I will always dream, I will never linger. Wishes never come true. I should know. Last night I prayed my cancer would come back.

I am fine.

AA is for Quitters

Come home.  The government is buying your groceries. Every morning I am awakened to the ring of an unknown number, attempting to collect on a debt.  Every weekend I find an excuse to obtain money from my father to buy a watery draft.  Later in the week, after I’ve regained my appetite I laugh about vomiting through clasped hands on the stranger waiting for a grimy booth at Waffle House. What fun! Wasn’t that great? Remember when I puked my expensive bar tab on some poor bystander? I can’t stop. I’ll do it again. I want it. Now.

You’re unfair to all talk about me. I wake up the next morning, still inebriated, still stinking. I just want something to drink. Really, is that too much to ask. You scoff at every move I make. It’s because of the drink. Yes bitch, I don’t feel well, yes I drank last night. I just want to shake my mother. Has she ever had to feel what I am feeling? Of course she has, she’s watching it.

I don’t mean to disappoint my mother. I just disagree with her. She views drowning your woes in booze as a weakness, I view it as a baptism. To become right again. Eventually.

Everyday I’m one notch lower and lower. Self worth dissolving rapidly. I have a panic within that is in tune with my life’s metronome. I know this count down all too well. Tick. Tock. Drip. Drop. Ink drying on a certificate. It’s all too close, too real.

February Killed Me

I’ve learned that over thinking can over complicate. I have perfected this. Over complicating is how I achieve.  I simply desire a warm embrace. To achieve this I demand you no longer care for me, or that you no longer desire me. You see I behold this capability because I have cancer. Everyone is afraid of the girl with cancer. What if it were their girlfriend. They are all afraid of having to commit to death. I am death looking you eye to eye with my moon pie face. I don’t fear death. I just fear the journey. If you want to kill me, shoot me. Quick, blindsided.  Please don’t make it a slow death. That’s just what my life has become, a slow, poisonous death.

         Every three weeks I commit to a voluntary poisoning. I slowly walk into 725 S. Ludlow and vow that this time will be painless. I let the same worn out nurses poke me without latex and I smile through the ride. My smile is a scream that everyone sees. I wait for the dickhead with the brown plastic bags and listen as the phone rings. Eventually the nurses remember I am awaiting a painful death and they shower me with questions and ungodly affection. I just want to eat. How I miss the pleasure of food. Eventually they connect my I.V to the machine and it’s a count down of each lethal drop.

                  Forty minutes for Carboplatin.

                  Fifty minutes for Taxoteir.

                  One hour for Herceptin.

         I slowly indulge in the words of Duras. I hold the 118 pages of The Lover near to my breast. I long for someone to desire me in gold lamé shoes and a man’s fedora. Instead I am the bald woman in clothes too tight, and misshaped, nipple less breasts. I seductively refer to them as tits, but I acknowledge these balls of flesh attached to my chest are nothing more than balls of flesh. To call them tits would be assuming they were tools of Seduction. Cancer took that from me long ago. Seduction has packed its weekender full of Calvin Klein panties and Frederick’s thigh highs. The only trace of Seduction left behind is a purple rubbery dildo, with which I am afraid of.

         I religiously bathe in lavender salts and compulsively smoke Marlboros. I sit in the candlelight and imagine Provence. I see the golden yellow of Van Gogh and the perverseness of the Marquis de Sade. I try to touch myself. I feel two folds of unwanted flesh. I imagine you bending me over the bed, pulling on my auburn hair. My body refuses Seduction. Raw yearning pulls at my loins. Tears well in my eyes.  Your induced broken heart has robbed me of Seduction.

Nostalgia

Written 26 September 2009, three days before my billateral mastectomy

26 September 2009

            I heard a song. I’ve heard it resonating.  “The fiction in the space between that has created space between you and me”. My head is filled with the stories of Calliope and Rhan Amir.  Instead of conversation I throw myself forward without hesitation into the lives of others.  I let these strangers absorb me mentally and emotionally.  Only these fictional characters and myself will ever know how I feel when their parents don’t listen to them or when promises are made that cannot ever come true.  I let my doubts fall into their hands.  My life cannot be said in a sentence.  You will never say, Lauren she is (fill in your desired occupation).  I am none of the above.  I do not struggle, but I get by.  I hope for facts.  I hope.  I hope and hope and hope. What is to come of hoping?  Just the bottom result.  I don’t have the drive to ever attend college.  My inward drive lets me bore endlessly of my daytime job.  I never feel that I could ever be loved.  Sure, there is a man in my life.  I talk that we are there for each other.  We both feel we have found the one.  Yet when he doesn’t call I am thrown into a torment I wouldn’t wish on someone I call my enemy. A castaway.  I love you. Do you love me? I love you, if this is what “love” is.  This is Lauren McClure. A rush of doubt, hesitation, and absolute unknowing.

       What I want is to walk to the kitchen and grab a Budweiser from the refrigerator and drink it until I fall asleep.  I know I need to get up in the morning and my judgment is taking the better of me.  My hands feel old.  I’ve told my story too many times over.  Can I please have a break? I am no longer myself.  Instead I am the face of breast cancer.  I feel like a walking pink ribbon.  What’s your survivor story? Were you sad, do you feel like less of women?  I feel like I am sick of this.  I am tired.  I want to be normal again.  I will never be looked at as a person again, but a disease.  I am breast cancer.  That is who I am.  Forever people will think of me as the twenty-two year old who had breast cancer.  Why didn’t I decide to be the twenty-two year old graduating from college? Do you think if I chose that route things would be different? That god really didn’t know what else to do with my life so decided to give me this disease to see how I would pan out. Questions. Too many.  I am suddenly old. Too old.  Too sudden.

GaGa Delight!

So I’m about to pee myself. Here I am, having to get chemo and then I’m hop skipping out of here to see Lady Gaga in concert!!

Here’s a little taste of what tonight will bring!!!

Seeking: THIS MAN

Mr. Bourdain, you do bad bad things to me. In my head.

Your Body is Not a Temple

It is an AMUSEMENT PARK

My body has been treated far worse than an amusement park. More like a traveling carnival with questionable roadies reeking of malt liquor and deep fried pork loins. The past few weeks have been filled with boozy men and drunken buffets of saturated fatty delights. I’ve just turned another year older and with that comes an order for change. I think I should provide a few examples of my utter debauchery over the past few weeks to really solidify my needs for a personal cleanse.

The highlights lowlights:

Let’s go back say, two weeks. That’s about as far as my memory can recall.  I was having a particularly shitty day and decided to sit my honky ass down at the bar at 1 pm.  Luckily for me the World Cup was in full swing and after twenty minutes of making side talk with the other losers who were choosing to drink at 1 pm on a Wednesday, I started making bets.  Let’s just say Germany did me well, and Serbia did not. I strutted, more like stumbled, out around 5 pm proud that I was drunk and the rest of the world was going home to make hamburger helper and pretend to give a shit about their significant others day.  I had managed to only spend $8 too! In my book that is a success.

As I’m trying to figure out which bar to next grace with my presence I get a call from someone Jamie and I got loaded with one night. Hanibal owns several businesses and well frankly is the type of man that would never allow a woman to pay for her own drinks.  In other words, my soul mate.  I put my game face on and met him at some burger joint. He had yet to have a drink yet so I have to act cool.  About six hours later we are on the patio of the restaurant making out. Ah dignity, you really don’t have my back.  I was getting texts from Boogers to come over so I left Hanibal hanging, saying I had an early morning. Which I did, I had chemo at 8 am! I never ended up going to Boogers but I did have a hell of a time sitting being stuck in a hospital room with the worlds worst hangover.

Speed forward to Friday.  My sister was out of town. I had the house to myself. holy crap. I could feel the hot mess availability in the air.  Jamie, Morgan, and I really slutted it up and went to Kramers, then Harrigans. Naturally.  We ended up at my place popping open champagne and inviting a complete stranger into the house.  We woke up the next morning, still intoxicated and went cabrewing. I could barely move I was so exhausted Sunday.

Following Saturday: Jamie’s dad’s band was playing in Columbus so myself and my wing women went up there. It was a great night of dancing. We then proceeded to eat more everything off of a carry out menu from a bar called “Twatters” We didn’t want to wake her parents at La Quinta so we sat in the hallway with our hair a mess, makeup running, stomachs no longer able to be sucked in, inhaling chicken wings and other various fried foods. No. This has to stop.

Side note : I woke up the next morning and I was missing a nipple. It was found in my pants. Whew

Next weekend: Jamie’s dad had another gig. We danced our little bootys off at Sharkeys then naturally, went to Harrigans. We proceeded to take many many shots because my birthday was the next week and Jamie would be in Germany.  David had to carry Jamie out of the bar. Woke up the next morning went to the bar and had a beer.

ok I need to stop. I haven’t even covered my birthday week and I’m exhausted by my debauchery.

Here’s the plan

Beginning tomorrow (because I’ve already eaten Taco Bell and a ton of Doritos) I will not eat anything with an ingredient I do not recognize.  I will be eating mostly raw vegetables and fruit. With unsalted nuts for protein and egg whites. I will not eat out or drink anything but water and black coffee.  Beer possibly. ha.

I CAN DO THIS!

I’m sick of being a chubster.