Personal Experience Essay

2nd January 2016

So, I was sat by the sea, on a golden sandy beach, on a hot day in June. I used to think the sea smelt like the sea more, but not today, no smell of seaweed or salt in the air, maybe it is because it is such a calm day. This has always been my place to come, when everything is too much, or if I need to feel good, and somehow after all these years it still makes me feel calm and at peace. I still remember as a teenager, when I was really angry, because I was not heard, I would walk on the beach, stomping, feeling the wind, sand and salt spray in my face and somehow often the power of the sea with the waves crashing matched my mood and this helped calm me. However, today is a calm day, but I don’t feel calm, I have to make a decision and I don’t know what to do, so I thought let’s sit by the sea, the sea will help, of course I know that really it can’t help, but old habits die hard.

Sometimes decisions are so difficult, because you can’t just think about you, you think about everyone else and what is best for them and what will make them feel better, ha, feel better. How did I ever end up like this? Of course I actually do know, and old habits die hard, I blame myself, and of course it is right to blame myself, although so often in the past I really wish I hadn’t. So here’s the thing, as I am a complete idiot and smoked for years, tried to give up many, many times, but I persevered, and now I am to pay the price. Of course it could have been anything, the bus crossing the road, heart attack when trying to run or life becoming too much and a rash decision in the middle of the night.

I know you know already, so let me state the obvious, the big C, and in my lungs, so I am the leper, the undeserving, I am surprised with the way we blame people for their own situations these days that they even offered treatment, surprised they don’t just go: ‘well you have cancer in your lung, but because you smoked, the NHS won’t pay for treatment, so unless you can afford private treatment, we do not offer anything other than a diagnosis’. At the moment though, it was a bland room, with a doctor, who tried to sound like it mattered, but just never really made it. I listened, but then it did not seem real, and then I started the self-blaming, what an idiot, why did you ever start smoking, why did you not stop, well you have gotten what you deserve haven’t you?