Staying Alive. Matt Beaumont

page is written as bullet points.

      You may experience:

       Shock

       Disbelief

       Denial

       Anger

       Guilt

       Depression

       Isolation

      I could put a big fat tick next to every item. Jesus, in the past few days I’ve gone through more mood swings than a country and western album. Just for starters I’ve done a lot of denial. Only tonight I was buying it by the gram. And I still have moments of disbelief. Moments when I think—I really think—pixie Morrissey is going to leap out from round a corner, probably in clown make-up, and trill, ‘ Da-daaa! We really had you going there, eh?’ Actually, the disbelief is overwhelming. More than anything I can’t believe my bad luck.

      While a drowning man supposedly reviews his life at lightning speed, I can afford to reassess mine at a slightly more leisurely pace. I’m doing a lot of looking back and all I can see is a catalogue of lousy fortune. And look at me now: up to my neck in credit-card debt, in a job that makes me loathe myself, and I’ve lost the only girl that ever mattered. That is not the description of a lucky guy.

       Well, at least I’ve got my health.

      Can’t say that any more, can I?

      I’ve got a cancer that only a couple of thousand British men will succumb to this year. And while the overwhelming majority of them will make full recoveries, I’m one of the forty or so who won’t.

      Why me?

      Why couldn’t I have found that lump months ago, before its vicious mutant cells had begun their journey around my body?

      And while we’re at it, why that particular cancer out of the dozens on offer?

      Why not a little melanoma on the small of my back? A slice with a scalpel, a quick zap of radiation and I’d be back on the streets in no time. Then there’s colorectal cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, mesothelioma and multiple myeloma. My chances would almost certainly be better with any of those. They surely couldn’t be any worse. I’d happily number among the one per cent of male breast cancers. I could put up with the sniggers. Or how about bowel cancer? Let them hack some of my stomach out. I’d put up with that. I’d put up with pretty much anything over the deal I’ve been dealt. A tumour on my arm like Jakki’s uncle. That’s a nice treatable one. Just cut off my arm. Hack off both to be certain.

      At least I’d be alive.

      But, no, I’ve got cancer in my testicle, my liver and my lung and I don’t even smoke. I can’t even shrug and admit I was asking for it. Well, thanks a million, God, Buddha, Allah, Krishna, the fairies at the bottom of the garden, whoever the fuck.

      I thought I’d plumbed the depths of my self-pity in the days after Megan left.

       I had no idea.

      And I’m terrified. The website doesn’t mention that one, does it? All-consuming, mind-curdling fear. More than anything else, I’m frightened…Of the impending pain…Of losing my dignity (not that there’s much to lose)…Of losing my life, obviously…And, strangely, of telling people. Making it real. Official.

       You really should talk to someone.

      Yes, but who?

      I click on WHERE CAN YOU TURN? More handy bullet points.

      · A counsellor

      I have major issues with this one. I know, I know, issues—as in the raising of and the dealing with—are what therapists are all about. But I’ve known me for thirty-one years, and I have trouble talking frankly about my feelings with myself in the mirror. It would take me an age to feel sufficiently comfortable with a stranger and, well, an age is something I don’t have.

      · Family

      I’m trying, but there’s no reply at Casa Mama. Anyway, how is Mum going to comfort me? I know only too well how she will react. Remember the gashed shin? She will take all of the emotions listed on this website and fuse them into an incandescent ball of hysteria.

      · A sympathetic employer

      Now they’re having a laugh, surely. The thought of taking my disease and the excess emotional baggage that goes with it into Niall Haye’s office and plonking the whole lot down on his desk is just so ridiculous that it’s almost—but not quite—funny.