I hate that smell

My bed smells like disinfectant, cleaning products, medicine. I hate that smell. It reminds me too much at my childhood, at another time, another life.
I’ve been healthy for almost 6 years… Well, technically, I should say I WAS healthy for almost 6 years, until it all started back about a year ago. Right around the time my soul was as damage as my body and mind.
In spite all the doctors and tubes, medicines and hospitals, I was a very happy child. Always smiling, always dreaming about a better future (one without any tubes, but tones of love). I had always been optimistic. Then, when my luck finally changed, my entire life –including my attitude– did also. I got better, I got cured. I was a 17 year old who had missed most of life experiences for a liver disease, so now was ready for “living la vida loca”… The only problem was, life’s never like in the dreams.
I got to see how the boy I had a crush during highschool got married and had a kid. I got to see how all of my friends went to college while I had to sit around and wait, because my doctor didn’t want me to stay outside so long. And I got to see how my best friends, my childhood girl-friends got their careers on and had boyfriends… a life. Two of these girls are getting married this year, and one of them is moving out of town… and I’m still here.
Eventually I get to go college, I could get out, go dancing, meet new people. But it took me way too long to find somebody to love and who loved me back. And that make me become a bitter person, someone that I had never though I could be. In the end, I found someone, but by then I had already made a lot of mistakes (including sleeping with a friend), and with that relationship I made a hell of a lot more.
The thing is, as much as I got hurt during that time, I don’t regret it. I got the chance to live for a while. I even got the chance to know what love is. But, after that love&tragedy story, I was really messed up. I started therapy after the relationship ended because I didn’t know what to do with my life anymore… Everything happened so fast with Santiago… I even ended up in the hospital, AGAIN, with another surgery performed in my already trained body. Not the same kind of surgery, though… this one only left a scar in my heart.
So I decided it was time to go back to being me again, the happy girl instead of this depressive person that I’d become in the last few years. I even got a job that I really like, and started saving for a trip to Mexico that I wanted to do next summer. And then, when time seemed to be healing my wounds and I could finally start to enjoy life the way I had never done it before, it happened. My disease came back.
It wasn’t very strong at first, but soon I was visiting hospitals again. My friends, as good as they might be, they had to go on with there lives, so I started to live mine trough the internet. It was very frustrating at first because I didn’t have anybody to talk to but now I have a whole bunch of friends online. I don’t mind that they’re all from other countries, I have fun with them in a way I could never do with people in here. Here I should get out more, do stuff that I can’t so I could really get to know and be friends with people. In the net, all I have to do is be myself.
I hadn’t had an episode for months now. Last time I was in the hospital was in December and I got on my feet pretty fast. I continued with therapy and my regular check ups. I go to work and school without any difficulty (except when I got a cold a couple of months ago and my mother almost have me confined again. Like that has anything to do with my liver?!?!). But last weekend, without any previous notice, I was sick, again.
I’ve missed work and school since Monday, and I’ve even spent that night in the hospital. I keep asking to go back to work, at least, because I don’t wanna lose my job, but is always the same answer: “once the doctor says its ok”. Yeah, yeah, I know…
Now my bed smells like a hospital bed again, and all the work that I did to go back to be a happy person is starting to vanish slowly. I love life, and I love laughter and fun and everything good that comes with it. But I’m just so tired of fighting to have a little bit of that just to, afterwards, see how it’s all taken away from me.
I’ve been fighting to stay alive for 24 years… and I haven’t really LIVED most of them…
Is that a way to live?
What am I fighting for?
I’m just not sure if I should keep on doing it anymore.