Depression and Fear are going to track me down. I could hear their footsteps right behind—perhaps just one step away. Once they get to me, they will frisk me, empty my pockets of any joy I have, confiscate my identity; sap away all of my energies and leave me a broken sell.

“Leave me alone!” I shout in desperation.

Fear, the ugly and more relentless guy, shrugs and says:” I’m sorry. But I might have to tail you whenever you feel not Okay.”

Of course I am not Okay. My radiation therapy has completed but its terrible effects still capture me in prison: I have a sore throat and rubber taste that I could only imagine I’d someone contracted a Radiation aftermath version of Covid-19; I am suffering from another bout of bowel affliction, which might change forever the way I feel about the bathroom. And chronic fatigue, loss of appetite…

And then they start to harangues me with menacing interrogations. They ask me how many times I still have. They ask why I am so sure that I am the 2.5 out of 10? Where my confidence come from? Is my life really worth of all those trying and suffering? How could I be sure that the question mark (infection? Or Tumor?)  in my recent CT scan about my rectum is the infection instead of the other one around?

I feel I must defend this one: Of course it is infection! I have running stomach because of radiation therapy. It happened to me last round but it got better afterwards.

“You never know, don’t you? Cancer is tricky. It grows and spreads. That could be the symptom of rectum cancer.”

I push their voices aside, stubbornly and firmly. I know what would happen once they come upon me. I got depressions before I got cancer. I know what symptons it will bring out---everything I am suffering now—loss of asleep, appetite and libido, chronic backaches and stomachs, alienation and despair, trouble concentrating on everything. That would be double kill, and I could not be able to survive this right now. 

I know Depression and Fear very well. I’ve been playing a cat-and-mouse game for years now. Of course I’ve learned from my mistakes. First of all, you need to divert your attentions, with writing, reading, exercising, anything. If I get to thinking a little too much, and then my thinking turns to brooding and that’s when they catch up with me.

So let’s walk on a tread mill--- even I have to do it on my wobbling legs.