Radiation Begins
There was a strange dance that unfolded over the next seven days—a rhythm dictated by the relentless pulse of the radiation machine. Every hour, without fail, the machine would roar to life, delivering its charge 24 hours a day. I lay there, pinned down, as the machine worked tirelessly to destroy the cancerous cells within me. Yet, while parts of me were being "cooked" and destroyed, I felt a connection to something deeper. I clung to the mantras I silently chanted, feeling the universal life-force flow through me. It was as though, in the midst of cellular destruction, I was simultaneously being held by a force larger than myself, keeping me grounded, keeping me alive, even as parts of me died.
This contradiction—of life and death intertwined—was disorienting. The physical reality was undeniable: my body was breaking down, and my cells attacked hour by hour, minute by minute. I felt trapped, imprisoned in a position that I couldn’t escape. The radiation schedule was brutal—25 minutes of radiation, followed by the desperate attempt to catch fleeting moments of sleep before the machine would start again. My back ached constantly from being unable to move, and the desire to simply stand and stretch became an obsession. The inability to act on this need only deepened the sense of captivity. I was pinned down, both literally and metaphorically.
Words, at that moment, were useless. How could they capture the violence of what was happening to me? The pain, the intensity, the inescapable sensation of being torn apart from the inside—it was beyond articulation. The tools I had brought to pass the time—books, clay, crocheting—became meaningless in the face of this all-consuming experience. The thought of using them felt absurd, irrelevant. But the oil pastels… they were different.
The oil pastels allowed me to access something beyond words. There, in that sterile, confined space, their vivid colors became my lifeline. Drawing wasn’t just a distraction; it was survival. I could take those pastels and scratch at the paper, releasing through lines and color the unspeakable terror I was enduring. The act of drawing was raw, almost primal. It wasn’t about creating something beautiful; it was about expressing the inexpressible, making visible the emotions that words could never convey.
Every stroke of pastel across the paper felt like a release. Each line, each curve, mirrored the internal chaos, the pain, the fear, the strange dance between destruction and life. The colors—bold and aggressive—became a reflection of what was happening inside me. I didn’t have to explain or rationalize; I simply let the pastels do the talking. This act of creation, of making something tangible out of my suffering, became a way to cope with the violence I was experiencing. In the midst of radiation, in the moments where I could not move, drawing allowed me to escape in a way nothing else could.
In those seven days, I discovered a new language—one born from necessity, from the depths of my struggle. The colors of the oil pastels helped me access the unspeakable, transforming the horror of radiation into something I could see, something I could control, even if just for a moment. It was not about art or beauty. It was about survival.
