A look in the life of Benjamin Richardson

My daughter had to be admitted to the emergency room this morning at around 5:45. After many hours of painstaking waiting we got the results of the tests that they had ran. My beautiful little girl of six years old has a mere three months to live. She has been diagnosed with a mutated form of lung cancer. Her case has the doctors absolutely bewildered, which honestly does not surprise me anymore because these so called doctors are a dime a dozen. It is going to be so difficult to just sit and watch my little princess die this dreadfully painful death.

                As if things weren’t already bad enough in my family, we get the news of her diagnosis. I’m finding it harder and harder to want to live in this desolate planet, where the segregation of the social classes is so palpable. I can walk into a job interview, if I’m lucky enough to get called into one, wearing a dilapidated shirt and blue jeans with holes all around them. When you can’t even afford to have one set of honorable clothes, you’re pretty much out of luck with getting a job.

                Times like this I wish that I had reliable source of income. If I did, maybe, just maybe, I could afford the medicine that could make it just a little more tolerable for her. As if I not having a job wasn’t degrading enough to my family, the only real source of income comes from my wife making it on her back. Each night she’s out doing what she can with what she has. The only reason she’s doing this is because I can’t support my family monetarily.

                The cancer is eating my daughter from the inside out. Her shimmering blue eyes that she once had before she got sick, have now turned into a faded slate grey. She frequently screams in the middle of the night, awaking my wife and I. This takes me out of the nirvana that I was in when my daughter was at peace and in her cheerful state of mind, and back into the terrorizing living nightmare called my life. I’m actually praying that my little girl can be taken care of and healthy once again. I hope that she can stay around and experience all that life has to offer in this tragic world. At the same time, however, I hope that she doesn’t have to experience the travesty I’ve had to face in my life.

                My life has been surrounded by loss; everything and everyone I’ve ever cared for I have let them down so many times that they just decide to leave. My mother abandoned me when I was merely fourteen years old. Living with my drunk of a father all of the physical, mental, emotional abuse that I endured. We all struggle daily in the outlook of things that seem to matter drastically at the time, but when we look back on things we realize that it was just another piece to the puzzle. My life has been a puzzle. I typically stare at a puzzle that I am trying to complete and work the outside corners, to the inside. With life, on the other hand, it starts from the inside and works its way to the outside. To clarify, what we go through affects us on the inside and in turn, affects us on the outside. The state of affairs that we endure, help us become who we are meant to be. With my daughter, although it’s very difficult, I’m trying my hardest to keep in mind that the situations we go through shape us into the best that we can be. The entire world is crashing down around us. The contemplation of ending this God forsaken life is as familiar to me as baseball is with Babe Ruth.