Not again.

"There wasn't a day went by over the past four years that Merbein's Page McCarthy-Beard wasn't in pain because of the cancer that was slowly taking over her body.

The lively, friendly and lovely teen was in and out of hospitals, underwent hundreds of tests in Mildura, Adelaide and Melbourne, including chemotherapy, lost her beautiful long hair, and then a leg.

But there wasn't a day go by that this bubbly girl didn't have a smile on her face, or a thank you to family, friends and hospital staff for all the help she was getting. She was a fighter, determined to fulfill her dream of one day becoming a journalist.

Sadly, just a few months after her 18th birthday, Paige this week lost the fight. She passed away at the Mary Potter hospice in Adelaide at 10pm Tuesday, with family members who had shared the highs and lows of her young life by her side."

-Mildura Weekly 2/7/10, Alan Erskine

I can only really say one thing - not again. Merbein is a half-hour drive from where I live. First was Josh (who the community has mostly seemed to have forgotten about, or maybe it's just too painful), suffering from aggressive, malignant osteosarcoma of his thigh bone, and next is poor Paige, who suffered from an extremely aggressive nerve-ending cancer.

[Take a breath
I pull myself together
Just another step
Until I reach the door]

I don't understand at all. Why is it the kids? Isn't it hard enough that our uncles and aunts and grandparents and parents suffer from this (and we partially expect it because cancer is associated with the elderly), but then they rob us of our friends and siblings too? Who's they? Angels? Demons? Our own malignant cancer cells?

I want to believe. But I can't understand what a child has done that's so wrong it's punishable by death in anybody's eyes. I want to know who's responsible and at the same time I know it's nobody. Nobody can be blamed for her death. You can't blame the doctors, they did their best. You can't blame her body, it malfunctioned. You can't blame her parents, they sacrificed it all for her treatment. You can't blame the community, they rallied around her like a force field.

[And you'll never know the way
It tears me up inside to see you
Sometimes I wish I could save you
And there's so many things I want you to know]

God, if you're there, please tell them we miss them.

the milk bottle. (:

Our own keepers

[So stand in the rain
Stand your ground
Stand up when it's all crashing
Stand through the pain
You won't drown]

Sorry I haven't posted :) I've been thinking a lot, lately, and writing a lot, and I've realised that everything I ever thought about my friends has been wrong or misinformed in some way. You can never know what actions drive a person to do the things they do.

I'll never know why Kelsey used to cut herself. Sure, I know some of the reasons. But I'll never know exactly what drove her to that point. As a cup half full person, I can't imagine being so without hope and so in pain that the only way to take it away is to create a physical hole to leak it out of.

I've come to the conclusion that pain doesn't kill. Fear of pain does.

[What's left to say
With all that's come and gone?
Words get in the way
And anyway the Devil's got your tongue.]

And I have no idea why people choose to keep it to themselves. You think it'd be easier, having someone around to talk to during those hardest times - and some people don't have anybody to talk to, or the people who are supposed to be there for them just aren't for some reason (whatever reason).

[Lost and insecure
You found me, you found me
Lying on the floor
Surrounded, surrounded
Why'd you have to wait?
Where were you, where were you?
Just a little late, you found me, you found me.]

Is it anything forgivable, being in blissful ignorance of one of your best friend's pain so you can pay attention to the other's? Is it forgivable to almost hate them because they were the reason you had to ignore them in favor of your other friend in the first place? Can you forgive them for telling her "it won't hurt, just one cut so I won't feel so alone"?

It's kind of sad that you, my readers, may know me better than anybody else out there, because these are thoughts and feelings I wouldn't dare convey - couldn't convey - to anybody I know personally. Some things have to stay quiet, hidden. Like my literature teacher says, you never truly know someone.

I don't think you ever truly know YOURSELF. You could guess at how you were going to act in a certain situation, but what happens when that situation comes about?

[It's 4am I'm waking up to your perfume
Don't get up I'll get through on my own
I don't know if I'm home
Or if I've lost my way into your room
I'm spiralling into my doom
I'm feeling half alive but
I know one day you and I will be free]

Which is it, for any of us? Peace or freedom?

"Once upon a time, I thought I was put on this earth to save my sister. Now I realise... that wasn't the point. The point was that I HAD a sister. And she was the best." - Anna Fitzgerald, My Sister's Keeper

the sensational crusader. (:

Tomorrow

So I've been watching Skins, a British reality TV show, and I've realised one thing - most humans are more terrified than anything that tomorrow won't come, that for whatever reason, their last breath will occur the moment they slide into sleep.

My grandma once told me that a person who's lived a full life isn't afraid of dying. I disagree. I would still be scared of dying. More than that, I'm afraid someone close to me will die - just like Josh did. I see Libby fighting her way through a myriad of facades every single day just so she doesn't drag the people she loves into her misery as well.

[I miss those days
And I miss those ways
The days I got lost in fantasy
In a cartoon world of mysteries
In a place you don't grow old
In a place you don't grow cold]

When I look ahead in life, I just see this huge, huge slab of concrete bricks, because there are so many paths to take they all overlap so much you can barely see the spaces in between. Maybe I'm in a space between right now. Maybe all school-age kids are, because they haven't realised that the real world is one of pain.

It's also one of beauty and hard work.

If you think about it, humanity is about preserving the past to enrich the present. We work so hard just to find out about things a lot of people find menial - like when did the dinosaurs go extinct, or how were the Egyptian pyramids constructed, or why exactly did Hitler turn out the way he is, and why was JFK assassinated, and where did legends and myths stem from?

Typically, we all spend our lives in much the same pattern - school, home, school, home, uni, home, uni, home, work, home, work, home... but then there's always that one person in a million who dares to step outside the pattern and go against what everyone else thinks.

[You call my name
I come to you in pieces
So you can make me whole]

We owe everything humanity is to those people, people like John Dee and Katherine Mansfield and Mary Shelley for pointing out the ugly truth, and the beautiful truth. Humanity is capable of creating beauty. Beauty is capable of creating pain.

And we owe people like my literature teacher, Dunbar, who aren't afraid to teach us outside the box, to tell us things that nobody else remembers or maybe never even knew, who aren't afraid to break the rules if it means it gives us just that slight advantage.

I wonder a lot about whether anybody thinks the way I do, and most of the time, it makes me feel alienated, like I'm not a part of whatever bigger picture there is, that I'm a puzzle piece that's been packed into the wrong box and I just don't fit anywhere. And then, sometimes, very rarely, it makes me feel like I can take on the world, like I really do have an advantage 'cause I'm lucky enough to have met all these amazing people who have taught me so many amazing and astounding things.

[So much is happening to me
So much that I can't even see
So many words of wisdom that I am trying to be
Catch me if I should fall
And even more so while I'm standing tall]

I'm grateful I watched "Signs" which demonstrated the power of coincidence, and "War of the Worlds" that showed me even the simplest things make a difference. I'm glad I saw the Little Mermaid and witnessed a human's capacity to love, and I'm glad I watched Valkyrie, how Tom Cruise portrayed the human spirit as something utterly unbreakable.

Most of the time, I'm just glad I'm alive.

[You don't understand what I'm going through
Just to find a way to find a way to climb
It'll be in my own time]

I'm incredibly happy every time I go to school, just because I see so many different people, and it doesn't matter if I don't like them or not, it's just observing them and how they act that's totally amazing. I'm grateful I took psychology and know the contributing factors to a human personality, and I find it hard to believe now that a human is just a machine. How could something so complex be a machine?

Machine implies we're all copies of one another.

"When I was a kid, my mother told me that I was a little piece of blue sky, that came into this world because she and my father loved me so much. Most babies are coincidences. I mean, up in space you've got these souls flying around, looking for bodies to live in. Then, down here on earth, two people have sex or whatever, and bam. Coincidence. I on the other hand, am not a coincidence. I was engineered. Born for a particular reason. A doctor hooked up my mother's eggs and my father's sperm to make a specific combination of genes. He did it to save my sister's life. Sometimes, I wonder, what would have happened if Kate had been healthy? I'd probably still be up in heaven or wherever, waiting to be attached to a body down here on earth. But coincidence or not... I'm here." - Anna Fitzgerald, My Sister's Keeper

the sensational crusader. (:

Looong rant

[Take a breath
Just take a seat
You're falling apart
And tearing at the seams]

So apparently, while me and Riz were away today (no we weren't wagging lol, Riz busted a ligament in her knee and I was sick) Erin walked up to Monique and said "we'd prefer it if you didn't hang out with us anymore" and left her standing there.

Now, Erin's my best friend, and I don't particularly like Monique anymore, but was the bitchiness really necessary?

[Belief
Makes things real
Makes things feel
Feel alright]

Maybe there'll come a time where I can look her in the eye and say "I forgive you" and mean it. Maybe there'll come a time where I can laugh with her again and have those silly arguments about Twilight. But maybe that time will never come, and maybe I'll grow tired of fighting for things that can't be saved.

God help me, I hope that never happens.

The moment a human stops fighting a fruitless battle is when they become little more than an animal. If you think about it, fighting to stay alive is just ridiculous, from a pessimist's point of view; we're going to die anyway. So, in their eyes, why not choose your own manner of dying and when?

Because it's against most humans' nature to hurt another. And suicide does that. Suicide doesn't make the pain go away. It lets it grow and fester and transfer into other people.

[We're separate
Two ghosts in one mirror
Later on
If it turns to chaos
Hurricane
Coming all around us]

But I won't be one of those people. I'm not going to let Monique drag me down with her like she did at the start of the year. I'm not going to sit here and think "but what did I do?" I'm going to think "what didn't I do and what could I have done differently?"

I am so tired of her attempting to dump on us, and then get back in with us. We aren't toys, and if she asks me anything about it tomorrow that's exactly what I'll say. I'll just tell her that she's screwed us over too many times for us to be the Mother Theresas of the world anymore. I mean, I'm forgiving, but there's only so much one person can take.

But this brings me to something else - if Erin can act so callously towards Monique, is she really any better? Speaking from experience, playing mind games with someone who's supposed to be your friend isn't fun. Even if you end up "winning". It leaves you exhausted and wondering if you're actually any good to anybody.

[Frame by frame
Red speed ahead
A city dissolving
The threat of your love in the headlights]

There were men at Pine's Neck, men who were so vastly outnumbered they knew they had a matter of minutes to live, in world war one who kept fighting just to give their comrades some time to escape. There was a little dog named Pepper, rescued off a battlefield by an Australian soldier, who tunnelled thirty metres to a leaking gas line, allowing him access, and allowing him to save an entire platoon of men.

There was Samson and his donkey, who ferried countless injured men across the battlefield just because they didn't know what else to do, who was shot down doing this very thing, just because politicians were too weak and pathetic to fight their own fights.

There was John F Kennedy, who said that America would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." - Who died because he was a good president, too good a president to keep around.

There was the antihero, Claus Von Stauffenburg, who fought till the very end trying to bring Hitler to his knees, and very almost succeeded, despite all his allies pulling out on him at the last minute, who's last words were "Long live sacred Germany!" despite the horrific scars the country had from war and Hitler's regime of terror.

"Boy oh boy. The price of freedom is steep." - Zack Fair

the sensational crusader (: