My fear

I am watching SATC. It's the one where Samantha's hair starts falling off from chemo, and Smith shaves his head with her.

Sickness scares me. It scares me a lot. The thought of something going wrong in my body terrifies me, it petrifies me, it scares me to a point where I avoid going to the doctors, simply because I don't want to know.
My father is an oncologist, and a lot of my parents' friends have had to go through his hands. I remember Lena, my mom's best friend, they lived at the appartment below ours for ever, ever since I was born. When I was about 18, Lena was diagnosed with colon cancer. She had to go through an operation, and horrible chemotherapy. Her hair fell off and she was in awful pain.
Lena eventually got better, and it's been 14 years since then. She's been cancer free and I hope she stays that way.
That wasn't the case with Mr. Nikos. Mr. Nikos was my friend Sofia's father. I've known Sofia for ever, we grew up together. Of course, since my father and her father went to Junior High toghether, and then High School, and then they were roommates in University, and then stayed friends their whole lives. Actually, Mr. Nikos' whole life. In January 1996, Mr. Nikos was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died exactly one year later - six months after Kosta.
My father also treated his other University roommate - my godfather's brother. He, too, had cancer, and he, too, died. That was actually the first time I saw my father absolutely break down and cry like a baby.
Through all the people that died, how can I forget about Tina. She had been sick her whole life -mediterranean anaemia did the trick. She was in pain, she was always weak, and died aged 28.

Tina used to say that we shouldn't be afraid of anything. And that we should live our every moment like it was our last. Coming from anyone else, that would be just another little poem on a piece of paper baked inside a fortune cookie. But with Tina, you knew she meant it: her every moment could be her last one.

I grew up with an unprecedented fear of death. Ever since I was a little kid, my aunt would scare me with stories of all her dead brothers and sisters, who would come back to haunt the house she lived in, saints would come knocking on her door, and a huge hallway filled with photos of the dead.
I remember being 2 and afraid to open the front door, because I thought I'd see a dead guy staring at me, asking why he had to die before his time. How would I know, I was 2!
I remember the first day I went to school. All dressed up, holding my little bag, with a Merenda sandwich, juice and an apple for the teacher, waiting for the bus to come, I turned to my mom and said: "I guess now real trouble starts". My mom thought I was talking about school and all the work. To this day I can still hear my thoughts in my head: "I am one step closer to dying now". I was 4.

I don't know where this fear comes from. Maybe it's because I'm missing out on life. Maybe it's because I should be doing things, and I'm not, and I feel that my life is being wasted away. But every time I think about sickness, I get that same feeling in my stomach, and I can't breathe.
- Same thing when I get on a plane! The take-off and the landing... You'd better be nowhere around me at that time! -

Panos came in through the door this afternoon and said to me: "How would you feel if we sold everything here and went somewhere else, like the US, or England, or Ireland, go study at some University and live there? Do things?"

I said "I'd absolutely love that"
What I meant to say was "I feel like we're taking a step away from dying".