JULY 15 — I don’t think we should always be looking for silver linings. Sometimes, things are objectively terrible.

Like people who insist on finding the “blessings” in getting cancer.

My blessings are the people in my life. Cancer was something terrible that happened to me, even if I did make the best of it.

I’m not thankful for getting cancer. I’m thankful for the support I’ve received and for being in the public healthcare system while it was still mostly functioning.

Making the best of bad situations, leveraging the worst to create the most ideal option, it’s sometimes the only thing you can do.

Just the other day I was talking to a colleague about Bella Astillah and how some have reduced her to just being a “social media starlet.”

Bella was a singer first, a good one, and even represented Malaysia overseas.

She had the misfortune of marrying a man who embarrassed her publicly not once, but twice, and to this day her ex-mother-in-law takes every opportunity to talk to the press to defend Bella’s ex-husband.

Yet Bella persevered. Worked hard. Endured the pitying eyes and whispers, hustling online because she had two children to raise. 

With or without Syed Saddiq, she has done well for herself but that does not in any way diminish her previous pain.

Sometimes, I find myself crying without even understanding why. I turn on YouTube and put on a random song and the tears start. Then I try singing and am so glad I don’t have to do it for a living like Bella does because the lump in my throat starts up and chokes my voice back.

I understand now that my body is doing what it couldn’t at first when I was too busy trying to survive my cancer diagnosis, bully government agencies and trying not to fall down stairs.

There was no time to grieve or mourn, no resources to allocate to having an emotional breakdown. 

My body now thinks it’s safe enough for me to be as sad and as angry as I want.

It has also surprised me, like when I was trying to assemble a metal locker I bought off Pinduoduo.

The locker was RM65 with free shipping (by sea) but on Shopee (without shipping) it’s nearly RM200 so it really makes you question the true cost of things.

It was sturdy enough but required a lot of screw-turning and whenever I had to expend a bit more energy, I was rather amazed that I had the strength now to make that extra turn.

What I was less surprised by, but grieved, was to find out that the woman whose QR code I was sharing for donations, had her own relatives stealing her donation posts and putting up their own QR codes.

How awful a person must you be, to steal from, of all people, a cancer patient?

She was heartbroken to find one of those people was even sharing a roof with her.

If you have been wanting to spare her a ringgit, her actual, verified donation link is here. 

Of course I’m anguished on her behalf, but thanks to the many people who did respond to her donation plea, she is only a few hundred ringgit away from her target to order her first treatment course.

Just the other day, my Instagram feed showed me words from writer and poet John Roedel.

“I have no patience for people who can watch the world burn and never wonder: How do I become rain?” 

I don’t know how much longer I have on this earth, maybe decades, maybe years.

So I’d rather not waste it when I still have the voice, and the rage to bring storms when they are needed.

Like reminding people of the current realities of ever more crowded emergency roomshttps://www.threads.com/@unreachabledesire/post/DauuZIQGYAL?xmt=AQG07eMEoK4a_STlMhD3nZlTXgPpNnm1M91uJfMn-zp66A and the sick who need the requisite agencies to step up, instead of asking them to shop around their QR codes.

In this burning world, we all need to become the rain, or at least, offer up umbrellas. 

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.