Sorry I haven’t posted in a while I was in the hospital for five days and very out of it. Anyways, I wanted to write this because nobody tells you what life will be like after it is over. So I’ll try to shed some light on it as best I can.

When the surgeries are finished, when your body recovers and reaches a semi-normal state for the first time in years you will find that the scars go much deeper than the skin and there is an aftershock. Everyone will be telling you how strong you are, but you won’t feel strong. When you are going through treatment and surgeries your body goes into some kind of shock that protects you and perhaps even saves you; you are very numb to everything going on around you. When the shock wears off, when the you and your body can accept that a trauma has happened, when you can let down your defenses, it’s a very scary moment. It’s vulnerable. More vulnerable perhaps than when the cancer was in you. You will be disappointed that not everything is as it used to be; as happy as before. You will be scared and live in fear no matter how badly you just want to leave it behind. Read More

Sorry if this is dark, or if it makes no sense to any of you at all. But it’s 2am and these are the thoughts running around consuming my mind ….keeping me up. Today was a bad day.

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There you were;

The girl I wanted to be, the girl I was, but now don’t know how to be.

I am here and you are there.

It’s back, the cancer (along with its villainous propensities), ripping you away from me.

You’re being pushed out of my reach.

I finally had the life I wanted despite of everything that had been taken.

You were the girl who could do it all, had done it all.

I was strong, I never gave up, I fought to be you, that girl. Read More

This piece was my common app essay for college applications……..

I blink. Trying to focus my attention on the hypnotizing beat of the heart monitor. I blink again. Bright lights beam down, nurses hustle around attaching blisteringly cold monitors to my body. I lay there as still as I can manage as the warm tears cascade down my cheek, no control over what is about to happen. This moment nearly three years ago felt almost entirely surreal – an oblivion, out of my body, out of my mind. In that moment, a matter of seconds in time, but a small infinity in terms of meaning, the only thing lying still inside my swirling head – the letter C. Cancer. My reality. But in that moment, right as I was about to go under, I made a conscious decision in the midst of my worst nightmare. I made the decision to embrace what the next years would bring with all the strength I had, because I knew that in the end, I would not only survive, but also be stronger.

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