Forgiveness

A Story by Sammie-Lynn

something I wrote in creative writing class my junior year of high school

If only you could know what I’ve been through. If only you knew what has happened to me during these sixteen measly years that I have been living. If you could see the true me, then you would know why I am the way I am. You would find out why it does not hurt as much as it should when people crack jokes about me. You would finally understand that my condition is rare and that the doctors are doing all that they can do. You would feel sad because you would find out that I do not have much more time to live. But do not feel sad for me. I have accepted the fact that I am going to die and if you did not already know you are going to die too. I am just going to die sooner. But do not worry I have done everything that I wanted to do by the time I was sixteen. I have decided that there is no need for good-byes because they are only a waste of time. So the only thing I ask is that you remember me as I should be remembered: as a normal person.

It all started when I was in the seventh grade. I began to be seriously sick at random moments. There would never be a sign. I would just wake up and be sick. It was never just a stomachache or a headache or a cold. It was always all of those added with a fever and extreme fatigue. I was always in unbearable pain and under the constant watch of my mother.

She was the kind of woman that will bring you to the doctor over a paper cut. So obviously she was a complete wreck when I started to get sick. The second I coughed the first time, we were in the car and rushing to the doctor’s office. He examined me and said that I probably had only a cold. He told my mom to give it some time and I should be better soon. I did not get better. I got worse.

At this point my mom was stressed beyond belief. She took me back to my doctor and he still could not find anything wrong with me. So my mom took me to the local hospital. They ran test after test after test on me. At the end of it all, I was even more exhausted and the doctors were not any closer to finding what was wrong with me.

My mom was close to a nervous breakdown and was constantly on edge. Every little thing that was out of place bothered her. She was always cleaning or fixing something. After months of testing and getting no results, my mom seemed like she was ready to snap.

The thing that made her snap came a couple weeks into the fifth month of testing. The doctors called and said that they had finally found out what was wrong with me: I had cancer. It was a very rare form of cancer and there were not many treatments they could do to get “rid” of it. The doctors said that if my parents were willing, they would gladly perform the treatments they knew they could. She of course agreed right there without talking to my father about it. She would do anything to keep her children alive. It is just a thing that mothers do.

After that day, my mom was never the same. She could not look at me without almost crying. She seemed to be just wandering around the house like a zombie. It was as if she had no reason to do anything because she knew that she truly could not help me. But what she did not know was that she would help me in the best way possible.

Soon after that dreadful phone call, I began treatments. And of course the doctors always try Chemotherapy. So Chemo ended up being the first treatment of many that they decided to try. Because my case was rare, I had to go to the hospital for Chemo treatments more that most Cancer patients.

It took even more of a toll on my mom because she had to drive me to and from treatments no matter what she was doing. She would have to leave work or not go out to a dinner or a meeting because she had to take me for my treatments. Also, she would have to be there, watching me go through my treatments. This hurt her most I think. No mother wants to see her daughter go through that kind of pain and struggle.

The treatments became hard for me as well. I knew that it was not going to be a breeze. I knew that after a few treatments the Cancer was not just going to go away. I knew that it would take time and effort. What I did not know was how much the treatments would affect the way I live.

After a month or two of going through the Chemo treatments, I became so exhausted that it was a struggle to get out of the bed in the morning, get dressed, and even go to the treatments. I began to hate going to the hospital because it reminded be of how bad my life had become. It reminded me of how sick I was. It reminded me of the struggles I had been going through and the ones I was bound to go through in the future. I would refuse to go to the hospital and my mom ended up forcing me to go. It was the only way that she knew how to help me. She only knew that the only way for me to get better was to go to my treatments and she was determined to make me better even if she could not do it herself.

The one thing that made me hate Chemo most came around the same time as my exhaustion. My hair began to fall out just like all the other Chemo patients. I hated that I was losing my hair ten times more than the exhaustion. My hair was the one thing that made me feel beautiful. Now that I was losing it, I thought that I would never be pretty again. Now, when I look back, I realize how wrong I was to think that something as simple as hair could define how beautiful someone is. But, at the time, the shock of losing my hair and the pain of what I was going through was too much for me to handle.

My mom saw how much it was hurting me to see my hair fall out so easily. I would brush my hair in the morning and my brush would be filled with hair after only a few strokes. She saw that I did not want to leave the house unless I had to for treatments and that I barely spent time with the family.

So, in an attempt to make me feel better about myself, my mom went out and got the best wig she could find to match the hair I use to have. I was grateful for the gesture, but it was not my hair. Of course the wig was real hair, it was the shade of my hair, and it was even the same length. It just was not my hair. But I knew that I needed to have some kind of hair covering my head even if it was a wig. So I decided that I would wear the wig no matter how much I was against it.

I went back to school after four months of Chemo. My hair had not even begun to grow back so I was still wearing the wig. It was strange because the wig had become a security blanket for me. It made me feel slightly normal when I was actually strange; well at least to the people in my school. They did not know what it was like to have to go through Chemo and have to lose all your hair. They did not know how to act around me. They did not know what to say. So they remained silent when they were around me.

It did not annoy me that they did not talk to me. I liked that they didn’t because then I didn’t have to hear their sympathy, which I did not want. What annoyed me most was what they did say when I wasn’t around. They would make jokes about me not having any hair and how I have to wear a wig. They also said that I probably did not have Cancer and that I was probably in rehab.

When I had heard what everyone was saying about me, I wanted to never go back to school again. I wanted to be home schooled until this mess was over. But my mom would not allow it. She wanted me to go to school so that there could be some normalcy in my life. She wanted me to stay as social as I could for as long as I could.

So I continued to go to my school against my own will. I soon learned to ignore what they were saying. It became easy because I was not in school very often. The Cancer would make we so tired at times that I had to stay in bed for a week. The students and teachers in my school became use to me popping in and out of school. I would be gone for around two months then come back for only a couple weeks. In the ninth grade, my teachers stopped giving me work to make up. I was out for over half the year in ninth grade.

When I was in the tenth grade, which I am now, I stopped responding to treatments. It became clear that my time was running up and that I should live my life to the fullest. It also became clear that it was truly pointless to stay in school. My time was almost up so there was no need to learn anything; I would not need it.

But I continued to go to school anyways. It gave me time to get away from the Cancer, home, and hospital life. I cherished the few days that I went to school because I could get away from home. I could get away from my mom and the sadness at home. People at school never said anything to me so it was like I was invisible and that was comforting to me. I would rather be invisible than to be constantly under watch.

Even though I was still going to school I could not accept that my time was almost up. I wanted to go to college. I wanted to get married and have children. I wanted to fall in love. There was so much that I still wanted to do and I knew that I never could.

I never showed that I was sad about dying though, but I was. I made everyone believe that I was fine with the fact that I had no future. I was fine with what I had done up until that point, but that does not mean that there was not more I wanted.

At that point, I began to talk to God every night before I went to bed. I was never religious but I felt a need to talk to someone. It was not like I could talk to anyone on this earth because they would not understand.

I always started out asking God to take the Cancer away. I would always ask Him to take the pain I was feeling away. I wanted my life before Cancer back; a life where my mom did not have to constantly watch me and I did not have to be in the hospital all the time. I would ask Him to help my mom deal with the pain that she was going through and help her after I was gone because I knew that she would need it. But most of the time I was asking for God to help me and no one else.

My mom became very controlling around the last five months or so. She started watching me more. It was like I could not have one second of privacy. She was so worried that something would happen to me the second she turned her back. her watch over me became so extreme that she put a baby monitor in my room so that she could even watch me at night.

So now, when I would talk to God, I would take the batteries out of the baby monitor. But at this point in my life, I realized that I was wrong to have asked God to take the Cancer away from me. I was only being selfish. I realized that I needed to be thankful that He had given me the time that He did and that I was given a good mother who protected me.

I would thank God for what he had given me and ask Him to help my mom. But after that, all I did was talk to God about the struggles and pains that I was going through that day or week. I would tell Him exactly how I was feeling because I figured He was the only one that would understand. I would always talk to God for about twenty minutes because it was hard for me to talk to someone that I did not know existed. But I still talked anyways. When I was done talking to God, I would put the batteries back in the baby monitor and go to sleep. My mom never had a clue of what I had been doing.

When I knew that my time was running really short, I began to wish for more time. I wished for more time to do the things that I wanted to do. More time to have with the few friends that had stuck with me through this. I wanted more time with my mom because she was the one who had made the effort to make my life normal. But I knew that I was not going to get that extra time.

So I began to think of all the things that I had done until this point. I had played soccer and softball until I got Cancer. I had kept good grades even when I had Cancer. When I started to think of all that I had done, I realized that I did have a good life. No matter how short it was, it was still a good life.

But thinking about what I had done made me think of other, worse things. Would I be remembered? Would there be sadness over my death? Would there be mourning and sorrow for a little while and then I would be forgotten? Thinking about those things made me write down my story.

And so, I began to right what you have been reading. I wanted to leave behind something of me that would let everyone know what I had felt. I wrote it for people like you, who made jokes and rumors about my situation. I wanted you all to see that it was not a lie. I did have Cancer and it did take over my life. But most of all I wanted you to see the pain that your jokes and rumors put me through. I hope that, after reading this, you will rethink everything that you had said about me and realize that you were so wrong and hurtful. I hope that you feel at least a little sorry for what you did to me. I do not want you to feel guilty because I am not that kind of person. I just want you to know that what you said about me did affect me in both a bad and a good way. But most of all, I want you to know that I forgive you.