It’s strange how people can change without even being aware of it.
Take me, for example.
image via Pinterest.com
I used to have so much more to say but now I just have so much more to think.
There was never a conscious decision.
I never told myself, “Today’s the day I’m gonna grow up!”
I think it just happens gradually, it takes lots of time.
I think part of getting older is becoming more self-aware and learning new things about yourself.
I started to notice that things were changing when I discovered that my parents opinions aren’t always the same as mine; when I realized that even though it’s difficult sometimes, I am allowed to think for myself.
I started to see that someone’s bad decision shouldn’t define who they are as a person.
My friends tell me that I’m different than I used to be.
“It’s not a bad thing, or a good thing. It’s just a thing, you know?”
But I believe there is a lot of good that can come from change. I think that being different than I was before means that I’ve learned a lot and that I’ve started to become who I’m supposed to be – who I want to be.
The night was pitch black. The minimal stars sitting up high in the sky only served as a reminder that we were still in the universe, and the distant street lights and sounds of passing cars were muted while walking across the field.
The grass was cold against my bare feet, and I held the neon pink glow stick inside my shaking hand as every single memory of my fifth and sixth grade years came back to me.
I wasn’t the only one there who had these memories rush into my head. Everyone who had cracked open the glow-stick had something about cancer to remember.
The whole field was silent. The occasional sniffle could be heard, and the tear stained cheeks were inevitable to avoid the longer you walked in silence.
The longer I walked, the more memories rushed into my head, and the more memories eventually made me break down.
I never enjoyed crying in front of people, and normally I don’t. I cry alone, because I’ve always hated crying in front of people and feeling pitied for my tears. But I was surrounded by so many people, and when I knew I wasn’t the only one crying, I didn’t hold the tears back anymore.
Photo Credit: Pinterest
I never had cancer, but the speaker last night was right. In a way, when a loved one gets cancer, it consumes you too. It affects you too. It takes up your mind and heart. My father got cancer, and it killed a part of me too when it killed him.
Cancer is the deadliest weapon of all.
It’s the cause of the pang in your heart when you first find out they were diagnosed.
It’s the weeks spent in hospital waiting room during examinations and testing.
Then there’s the news that the cancer is gone. You think they’re finally safe, until the cancer fights back, and it comes back worse and worse, until it eventually takes over and kills.
It’s weeks of watching the life in the eyes of your friends or family fade away. When they go from being healthy, lively souls, to being trapped in their beds with no energy to get out.
It’s the fight that soon becomes too hard to keep continuing.
The consequence of cancer isn’t always death, but it’s the long suffering before it.
Not every cancer story ends with a cure.
Not every cancer story ends in a peaceful death.
In fact, most of them don’t. The cancer eats up everything. It eats up their health, and their happiness, and their motivation until all there is left is remnants of hope and loved ones close trying to help continue the fight for them.
But that was what the walk was for. We were fighting for those who couldn’t fight anymore. I was fighting for my dad who was hoping for a cure, and didn’t get one. Who didn’t win the fight. Every year I walk with survivors, caretakers, and friends to continue the fight, so that one day, the war against cancer will finally be won.
It’s been a couple months, a lot has changed. In approximately 30 hours I will have to plunge headfirst into your world, ready or not.
I told you before that I have bent, folded, and shaved off the idiosyncrasies, made myself two dimensional, and now — now you’ve figuratively and physically slapped me in the face with a decision that has so many facets to it I don’t think it belongs in the three dimensional world.
Every time I try to settle my heart and think about this I feel ill. Like I can’t think straight, like I’m drowning.
Explain to me how you chose me, so that I may choose you. Explain to me how I can possibly know what I want. Explain to me how I can barely stand to look at the name of college, imagine myself at college, without feeling like I’m buried alive with fear of making the wrong decision and hating myself for it.
Photo Credit: joshuanhook.com
I feel as though I am still stuck as two dimensions and that this decision requires at least four dimensions to be safe but actually in reality somewhere around six.
I am in fact more terrified now, the future now rests in my hands, not yours. What if mine aren’t big enough, what if they shake too much, what if they go to pull the wrong lever?
I have never been so scared in my life. I am so incredibly scared to make a decision that I won’t be able to live with, that I will close a door that would have been perfect.
I don’t know what I’m going to do, the hours are passing by, I have finals and APs coming but all I can do is sit and stare into space wondering what the hell I’m going to do with myself. Which in turn makes me more nervous because if this is how I’m handling it how am I going to handle the actual stress of college?
I’m left with the ultimate feeling of: if I feel like I’m pulling apart at the seams now, college is going to break me, and I don’t want to be broken.
Everyone else seems so able to say: “F**k it this is where I’m going.” They seem so okay, I can’t see if they feel like they’re dying inside, they all seem impervious to the nerves and the fear that they won’t live up to what they have told themselves they can do.
I haven’t lived nearly as much life as you, college reader, so what do I have to decide with, a handful of microbes in my gut that feel like they’ve just gotten off the teacup ride ready to vomit?
I don’t know what to do, who to be? Do I have the strength to rise in adversity, to swallow up those things that would make me sink? Do I have it in me to carve out my own path and people? How do I decide between totally different things that pull on me the same?
So, college reader, I told you who I was, apparently you liked me and now here I am.
OVS Journalism Blog 
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