I didn’t think that any one of us was ready to talk about the fact that in a few months there was going to be nothing of us, but a tombstone and things we used to do. I couldn’t tell Noah that every single day I woke up, I thanked whatever force there was in the sky, because it was another opportunity for me to live.
In the beginning, I blamed myself for not going to the doctor earlier. I thought I was just tired, or maybe I put too many things on my plate. Headaches, dizziness, lack of appetite, I pushed it all aside thinking they were nothing more but passing things.
I was so fucking wrong.
I still remembered the day when I collapsed on the ice for the first time. Two weeks after Noah and I stopped talking, I dragged myself to practice, already feeling like shit from everything combined. And there it happened—the first seizure.
First of many.
Rapid growth, the doctor said.
Stage four.
Terminal.
Months.
We are so sorry,Sophie.
I could still hear my mother’s scream filled with anguish, and Andrew’s face when he came to the hospital that day. I still remembered the tears in my father’s eyes, and the abrupt exit he made when he couldn’t hold them in anymore. It was the first time I saw my father cry. It was the first time my mom couldn’t look at me, and the first time for Andrew to be unable to keep it together.
And me… I just lay that in that bed, still trying to connect the dots and to understand the gravity of the situation.
I was dying.
Every day, every hour, minute, and second mattered. Movies never painted the real picture of what it felt like knowing that in a few months you wouldn’t be walking on this earth anymore.
Anger was the first emotion that tore through my walls when we came home after the hospital. Scorching hot, like an inferno burning inside me, it spread through my body, tingling on the tips of my fingers and toes, and I wanted to shout, to kick something, to break things, because it wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fair I had to go through this, even though I knew that a thousand other people went through the same. Statistics were there, I read them, and I wasn’t an exception of a rule.
Cancer could find you, no matter how old or young you were. It didn’t have a preference of gender, age, race or religion, it picked the first person, and like a silent killer, you wouldn’t even be aware it was there until it was too late to do anything.
Why me? I asked myself so many times I became tired of those two words. I could ask and ask and ask, but the outcome would always be the same—I was still going to leave my loved ones.
But anger quickly got replaced by sadness, and before I knew it, I was unable to get out of bed. What was the point when I didn’t have anything to live for? What was the point of going out, pretending everything was okay, when I knew that going to school, going for practices, doing any of those things was futile?
I would never go to college, and I would never get to go to the Olympics. So why should I try?
But just like always, its best friend slithered faster than I could recover, and numbness took over. I didn’t take any of my meds. I didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, and I didn’t care about anything.
While my mom cried, I stood there unable to feel anything. And I loved feeling like that.
There was no fear, no sadness, no anger, just a huge emptiness taking place inside my chest. I knew it wasn’t healthy, I knew I had to process and cry and be angry, but I couldn’t.
Every time I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn’t see myself, but a girl who stopped fighting.
My therapist told me it was normal to feel like that, and when all those emotions I was suppressing came back, I was once again suffocating.
Even now, as I stared at my reflection in the mirror, it felt as if a stranger stared back. My cheeks were sunken, my eyes lost their glow. My shiny hair wasn’t so shiny anymore, and even though I knew that all those were such silly things to think about, I couldn’t stop myself.
Here I was, an expiration date stamped on my back, and all I cared about was my physical appearance.
“Soph,” came from the door to my room, Noah’s voice pulling me back to reality.
“In the bathroom,” I called out and turned on the water to wash my face.
Just like he promised, he was the one constant in my life. Bianca came a couple of times, still angry and hurt that I didn’t tell her about my condition.
