She only drinks Coke, laughs at my stupid jokes, and has the same routine. She prays daily and continues to give up her time to community service. Whenever I get dressed, and she sees that we accidentally wore the same clothing item, and she claims that I copied her. Most importantly, she is always there for me, even when she’s mad at me. That's why I never thought it would be my mom, not until I came home after school to hear the news that would alter my life forever. I really didn’t know how to handle my initial emotions or who if anyone to tell. I just avoided the situation and pretended it never happened. Running from the truth turned out to be one of the worst decision I’ve ever made. My lapse in judgment caused significant damage to me physically, mentally, and socially. I perceived my life to flat-lining until I was saved by learning one valuable lesson.

In what seemed to be a matter of days after hearing the news, my clothes became baggy, and my bones became visible through my light skin. It’s not that I didn’t want to eat, but I just couldn’t. I was so scared of what could happen to my mom that I just lost my appetite. My rapid weight loss transformation was blatantly obvious, you could tell in my school photo how dramatically skinny I turned. Nothing would enter my dry and malnourished lips, not even a single crumb would I eat from my food. I became too weak to participate in sports, almost fainting every time I stepped on the field. As an athlete who lived and breathed the game of softball, this inability to compete was demoralizing. Attending church every Sunday was no longer a possibility, fainting every time I stand. I was starting to have more doctor appointments than my sick mother. Money was being thrown like confetti, so I stopped telling my parents when I fainted. I would walk to the bathroom, faint, and push myself off the cold floor to stumble back to the classroom, pretending nothing happened. My grades were falling with me as well. Soon enough, I was sitting in the library with a high schooler trying to figure out what nine times nine is.  

The social butterfly side of me was the next component that I lost in my altered state of living. I began hating the early morning hallway socializing I had once been accustomed to, so I started showing up to school late wearing a sweatshirt and leggings. I wanted those wandering eyes away from me. I wanted absolutely no attention. To avoid my friends, I would sit alone at lunch, staring at the wall covered with healthy eating posters. At recess, I would sit under the slide, drawing on a piece of white paper. My friends would approach me, seeing that something was up, but I always ran away, fearing their awkward response. So I started losing my friends one by one, then all at once. Coming home crying was the new normal. Running with tears rolling down my cheeks from my bus stop to bury my shrunken body under the covers until a family member walked through the door was the only routine I knew. To keep my parents happy, I never showed emotion and put on a fake smile. My academics were trailing, I would never raise my hand in class, losing my participation points, never turning my assignments in, and I would always leave the class first.

My mental state was the last to leave, and this was the most damaging. I tried to hide it thinking maybe if I avoided it, it would go away.  My parents would ask me how I was doing, but I gave the same monotone response, “I’m fine.” But that only went so far, because I needed urgent help. To help manage my mental health, I ended up seeing a counselor for three months. I felt embarrassed for seeing someone for something trivial as my handling emotions because I feared what my peers may think. So I skipped the first session and hid in the bathroom. The counselor eventually found me and had a sit-down talk with my parents. Every session, the counselor asked me to rate my mood, and it was consistently a one on a scale out of ten. I never liked opening up, especially to unfamiliar people, so this was no exception. I gave short answers and never gave her eye contact. After a couple of weeks had passed, I noticed to my surprise that I started to open up more. I started answering questions in full sentences and even shed a few tears. My cloud of darkness started to lightened up, my mother beat cancer, I got my friends back, my grades began to rise,  my clothes began to fit, and no more fainting.

In life, you don’t get everything you want and deserve, but I believe it is how you overcome the challenges you are faced with. For example, my family didn’t earn the news that my mom was faced with cancer again this past year. Though it damaged me and temporarily knocked me down,  I was able to overcome because I learned that it's okay not to be okay sometimes. I wish when this happened the first time, I would have talked to more people, and showed more emotions of how I really felt. Maybe that would have saved me several doctor visits and council sessions. Thankfully, we’ll never know because that’s in the past and now my mom is cancer free, and I’m ready to travel the world with my best friend this summer.