Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87152 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87152 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
I’m the reason my grandmother couldn’t spend the rest of her life in the house where she spent her marriage and raised her family. She would never see it that way, of course, and I know I’m lucky. She has never held that against me, never made me feel like I was dragging her down. By the time Mom and Dad were killed by a drunk driver, she should’ve been enjoying her life—kids out of the house, her husband was retired, it was time to start living.
And then she ended up with another kid to raise once I was orphaned. But she never complained. Never hesitated for a second. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to pay her back. It will probably take the rest of my life.
She’s watching a morning talk show and working on a crochet project on the living room sofa by the time I emerge from my bedroom again. “You check in with me now,” she reminds me as I lean down to kiss her soft cheek. She’s always careful not to wear perfume or scented moisturizer, since it seems like my sense of smell is so much stronger and my aversions are so much harder to deal with a day or two after chemo. Another way she thinks about me.
“I promise,” I reply before leaving. But I’m going to try my hardest to stick it out. Sometimes I need to set little goals for myself.
It’s just the goals themselves that have changed. I guess some people want to get a certain grade in a class, or they try to make the Dean’s List. I just want to make it through an entire day at school without exhaustion crushing me. I want to walk through life like a normal, healthy person would.
Instead, I make the drive to school, eyeing the dangerously low gas gauge and doing the mental math it takes to figure out how much I can feasibly spend to fill the tank. It’s not only Grandpa’s life insurance that’s running low. The insurance payout from Mom and Dad, which I’ve used to pay for books and intuition, is running low, too. I have enough to get me through until I graduate, but not too much more than that. And even then, I have to be careful how I spend.
That means crossing my fingers and praying every time I turn the key in the ignition, then patting the dashboard and praising the car for running so well when I make it to my destination. “Good girl,” I whisper once I’m parked in the lot, surrounded by much flashier, probably more reliable, cars driven by people who have never sat alone during a chemo treatment, who have never heard about things like ports and the difference between lymphocytic and myeloid leukemia.
They don’t know how good they have it. A couple of girls pass in front of me once I’ve killed the engine, shaking the ice in plastic cups printed with the logo from the coffee shop in town, a few minutes’ walk from campus. It’s a cute, charming little area, and I would like to explore it sometime when my energy’s a little better. But unlike the girls whose conversation carries on the morning breeze, I would be alone. Let’s face it: if I barely have the energy to drag myself to campus, how can I muster up the strength to make a friend?
But every day isn’t like this. I have to remind myself of that as I slowly climb out of the car and sling my backpack over one shoulder. There are ebbs and flows, and today is an ebb day, that’s all. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget there are better days when everything feels so daunting.
I’ve been through worse than this. Much worse. And it kind of makes me wonder as I slowly cross campus, strolling like there’s nowhere in particular I have to be. What are the people around me going through? Because if there’s one thing this experience has taught me, it’s how easy it can be to overlook other people’s struggles. I doubt there’s anybody who would look at me now without knowing what’s going on and imagine I have cancer.
The guys tossing a football around on the lawn, the girls watching them and giggling—I’m sure they all have stories nobody knows about. Private struggles. Just like me. What would it be like if we all walked around with signs hanging from our necks, telling the world what it is we’re wrestling with? Maybe we’d understand each other a little better if we remembered everybody’s going through something. Maybe there wouldn’t be so much negativity and fear in the world.
“Well, well, well. Look who it is. Pearls.”
Whoever says it is practically shouting, obviously trying to get my attention as I reach the hub of the quad, where the paths leading from different buildings converge like spokes in a wheel. Reflex makes me touch a hand to the pearl necklace I’m wearing—it was Mom’s, and it’s one of the few hand-me-downs that were actually worth keeping. We didn’t exactly have a lot of money.