Just Nine Years Old
Today, I reflected on what it felt like to be nine years old--when I started fourth grade, life was different. Then 9/11 happened. I turned ten shortly after, and then...I had cancer by Christmas. All during my fourth-grade year.
I'm figuring my life out right now post-graduation...I'm not going to go into detail about what that looks like. It's a lot of things. I'm not ready to share all of it with the internet. There are a lot of moving parts right now, too.
Some days I feel like I have a lot of clarity and know exactly what my future will hold, other days I feel like a failure. Some days I have written an entire chapter for the book and I feel on top of the world. On other days I have felt unproductive and useless, not wanting to leave my bed.
The good news? Feelings aren't facts. The truth is somewhere in the middle of "I am useless" and "I am on the mountain top." It's the walking in between, mostly. The ordinary stuff.
My birthday is coming up. In a short number of days, actually--on September 30th. I've decided to do this birthday big--like, marathon big--for several reasons, and I'll come back to all that another day.
On September 11, 2001, I was nine years old. Like most people, I remember the day vividly. I remember that day in fourth grade vividly.
I remember the days after that day...how we all processed the tragedy, collectively. But my difficult memories do not stop there.
I remember around Halloween I was in the school bathroom one day and noticed something odd about my tummy...was I getting fatter? Something hard. It wasn't right.
That was the first time I noticed what we later discovered was a tumor in my abdomen. I had cancer in 4th grade, which we didn't officially name as a tumor until Christmastime. But I knew about my growing tumor in October.
I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was not supposed to be there. I was scared to tell anyone about it though. I beat myself up about that for years. What might have happened if I had told someone sooner? Would it have changed anything? My prognosis was always good. And I was a child. How was I to know? I'm not sure how fully I grasped what I was going through--at least, not while it took place. That weight of understanding did not come until after treatment was over.
All of this to say, 9/11/01 has always marked the beginning of my cancer journey. In turn, it marks the beginning of the entire remarkable health journey that I went on for the next twenty years. There were years in the middle that felt normal--don't get me wrong. I had a pretty awesome life as a teenager. But...then things went a bit downhill, to put it mildly. Years of misdiagnoses, thousands of pills, multiple hospitalizations, brain swelling episodes, multiple episodes of psychosis, likely having seizures we weren't even aware of...all the while struggling for years to get through college, brain fog, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and being poked and prodded more than I can possibly count?! For some reason I still cannot grasp even myself, I never gave up. Well, except that I have an absurdly supportive community of people who pray for me, check on me, and hold me up when I am convinced I cannot keep going.
After all of the madness, I made it to the other side of this story. I have a lot to share. This is a story of redemption, hope, and remarkably--humor. I can laugh about a lot of it. If that surprises you we probably haven't spent much time together. But pull up a chair, friend--I love to laugh!
If you just saw or met me today, you wouldn't know what I've lived through. Most of my scars aren't visible--a few, but most are the invisible kind. Even my most recent scar where I ran into a metal dog kennel is perfectly hidden in my eyebrow, so good luck finding it! Ha!
Today, as a thirty-one-year-old on September 11th, I spent most of the day with family--my brother's three kids, while my parents were in town. My oldest nephew is nine. It dawned on me when I was driving home tonight that he is now the same age I was when I experienced the tragedy of September 11, 2001. He did the kind of normal things a nine-year-old should get to do after school: I met him on the corner when he got off the bus and he immediately insisted on showing me a video game he likes right now. We all went to the park before dinner and later ate tacos as a big, happy family (you have to be happy when you eat tacos). Once all three kids got ready for bed, he and I sat on the couch with my dog and watched part of a Star Wars show before I tucked him into bed. It was a sweet day--the kind of school night a kid deserves, surrounded by love and feeling pretty carefree.
I will not be able to look at him with the same eyes over the next few months, thinking about how small he is. I will think about how all the adults in my life were seeing me when I was sick with cancer at that age. I will remember how my friends were sad to see me so sick. I will cherish his precious life all the more. He and his siblings are some of my favorite precious humans, by far.
And so, my birthday is coming up. My 32nd. If you do not like birthdays I beg you to reconsider. There are plenty of people out there who don't get any more birthdays. There are plenty of people out there who wish they had another birthday to celebrate with someone they love dearly and miss very much. This is why I love birthdays. I don't know how many other cancer survivors feel this way, but this is why I celebrate my friends' birthdays so deliberately, writing them on my calendar and praying for them every year (whether they realize it or not). I insist on celebrating and being grateful for my own birthdays...twenty-two "extra" birthdays for me, so far. Life is precious, dear reader. Please don't forget it. Celebrate your loved ones. Celebrate your life. May you be blessed with many happy, regular days.
Sincerely,
Haley
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