My best friend made a joke a few weeks back that the day myself and another of my friends would return back to college to start our spring semesters was also the day she planned to die. These jokes are commonplace in our group chat (named "Pretty Princesses") and typically mean nothing, but the eerie thing was the text message I received the day I was finishing packing my suitcases.
My best friend had undergone a tonsillectomy, and they'd found what looked like cancer.
I reread the text message a dozen times, but the information was having trouble sinking in. A few days after I'd had my tonsils removed, all I could remember was eating grape popsicles and watching lots of chick flicks while lying around in bed with a notepad as a form of speech. People were not supposed to go to their check-up and discover the source of their strep-throat has actually been a tumor in their lymph nodes.
It's not as if I've never had someone in my life become ill before: two uncles and both grandparents have had some form of cancer or other long-term illness. But this was the first time I was old enough to not immediately resort to an optimistic outlook on the situation. When I realized the severity of Elizabeth's condition, I also began to realize that wishing something will have a positive resolution isn't necessarily enough to make it come true.
As children, our parents usually try to shield us from thinking about the negative, but when I told my mom about the situation, her reply was instead, "You realize how scary this is, right?" Although I was fairly calm when discussing the situation, I also realized I didn't need to be told to be rational. That was the mature way to handle things, and that's what I was doing. It's kind of strange to think the instructions reverse as we age: children need to be reminded not to freak out, but adults should remember not to be too relaxed.
Tragic and terrible things are a part of life, whether they directly affect us like a friend getting sick, or indirectly hurt us, such as a terrorist attack in another country, which ultimately forces the entire globe to question how safe we really think we are. We can't change that. All we can do is try to balance our rationality with our emotions, and if that means putting on a brave face all day at work, doing the reading for your class you really don't feel in the mood for, and then coming back to your apartment and having a good cry in the shower, that's what you do (that may or may not have been what I did the day I got the official lymphoma diagnosis from my friend earlier this week). It's life, and we have to continue to push forward.
For the record, I've set up a GoFund Me page to support the cost for my best friend and her fiancé in this journey. Sharing it would mean the world to me.
