I recently came across the essay I wrote for my common app college applications and I realized that it was one of the first times that I had ever opened up about something very personal: my mom's battle with cancer and my attitude towards it. I figure that if I was able to open up to college admissions people whom I had never met, I could share this with others, too. This essay was one of the hardest things I have ever had to write, but it forced me to confront my emotions and helped me get into the school that I love so much. It is my wish that this essay can give hope to those who are struggling, or just give future high school seniors some ideas for their own common app essays. Either way, I hope you enjoy this rare moment of my complete emotional transparency:

When I was 6 years old, I watched my mom’s hair come out in clumps into her hands. It was wet from the shower, the strands thin and frail. I vaguely remember the look on my mom’s face as she realized what was happening, but I distinctly remember seeing fear in my dad’s eyes for the first time. I heard her cry and then tasted my own salty tears. I recognized that something was wrong, but didn’t really understand what.

Seeing mortality firsthand is difficult for a 6-year-old. Now, at 18, I know that I will never grasp the concept of death. But after all the years of my mom battling breast cancer, I have at least begun to understand the inevitability of succumbing to mortality. I’ve found myself considering life and death often, and I have come to the conclusion that mortality is a very scary thing. I realize now that the idea of tomorrow is abstract because the only thing certain about time is that it will end. That is a depressing thought. I would like to be able to say that going through this has sparked a desire in me to take advantage of every moment and live life to the fullest, but all it has really shown me is that life is unpredictable and many things are out of our control, there aren’t a lot of answers, and sometimes all we can do is find something to believe in.

I do not think that it is necessarily a bad thing to not have answers, because if we knew everything, we would not have much of a purpose in life, nothing left to progress towards. Although I do get frustrated knowing that I am searching for answers I may never find, there is a certain beauty in the open-endedness of it all. It allows me to create my own set of values to live by and some explanations for the instabilities of life that are unique from those of anybody else.

I believe in the importance of having a loving and caring family, because I have grown up in one and have seen how lucky I am to have a family who cares about me so much. I took it for granted for a while until I noticed how my friends’ parents encouraged them to get their driver’s licenses so they would not have to drive them to school anymore, while my parents did not want me to get my license because they loved driving me to school. My family has also had a tremendous impact on shaping my other core beliefs, which include being kind to everyone even if they do not reciprocate, always reminding people that I care about them, taking responsibility for my actions, and trusting my own capabilities. Possibly the most important belief they have taught me is to question everything, and this has helped me to understand in some way why things happen the way that they do.

My mom has been fighting breast cancer on and off since I was six, which means I have had twelve years to contemplate why something so terrible is happening to such a good person. I have come to the conclusion that bad things happen to good people because they are the only people strong enough to handle them. This is the only explanation that makes sense to me, and it has heightened my feeling of hope because it reminds me that if anyone can make it through this, she can. I believe in the power of positive thinking, because having a healthy mindset can change everything. I believe that things will turn out well in the end, because “well” is determined by my attitude. I believe in the importance of believing in something, because life is already fraught with too many nothings.