When you’re 17, you think the entire world is out to get you. Teachers drive you crazy with unrelenting assignments, parents drive you batty with responsibility, friends distract you from what’s important, boys cloud your mind. You wake up with bad hair, and the world is coming to end. Your boyfriend breaks up with you after 3 weeks, and the world has to stop so you can cry about it. At 17, life is just horrible, or at least YOU think so.
The world isn’t out to get you until your mom is diagnosed with cancer practically in front of you. I remember coming home from school, it was the last day of junior year. Summer. Freedom. Just one more year. My mom wasn’t home, and something wasn’t right. I looked around for her, racking my brain to think of some appointment she had, or where she might have gone. I called her boyfriend/fiance, and he said something along the lines of being at the hospital, that I should stay at home, he would call back. I immediately called my boyfriend, who took me up there as soon as he got off work. I can remember the nervousness of trying to find her room, the right floor, the right door. I remember seeing her in the bed, ugly hospital gown, pale faced.
I don’t remember the words, but I know it was something about they found a tumor in her brain. The entire world came crashing down. Or at least, I think it did. I don’t remember exactly what was said, or what happened, but my first day of the summer before senior year was horrible. I was selfish. I thought, “There goes my summer.”
The world isn’t out to get you until you wake up one morning, at 17, and realize your period hasn’t come. Being like clockwork, this is a surprise. So to take a test, and to see 2 pink lines blazing back, isn’t all too surprising.
The world is finally out to get you when 21 days after finding out, your mom loses her battle with cancer. The world has not only come crashing down, it has been smashed to nothing but dust and pain. The world has come down in such a way that it has rocked your core, while making your heart still.
At 17, life is incredibly frustrating. School, friends, boys, work, parents… but for some, pregnancy, babies, ultrasounds. At 17, I thought I would be dress shopping for prom, ordering my graduation cap and gown. I had no idea the world was out to make me a motherless mother. Thanks world, you’ve taught me a lot.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
You are a wonderful mother and have a beautiful family. Your mother is very proud of you right now. :)
This made me cry, you have been through so much. When you start feeling down just know that you have your wonderful family and that your mom is looking down on you and still taking care of you.