Hey guys.
It's me again, Cat.
I feel like the world is falling apart.
I just got some of the worst news of my life.
So I'm supposed to have a new baby cousin, a girl named Grace, by the beginning of May.
I don't know if that's going to happen anymore.
My brother just got a text from one of my other aunts, not the one who's having a baby, and it's some of the worst news ever.
Grace apparently has a lot wrong with her. A bunch of long, complicated names for stuff, but the two things that stood out while Peter was reading the message was "extra chromosome" and "hole in her heart".
Three things could happen to her.
1) she dies in the womb
2) she lives about a month, then dies
3) she lives to her mid-twenties with a whole lot of health problems
I want to rip and smash every last thing in my room right now.
It just isn't fair.
Why is it that I get to live and breath and talk and sing and see the world, and she might not even get to take a single breath?
She might never have the opportunity to draw or write. She might never be able to obsess over something to the full extent. She might never get to make friends, or have a first kiss, or even reach puberty, as shitty as it is.
And if she does, it'll be even worse for her.
I thought my grandma dying this past March was bad. I thought "nothing could get worse than losing someone you've known your entire life, nothing could possibly compare to this".
But this is a million times worse.
There are too many options for what could happen to her. Not knowing if she's even going to be able to breath when she's born, not knowing if she's going to be stuck in a hospital her entire life, getting pointless surgeries to try and fix her that might end up making her life even shorter than it already is.
All that's running through my head right now is: why can't it be me instead?
Why take the life of this little tiny baby that hasn't even gotten to see how cruel and wonderful the world is?
Why can't it be me instead?
I have a question for you now: have you ever cried so hard that your eyeballs seem to start throbbing?
Because that's what's happening to me right now.
I just stared at my ceiling for a good 15 minutes, looking at all the little indents and cracks and bumps that are covering it, and all I was thinking was: Grace is never going to see the sky.
I don't know what to do, guys.
I just want to take her place.
