The parts you leave behind

Epilogue*

Hayden's POV

5 years later....

There was a point in time where I couldn't even step foot into hospitals. I mean the memories that came back every time I went into one haunted me for a long time, any doctors office did really. It just seemed like anytime I have to step foot into one of the places that holds the absolute worst feelings and times of my life was a place I'd choose to stay far away from.

I felt bad because in a way it almost felt like I had lost respect for doctors. I felt like they were incapable. Looking back now I know I would only tell myself they couldn't do their job so I had something to blame it on, and I really tried to blame it on anything I could. People. Places. Anything I could use to my advantage to place blame on, because in a way I think it helped.

It helped in a way that you feel relief when you find out who the murderer was in a crime case. It hurts to realize the truth, but at-least you had something to place your anger on. Every feeling became their fault, and it sucked but in an odd way it's just how you got by. It's how you made yourself get through life when you couldn't even imagine what the next minute was going to be like.

But one day I stopped blaming the doctors. I stopped blaming the hospitals, I stopped blaming all the wrong people because deep down I always knew there wasn't much they could do. It was the cancers fault. That's when I truly found the place to put my anger on, because that was the reason everything went wrong. The tumor, was the true villain in this story and I think the moment I realized it was hard.

The amount of time I'd put into placing all of the negative feelings into things who didn't deserve it was almost embarrassing. But I think realizing who the true culprit was, opened my eyes in a way. It hurt, it hurt not to really have a physical thing I could yell at or really show how much it hurt because I felt like I needed to fight it to truly be able to understand. So I did. I opened my eyes and I began to fight it.

Which is now why I'm now sitting in a chair with the sun blazing down on my skin for the second time in my life while nostalgia plays in the back of my mind. People call out names left and right, and I watch their smiles just like I watched their proud smiles in high school. But I think this moment means more than that did, because rather than just getting a diploma, we're really starting our lives.

The thought stays present as I watch because this moment seems surreal, like I never thought it would actually happen, yet here we are. Here I am while sit here, and I'm not nervous or anxious. I think I've been ready for this moment since the second I decided it was time to start fighting back against the true thing to blame.

"Hayden Hall!" They call out and in this moment I smile. Because I'm proud of myself. I'm proud I finally found a future for myself, I'm proud I finally found a calling in my life that I thought I would never get. I'm proud I won. And in this moment as I grab the degree from the deans hand, I know that I did in fact win. I knew all my fighting was worth it.

I don't even pay attention to anything else going on around me. I look down like I just won a freakin Nobel prize, but in this moment I feel like I've won so much more than that. This means the absolute world to me.

When everyone's finished and we all realize we've made it through four years of blood, sweat, and tears, we all stand for a final time in realization that this is real. We made it through all of the hard times that felt like it was worth nothing at times, and at nights when I could hardly even keep my eyes open I didn't really think I even could get through it.

But something was there to hold my hand through it all. There to push me when I felt like I stuck in place. Or someone per-se.

"Daddy!" She shines me her smile where her two front teeth are currently missing and it melts my heart as she gets let's go of Luke's hand when she sees me and I immediately open my arms with a similar, but all teethed smile before I pick her up and spin her around as she giggles in my arms.