Through Her Eyes

To Just Be

But peace wasn't something I ever really understood. I had spent so long living in other people's emotions that the concept of feeling nothing—no sorrow, no fear, no heaviness—seemed foreign, almost unreachable. I imagined it, though. Late at night, when the world was quiet and even the hospital lights dimmed, I would lie in bed and try to picture what peace felt like.

I thought maybe it would be like floating, like weightlessness. No more pressure on my chest, no more anxious glances from my parents, no more doctors who avoided eye contact when they spoke to me about my prognosis. I thought maybe peace was silence, the kind of silence that isn't lonely, but comforting—like being wrapped in a blanket where nothing could touch me.

Sometimes I wondered if I was already on the edge of that peace, if the numbness I felt to my own emotions was a sign I was getting closer to it. It scared me a little, to be honest. I wasn't afraid of death, but I was afraid of leaving people behind. The people who counted on me to be strong, to keep smiling. My parents, especially. They were the ones who suffered the most, even though they tried so hard to hide it.

I saw my mom cry more times than she realized. She would sit by my bed, holding my hand, telling me stories from when I was younger, before everything changed. She tried to be upbeat, but I could see the cracks in her voice, the way her hands shook when she thought I wasn't looking. And my dad—he was quieter, never really knowing what to say. But his silence was heavy, a constant reminder of how much he was holding in.

They were the ones I worried about the most. What would happen to them when I was gone? Would they find a way to keep living, or would my absence break them? I didn't want to be the reason they couldn't move on, but I knew how much of their world revolved around me and my illness. Sometimes, I felt like I had taken up so much space in their lives that they wouldn't know what to do with the emptiness when I was no longer here.

I guess that's why I kept pretending everything was fine. I didn't want them to know how tired I really was. I didn't want them to see that I had already made peace with the idea of not making it to eighteen. Because that would mean admitting that all their hope, all their efforts, had been for nothing. And I couldn't do that to them. They needed to believe I still had a chance, even if I knew otherwise.

It wasn't until a few weeks before the end that I started letting go of the act. I couldn't keep it up anymore. My body was failing, and so was the mask I had worn for so long. My mom saw it first. She stopped telling me it was going to get better. Instead, she started talking about the things she wished we could have done together, the places she wanted to take me. She stopped hiding her tears, and in a strange way, that made it easier for me to let go, too.

We stopped pretending. And that was when I realized that maybe peace wasn't something I had to wait for. Maybe it was something I could find in those final moments, in the quiet acceptance that came when we stopped fighting the inevitable.

The last few days were a blur. I don't remember much, just flashes of faces, the sound of voices I had grown so familiar with, the feeling of my mother's hand in mine. But I do remember the stillness that came over me when I realized it was almost over.

For the first time in years, I wasn't feeling everyone else's pain. I wasn't carrying their sorrow or their fear. It was just me, and for the first time in what felt like forever, I was alone with my own emotions. And you know what?

I wasn't afraid.

I thought I would be, but in those final moments, I felt something I hadn't expected: relief. It was like all the weight, all the pain, had finally lifted. And for the first time, I allowed myself to feel it fully, without worrying about anyone else.

It was quiet, and in that quiet, I found the peace I had been searching for. Not in death, but in the act of letting go.

And maybe that's what peace really is—learning to let go of the things we can't control, the emotions we've carried for too long, and finally, just *being*. Even if it's for a brief moment before the end.