Three Months

Chapter Fifteen

The biggest thing that I’ve learned in my short, seventeen years of life is that things don’t always go as planned. For example, it’s not like my parents planned on their only daughter – their freaking pride and joy – being diagnosed with cancer. I mean, who plans for that stuff? Survivalists, maybe. But my parents? Nah. The other thing that nobody ever plans is when stuff happens. Now, that fact may blanket over all the over facts, but it specifically applies to this one particular thing that I’m about to address.

            Something that I never, ever would’ve planned for is meeting a guy who might possibly make me want to live. Of course before I came down with cancer (now that’s a way to lightly put a deadly disease that can off me at any given moment) I always had dreamed about meeting that perfect guy that I wanted to sail the seas with and blah blah blah, insert happy ending here. Because what little girl that hears about the Disney princesses wouldn’t have that as their dream?

            So basically what I’m trying to say is that I’ve never really been given a definite reason to live. And this isn’t me being all mopey and a crybaby because believe me when I say that I’ve passed that stage in my condition. This is me facing reality. Before I met a certain somebody, I never had a for sure reason to continue living on this earth.

             But isn’t that how it is for every human being then? You have your parents that love you but that’s a given even if my parents don’t. And actually, I believe that they love me, I just don’t believe that they’re strong enough to support me throughout my illness, because isn’t that what the whole deal is anyway? They “loved” me before cancer, but they don’t love me after it. So in reality, it’s just the fact that they’re scared of what’s going to happen to me – my fate.

            Yet again, that’s beside the point. Parents love their kids. That’s pretty much the natural way of life because that’s a person’s lizard brain kicking in. Caring for your child is first nature for the majority of the human race, so it’s not really special when they say ‘I love you’ and stuff like that because it’s expected. But what’s not expected is to gain friends that you know will stand by you no matter what and support you in your decisions as well as being there for you when you’re hurt and need help. Now that’s something that a person can live through. It’d be a sad and lonely life, but it’d still be a life.

            Before I met Jude, I only had Steven to lean on, and after everything that’s happened between me and him, I’m starting to doubt if we were even friends in the first place.

            So really, this is me trying to sum up the fact that Jude is now my friend, thus my reason to live.

            I’ve come to realize over the course of the past few days that Jude has brought upon some unexpected changes in me. When I first met him, it was my goal to Break Jude Andrews. Too bad I didn’t realize that that goal would soon become Find a Reason to Live, because that’s what it became.

            Loneliness. I think that’s what my whole problem was. I was lonely. But now I’ve got Jude and Luke and Steven (I think our friendship is a budding process to be honest) and maybe my father and Dr. Caldwell and the list could go on but I’ve run out of thought space to remember them all. So in all, I think I’ve become less lonely than I was originally.