Little Red Wig - Fall Out Boy [Patrick Stump] Fanfiction

note to self. note to world. please read this.

when i started writing this story, i was 14. i was in an embarrassing emo phase, and i was in love with the lead singer from fall out boy. when i was at summer camp in 2015, i started writing a story that involved my favorite members. i created a girl in my mind. her name was violet. i wanted to write about a girl who had cancer. how she battled it and what her camp life was like. i never finished this story because it disappeared for a while, but it wasn't like i was writing it for anyone. it was for my own enjoyment. i never even published it. i never knew what a stupid little fanfiction would cause for my future. not that the future was a result of anything written here, that would be stupid. but i still can't help but feel like it was all my fault.

it's the 3rd of december in the year 2018, and i am now 17 years old. fall out boy still has a special place in my heart, but i'm not the fan i used to be, and i'm not the young girl i used to be either. writing this story, i was young, naive. i was unaware of all of the terrible things that could happen to me and the people i love. i decided i would write a story on cancer because i knew it could never possibly harm me. it was too far to touch, it was something other people dealt with. not me. not the people i love.

my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in april of 2016, whilst i was in the midst of writing a chapter for this story. i remember her calling me and my brother downstairs, she had to talk about something that was important. i remember yelling down that it wasn't the right time, that i was busy. if she could just wait a minute. she couldn't. so i went down in a grouchy mood. she said she had cancer. she was getting a full mastectomy. and starting chemotherapy immediately after. it was then that i realized i was taking advantage of the people i love.

my mother isn't what i wanted to talk about. her tumor was removed, she had chemotherapy treatment, and for now she's ok. i still have her, and for that i am so lucky. what brings me back to this fanfiction is the plot line. i wrote a story about a girl with cancer. she goes to summer camp with her best friends, and she falls in love with a rock star. i never finished the story. but i knew the ending. violet was going to die. in my head, violet was always going to die.

i based the camp in this story around my actual summer camp. and i named the characters after my real friends. i never told them that i was using their names in a fanfiction i was writing, that would have been so embarrassing. i remember telling myself that i wanted violet to meet fall out boy through the make a wish foundation, because something sick, deep inside me, believed that if i was violet, and if i had cancer, i would have the perk of making my biggest dreams come true with the make a wish foundation. what a sick, disgusting thought. looking back on my fourteen year old self, i am filled with feelings of pure hatred. how dare she think something like that. how dare she think that there are perks to having cancer.

at camp i had 5 best friends. two of them were twins. one of them i named a character after in this series, and the other, i didn't. it was 2016, and my story characters would soon represent my future. though, it wasn't my future i was writing. it was my best friend's. during the summer of 2016, one of my 5 best friends came to camp with a limp, but it was nothing. just a pain in her back from running or working out. she just needed to do some yoga or take some advil. it would never be something serious. that's untouchable. i remember sitting in the theater with my friends while a band performed. thinking of my fanfiction, i leaned over and said: wouldn't it be so amazing if fall out boy performed here? wouldn't it be amazing.

camp was over and i once again forgot about this story. that was until the following september, when i got the worst news of my life. i had a friend who walked with a limp. the limp was called osteosarcoma. cancer of the bone. harsh survival rate. but oh was she a trooper. this girl laughed in the face of that tumor and told it to pick on someone its own size. but while she was surviving, i was wondering why this all seemed so familiar. until it hit me. i had written this down when i was in eighth grade. i wrote the plot line to my best friend's life. how could i have done that to her? my immature, selfish ways had taken a story and thrown it into the hands of someone i loved so dearly. i didn't think it would come back to bite me. i didn't think that cancer could ever harm me. it only gets other people. me and my friends, we're invincible.