My time in high school has been a long and hard one. I encountered many terrible challenges within a very short amount of time. The last four years of my life has been a rapid fire succession of terrible news.
The first hardships I encountered were my Latin classes at Hill and my aunt’s battle with cancer that ended ultimately with death during the week leading up to the beginning of my high school career. I had no interest in Latin; I received terrible marks; but I persevered, because I was afraid to show weakness. This extended to my feelings of grief over my aunt’s death, I buried it deep. I never was able to even attend her funeral because she lived in Serbia, in my mother’s old country. I came to a revelation from my aunt’s death. Three out of the four members of my family who have died, died of cancer. I came to grips with my own mortality in my freshman year and the highly likely chance I will have cancer. It is a hard concept for anyone to understand, especially a teenager. …show more content…
I had only just come to peace with my first year’s hardships when another bomb hit me: my mother was diagnosed with cancer of the colon. The track record of cancer was not good in my family: my grandfather died of cancer, my grandmother died of cancer, and my aunt died of cancer. In my mind I believed that the odds were against my mother; I was angry and sad. My mother fought long and hard with the cancer throughout the year and communication with my family was difficult being so far away; there were long stretches of time that I didn’t know her condition. I could only hope. It was only in the summer that she finally beat it for good. The cancer went into remission but my mom was not the same. She was happy but the energy she used to have was not there anymore. It was a hard transformation to witness as a