It Was | Teen Ink

It Was

January 25, 2010
By dancingirl BRONZE, Snohomish, Washington
dancingirl BRONZE, Snohomish, Washington
4 articles 0 photos 12 comments

Favorite Quote:
“To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”


It was twelve days. It was two hundred and eighty-eight hours. It was seventeen thousand, two hundred and eighty minutes. It was one million, thirty-six thousand and eighty seconds. It was the remembering. It was the forgetting. It was the waiting. It was the elephant in the room. It was the not speaking. It was every thought that ran through my mind. And it was the scare of my life.

I was focused on the world outside of the car when I got the news. When his lips parted, words came fumbling out. Words that turned into sentences. Sentences became a paragraph. And I never thought or imagined that that paragraph, those sentences and all those words would be said to me. That my dad, my hero could have cancer.

At first the impact did nothing to me. It just sat there in the back of my mind waiting for a reaction. But that reaction didn’t come for quite sometime.

I must have been in shock. A shock that me kept me locked up in a cage away from emotions and feelings. Something I haven’t yet become accustom to. Soon I learned that in a world with no emotions turned into loneness, an empty feeling poured into my pores and expanded inside my body, drowning out everything until I was nothing.

That weekend came and went. It was filled with running errands and doing chores while wearing fake smiles and awkward laughs.

By the time school came around I was as ready as I ever could be. It seemed to last forever, trying to concentrate on school. By the end of my school day a few of my friends knew and all my teachers knew. Yet no tears, no screams. The feeling of nothing filled me up and killed my other emotions. Again, I was alone all over again.

And I was hurt. But this pain was like no other that I could have ever imagined. A pain that couldn’t go away. No matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did the pain was eating me alive. I would have rather someone hit me. Hit me with a bat and bash out my brains. At least it would have been over with.

I felt as if someone was pushing me lower and lower beneath an ocean so I would drown. And that’s what I what I was doing, I was drowning in worry. All I could think about was one day my dad would come home to say,

“Mckenna, I am dying.”

In my head that’s all I could hear. It screamed so loud it rattled my brain. But even so, I kept to my self in the darkness of my shell.

Until it happened, I couldn’t stand it any longer. So I talked to one of my best friends, who along the way of my experience, was there through it all and helped me more then he could ever begin to believe.


And as we talked he mentioned to me that a way to get my emotions to come out that I should talk to my counselor and then afterward that day we could sit down and talk all about it. But talking about seeing the counselor and actually doing it was easier said than done. I even bailed on the idea; I wasn’t going to talk to her. But surprisingly she approached me and told me that one of my teachers was worried about my family problems.

Later, as we began to talk about everything that was going on and all the outcomes that could happen, my strings that kept me together began to break. Seam by seam they broke in half and tears slid down my face. The numbness that had filled my body before, just seconds ago, filled with feelings. Not all good, but not all bad. And if even just for awhile I could be somewhat okay, it was worth it.

And those twelve days, those two hundred and eighty-eight hours, those seventeen thousand, two hundred and eighty minutes, those one million, thirty-six thousand and eighty seconds were the scare of my life. But writing this, reliving this all over again is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.


The author's comments:
This was expirence that I thought would never happen to me, but when it did I didn't know how to deal with it. Everyone who has go through what I did understands the loss of emotion you begin to expirence and that can sometimes lead to different factors of expressing yourself. Lucky for me, I found help in time. And even though this effects me everyday, making me want to cry myself to sleep or keep quite, I am slowly learning to deal with what happened in my life. So if this has happened to you, I want you to know some days it's easier and some days it's harder but there is always someone to lean on.

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This article has 12 comments.


on Feb. 23 2010 at 4:44 pm
dancingirl BRONZE, Snohomish, Washington
4 articles 0 photos 12 comments

Favorite Quote:
“To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”

thank you!!

SilentKun said...
on Feb. 22 2010 at 5:44 pm
No Problem?

on Feb. 21 2010 at 10:21 pm
dancingirl BRONZE, Snohomish, Washington
4 articles 0 photos 12 comments

Favorite Quote:
“To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”

Well I am glad you noticed something I didn't and thank you for commenting and listening to what I had to say.

SilentKun said...
on Feb. 20 2010 at 4:43 pm
How shocked you were, is pretty much I was talking about.

on Feb. 20 2010 at 2:45 pm
dancingirl BRONZE, Snohomish, Washington
4 articles 0 photos 12 comments

Favorite Quote:
“To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”

How did I react? And the intro was my favorite part too. It kinda summed it up without saying a hole bunch.

SilentKun said...
on Feb. 19 2010 at 10:23 pm
I especially liked the intro. And how you reacted in the middle.

on Feb. 19 2010 at 7:05 pm
dancingirl BRONZE, Snohomish, Washington
4 articles 0 photos 12 comments

Favorite Quote:
“To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”

Really? Well thank you. Its nice to know someone was listening to what I had to say.

SilentKun said...
on Feb. 18 2010 at 11:19 pm
You know that really short kid with the blue jacket in your connections. That sits in Nick's old seat. Thats me.

on Feb. 18 2010 at 7:45 pm
dancingirl BRONZE, Snohomish, Washington
4 articles 0 photos 12 comments

Favorite Quote:
“To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”

thanks :) can I just ask who you are?

SilentKun said...
on Feb. 18 2010 at 6:26 pm
Nice story McKenna. Thanks for reading this in class. It was a good story.

on Feb. 12 2010 at 11:59 pm
dancingirl BRONZE, Snohomish, Washington
4 articles 0 photos 12 comments

Favorite Quote:
“To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”

Thank you soo much for commenting on my memoir. It was so hard for me to go through this. I never thought I could make it through. Even now, after 3 months of having this happen to me I still think about it. I'm so glad you liked it. Thanks again :)

Yushime BRONZE said...
on Feb. 4 2010 at 10:37 pm
Yushime BRONZE, Eugene, Oregon
3 articles 0 photos 1 comment
wow this is a really moving memior. you are so brave to write this all down! I liked the beginning and the end a lot.