This week marks the one year anniversary of the worst thing I’ve ever been through. My boyfriend of over three years woke up one day to a lump on his neck; a month later, we found out it was an incredibly dangerous form of lymphoma.
I got the call while walking home from Moe’s with my friends. I remember just being so excited my boyfriend was calling me. He was getting surgery to remove the lump on his neck, and I was waiting for a few hours for him to wake up. I asked how he was with the biggest smile on my face, and he responded, “Not great, the doctors told me I have cancer.” That moment my life changed completely. I immediately called my sister to come pick me up and bring me home, and the next day, I started the most important role I’ve ever had: the support system. One year out, I am so lucky to say he’s now in remission, but that’s not to say it was easy. The months he went through treatment were the lowest in my entire life, and I had to watch my favorite person in the world suffer unexplainable pain. Despite this, it’s also the time I learned some of the most important things I’ve ever learned in my life. This week has featured a lot of reflection for me, so thinking back, I wanted to write down some of the lessons I learned from the worst thing I’ve ever been through.
- Sometimes people won’t get your decisions, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong
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Less than an hour after I got the call, I was getting in the car and going home. I didn’t even give a second thought to the fact that I was leaving during the most important time of the semester, the last week of classes and finals week. I remember being faced with so many questions: what are you doing? Isn’t it your last week of classes? How are you going to get through finals if you’re not even at school? Even though some of these questions were coming from some of the people I love most, they still stung. I didn’t understand how people could question my decisions; it wasn’t even a thought in my mind to stay at school, I knew home is where I needed to be to support my boyfriend. Still, when people would ask me these things, I felt threatened and invalidated. It’s still, and probably will always be, a hard pill to swallow, but I had to learn to trust my gut whether or not other people understood. Looking back, I’m proud of every decision I made, and even more proud that I learned to validate my own actions even if others didn’t understand.
- When you’re at your lowest, you have to let yourself feel it all
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It’s scary to watch someone you love go through a hard time, and this is something I knew all too well. What I forgot, though, was that this also applied to the people around me as well. During the hardest days, I would spend all day crying, going through panic attacks, and wondering why this all was happening. Needless to say, my loved ones noticed I was really going through it, and often tried to do things to cheer me up or take my mind off it all. As much as I appreciated their efforts, I had a hard time letting go of what I was going through. It felt inauthentic to smile and laugh when my heart felt heavier than it had ever felt. Soon, this became an important lesson that I had to learn; it felt inauthentic because it was inauthentic. What I was going through couldn’t have been cast aside for a fun day; when I felt all the emotions that going through something like this brought, I needed to truly feel it.
- the people you expect to help you the least may help you the most, and vice versa
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Another hard pill to swallow; people don’t always show up in the ways you expect them to. Some of the friends that texted me to let me know they were sorry for what I was going through never even checked in again, some didn’t text at all. This was a really difficult thing for me, feeling like I was such an insignificant part of my friends or loved ones’ lives. At the same time, people that I expected to be the least helpful ended up being some of my biggest fans. I’ll never forget telling my grandmother, expecting her to not understand at all. The first thing she said to me was that I needed to take care of myself and that this time was going to be really hard for me. She was the first one to even acknowledge that I might be going through a hard time. You never know how people are going to be when you need them most, whether that’s good or bad.
- The only way out is through
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When I was younger, one of my favorite books was called We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. The story was of a family walking around in the woods on a bear hunt, and they keep encountering obstacles to their walk. Every time they reach an obstacle, like a body of water or mud, the father explains “We can’t go under it, we can’t go over it, we have to go through it.” This is honestly exactly how what I went through felt like. People often ask me how I got through such a horrible time, and I underwhelmingly say, you just do. When life tests you, there often is no other thing to do than just get through it. You can’t go over it, can’t go under it, you just have to go through it. And even though this may seem negative, it can also be really positive. For me, I just had to push through and wait for better days, and I’m incredibly lucky to say that better days have come.
Overall, this year was one of the hardest of my life. But, it also taught me some lessons that I am incredibly lucky to now know. Looking back, I am so happy that this chapter of my life is now closed, and plan on taking some much-needed self-care time soon to celebrate!