Who is to define one’s own childhood or life as a tragic one? Most people, if they did not know me, would say that I have no right to deem my previous years as tragic ones. I beg to differ. Beginning in the year 2003, my entire family’s lives were changed. In 2003, when I was three years old and my older sister was eight, my mother was diagnosed with Stage four metastatic Breast Cancer. The following years were challenging, to say the least – although I have used one of my various, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and done my very best to bury those years into the darkest depths of my memory.
On September 2nd, 2015, my mother passed away. It is a date that will forever be engraved into my mind, but it is also a day that is a little more manageable each year. The sun always rises on September 2nd – no matter what kind of deep sadness or feeling of emptiness is pressing on our hearts that day. The weight of her death is most certainly not only felt once a year. It is felt 365 days a year. It is an unimaginable pain. It will suffocate me if I allow myself to feel it for too long. I do not wish this pain upon a single soul. I hope none of you have ever had to feel the pain that I am referencing. There are some days where I almost can’t get out of bed because it feels like it just happened yesterday; there are other days where I feel guilty that I did not think about her enough. All of those days – the good, the bad and the worse – are what make up my grieving process. No matter what kind of day it is for me, the sun still rises.
There were also other aspects of my grieving process. Around the time we knew my mom was about to pass away, I developed an eating disorder. I just needed something to control, so I found my eating disorder and clung to it. After she passed away, it progressively got worse until my father and therapist decided I needed professional treatment. I spent my seventeenth birthday in a treatment center in the Middle-of-Nowhere, Arizona…and the sun still rose. The next fall, during my senior year of high school, my eating disorder became the worst it had ever been. I was extremely sick and refused treatment. I knew I wouldn’t be able to go to college unless I started taking care of myself, so with the help of my amazing father, sister, therapists, and doctors – I made it here.
Coming to college forced me to finally start considering my own happiness and well-being – a foreign concept to the anxiety-ridden teenager with an eating disorder. I got involved in various organizations on campus and found a family away from home in Greek life that I know is always there for me. I won’t sit here and tell you that I no longer struggle with my depression and anxiety because that would be a lie. The bad days still come, and when they do, I have my wonderful friends to lean on and help me realize it won’t feel like this forever.
Now it is October of 2019, I am healthy and happy and, most importantly, regardless of what is happening in the world around me…the sun continues to rise every morning. No matter what. You may think there is no way you can make it another day with what you are going through. You may think that there is just no possible way the world will keep going after everything it has put you through. You may think the sun can’t rise again and make you push yourself through another day. But it will. And you will survive it. Every single day.
Love, Emily, A UF Student
