It was Friday the 13th. I sat on top of the stiff mattress of a hospital bed, an orange band around my wrist and baggy cotton gown hanging from my limbs. The stinging twinge of an IV needle radiated pain into the side of my arm, and I gnawed away at the inside of my cheeks to distract myself. The echoing of screaming children and nurse’s fast-paced footsteps filled the fluorescent lighted hallways, their sounds mixing in the stale air with the sanitized, soapy smell of hospital.
I had woken up that morning to the blaring of my alarm, following the same mundane routine that had been drilled into my head since elementary school: wake up, go to school, come home, do homework, go to sleep, repeat. That’s all my day started as. Until my paranoid
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I tried to focus on the chess pieces sprawled out in front of me to avoid the silence, but it inevitably seeped into the room, and my thoughts spiraled into an endless drain of blackened water that plunged my stomach further below crashing waves.
It felt as if I was hearing the doctor’s words for the first time all over again, and they were only registering now. My pancreas wanted to self sabotage it’s way to a non-functional state. The image of a life I had always dreamed for myself faded to a life of blood tests, needles pricking and poking at my skin, hiding in bathrooms to inject insulin without anyone noticing, counting carbs, and trying to gain control over something my body was supposed to be automatically doing on its
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But imagining myself, moping about the situation and cracking under the pressure and responsibility, felt counter productive. It felt wrong. Face to face with the issue, I realized that this was one of the many hurdles I would have to face in life, and once I understood that, I learned how to jump over it. I looked up at my brother, who sat across from me, moving his knight three spaces to the right, even though he knew that left his queen open for me to take. I looked to the left where my mom sat, now stroking her hand up and down my back, and my dad standing behind her with a smile. And I realized, not only was I ready to jump over whatever hurdles life gave me, but I had people around me who were willing to hold my hand and cheer me on over them. I felt strangely prepared to face the inevitable situation that struck me that Friday the 13th, and no other choice felt right other than to learn how to live with it. As the saying goes, “the only way out is through.” So through, I