day 1

Inspired by this amazing video 

http://www.upworthy.com/this-kid-just-died-what-he-left-behind-is-wondtacular-rip

When I was 16 years old I found out that I would never graduate from high school. Because I’d be dead. I won’t bore you with the specifics, like how to pronounce whatever obscure disease I have. Even I don’t remember that. All I remember from that day is sitting in a cold, white room with white, snow-framed windows, and feeling like winter would never end. Like for the rest of my life I would be freezing, alone inside a white room with needles to prick at me until I bleed, with white gloves reaching to tear me limb from limb. At that moment I remember wanting nothing more than to go home, to retreat to my bedroom and pull the covers up to my chin. I spent that night in a hospital room. And the night after that.

When I was finally able to go home, I remember that being all I did. Laying in bed, under the covers, as if my covers could hide me from the disease inside me. I didn’t know it at the time, but like a fungus in a warm, stagnant environment, the disease was becoming bigger, and bigger. So big that it kept me from going back to school once the doctors said it was okay. My parents stayed with me the first few days. But they eventually gave up trying to get through to me. I was inconsolable. And day after  day, my head was filled with all the things I would never get to do, all the dreams I once had that I would never accomplish. All the things I wasn’t doing as I laid in bed, day after day. 

I started going to school again. My once perfect grades fell to a C average. But what was the point? I’d never finish high school. Never apply to college. Why waste the little time I had left on school? Ironically, wasting time is exactly what I was doing. Day in and day out, school then home, glazed eyes no matter where I was. Dreaming instead of living. 

But one day I woke up. It was after school. I had ridden the bus home and was in my room, alone, playing video games instead of studying. I used to play them for hours. If I was going to die, I might as well have as much fun until it happened. But I was losing at the game. And the more I played, the more frustrated I got. Frustrated and angry and angrier until I hurled the controller across the room as a sob ripped my throat. I wasn’t having fun. I tried to think of what I could do instead, of what I wanted, really wanted. I realized I played video games to distract myself, and something inside of me had been screaming in protest the whole time. But if not video games, then what did I want to do? To live. The answer shone straight through the winter clouds that hung above me like a beam of sunlight. But why did I want to live when living was so miserable? This time, the answer came more slowly. Because I had dreams. I wanted to do things, see things, touch things. I wanted to become someone. 

Then go do it. 

That sentence weighed on my mind like a prisoner’s ball that night. And the next morning I woke up eager, excited for the first time in months, ready to… One week later nothing had changed. 

Stopped because lazy.