Evelyn H.
Photography by Ally Szabo
If you’re reading this, it’s ok not to understand your feelings yet.
Hello, if you’re reading this, I’ll tell you about one of the most formative experiences of my life.
On June 20th, a little more than a week before my 14th birthday, my parents called us all into the living room to solemnly tell us that my mom most likely had breast cancer. I wish there were better ways to open a letter but unfortunately, it was just as jarring as it sounds. My dad put on a strong face for my mom and my siblings, but being the oldest and most emotionally mature sibling, he broke down to me about being scared to lose my mom. Even though I had to put on a strong face and an optimistic smile for him, I was terrified of the gravity of the situation because, on top of everything, I had never seen my father cry.
As kids, we’re told to lean on our parents for support, but at that moment when my father had to lean on his 14-year-old daughter and cry, I knew I had to harden myself and be strong for anyone else who needed to do the same. Every week, my mom would receive treatment on Wednesday. On Fridays, the effects hit her, and she would be bound to the couch for the day. At the same time, I had just started high school. After my freshman year, I assumed life would go back to normal, as my mom’s hair grew back after she went into remission and my sophomore year began. And I did survive Algebra 2 (barely). But even then, life likes throwing curve balls.
During my sophomore year, COVID-19 hit. As if things couldn’t get worse, the summer before my junior year in the middle of a pandemic, my mother was diagnosed with cancer once again. If I am being completely honest, looking back now as a junior in college, I don’t remember my junior year of high school much at all. With the combination of my mom being sick again and having to cope with being isolated so as not to put my mom at risk of further complications of her sickness, I more or less turned my brain off (blacked out) for about 6 months. I was on autopilot for a while and barely felt anything except lonely.
Fast forward a few years and my mom has received treatment and has been cancer-free for five years, I graduated high school (despite Algebra 2), got into my dream school (Villanova, of course), and began one of my hardest academic journeys by studying chemical engineering like my father. Now, what’s the moral of the story? I don’t know. That’s the thing, even five years after my mother’s second cancer occurrence and multiple positive life milestones, I still don’t know how to process what my whole family went through. I still, as a junior in college, don’t know how to feel.
This emotional confusion was perpetuated further when two of my closest extended family members were diagnosed with cancer within a week of each other this past September. The news was paralyzing, but all I could do was ask about their respective treatment plans. Because I was used to this, right? I knew what to expect – treatment and then maybe hope. But I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t feel shocked at the news because I had been so hardened into expecting another tragedy that I knew what had to be done to help deal with it. Sometimes I wonder if I’m an emotionless monster because I haven’t processed what happened to my mother, let alone begin to process two more diagnoses. But I know that in reality, I’m a vulnerable 20-year-old girl whose life was thrown off track.
Some days it’s more difficult to remember that on two separate occasions, I almost lost my mother, and I am now at risk of losing two more relatives. Some days it doesn’t cross my mind as much, but almost every day I wonder if I actually felt anything at all – and I still don’t know.
Trauma has a funny way of popping back up when you don’t expect it and, even seven years after my mother’s first diagnosis and five years after her second, I am still feeling the aftershock of the largest emotional earthquake I have ever experienced – enough to not even be able to process two new shocks. And I still don’t know how to deal with it. But that’s ok. It’s ok to not have it all figured out and it’s ok to not understand your own emotions when it comes to such a large shock to your system. You don’t need to have it all figured out and you certainly don’t have to try to push down your feelings. If you try to grow from your experiences and develop as a person, I think you’re on the right track. At the end of the day, the world keeps spinning and we must keep moving one way or another, but we certainly don’t have to have it all figured out.
Evelyn H., Villanova University
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