Cancer popped up again after my life had taken a different direction and I had finished college for a hairstyling diploma. There it was again, peeping its ugly head around the corner.
I'm not going to rant about my cancer story (and for those of you who call it a 'journey', stop now. It ain't no journey). That's for a different post. I wanted to bring up the topic that falls heavily into my cancer story and that is that I actually wrote about it. For Camp NaNoWriMo this past April, I wrote a novel called "Sh!t Happens." Yes, it has the word shit in the title. Get over it.
I was constantly told during my treatments that since I'm a writer, I should try writing about my experience with cancer. At the time, the last thing I wanted to do was write about being sick all the time. I had to live it each day so the furthest thing from my mind was putting it into words when I could barely write things I wanted to write in the first place.
My first manuscript that I started in 2013 was put on hold during my struggle with cancer. It irritated me so much that cancer could so easily take away something I worked so hard on for so long and there was nothing I could do to fight back. Every single time I thought about trying to write my manuscript, I couldn't because it was not my best work. I didn't want to write something if I wasn't 100% into it. I didn't want to write pure shit. But that's what it was becoming on those rare few days when I could manage to sit at my laptop and hit the keys on my keyboard. It was total garbage.
I went into a state of depression. Everyone thought I was depressed because of the cancer, the fact that I was dying and all the brutal side effects that came with it. Yes, that upset me but in all honesty, I was more upset about the fact that I could die knowing that I never finished my manuscript. It sounds stupid and that I should have been more focused on my health rather than my writing but when you're put in the cancer shoes, nothing matters to you only your one true love - mine was (and is) writing.
Days spent in hospital beds turned into long nights thinking about characters and plot development and how I may not get to finish telling my story that I had worked so hard and so long on. It had to be finished, that's all I cared about.
While everyone was focused on me, I was focused on my main characters, Cleo and Asha. As much as my life needed to be saved - I needed to save theirs in my novel.
Time went on and now looking back, I realize that through all my struggles with getting cancer at the age of nineteen and finishing treatments close to my twenty-third birthday had led me to this point. It made me see that I was born to do this. I was born to write and tell the story of Cleo and Asha.
I'm happy to say that as of this day, Cleo and Asha's story is in the editing process and I am currently working on query letters (if you don't know what that is, check out my other blog posts).
But with all that being said, I flash-backed to the time when everyone would tell me to write my cancer story and I actually managed to do that last month. After some time of healing and being able to talk about my struggle, I finally put it into words.
I learned that without my pain, there would be no gain of this story to have been written. I wrote about my neuroblastoma and how many people don't know about it and how it does happen in adults. Maybe some day there will be a cure, but right now I'm happy I'm alive and able to share my experience with you.
