Shadows

February 2, Groundhog Day: anyone within the borders of the United States should be able to tell you that. But within my family, it means something else. You see today marks the day that I am cancer free.

My type of cancer hits kids young, a sick joke played on the littlest victims. They call it retinoblastoma, cancer of the retina. I was "fortunate" to get the kind that isn't genetic, and they caught it in time so that it only injured one eye, and I'm alive. I could have ended my life before my 2nd birthday, but I'm here now. This is the day I'm cancer free: then why am I crying?

I know. I know I should be happy, I know I should've spent the whole day smiling and telling everyone I come across that I'm the luckiest girl in the whole wide world. But I don't feel lucky-- pretty much the exact opposite.

I was little. I was just a baby, but somehow I remember it. Not all of it, of course, but I remember my hospital room. I remember crying in the exam rooms for my mom, and trying to lie still in a MRI machine clutching my stuffed bunny in my small hands. I remember the Beauty and the Beast wall decoration in the waiting room, and the calming presence of my mom and my Aunt Julie in the hospital. I remember all those things. I can think about them whenever I want to, or even when I do not want to. So why should it be any different that everyday I remember that I lost my eye to this terrible disease? Why do people find it so hard to believe that everyday I think about how different I am from the people I know, and why it's so hard for me to let it go?

I like February 2nd because I know for sure it's the only other day when other people are thinking about my cancer, and not just me. That may sound bad, but it's such a huge burden in my life, and I've had to carry it alone for 364 days out of every year for 17 years. How does the grudge and memory even last that long?

As if the memories of my treatments aren't hard enough, my battle scar is bold and visible to the whole world. It comes in the form of a glass eye; painted closely enough to resemble my regular eye, but glossy and painful enough that people notice that something is different about me. Everyone knows the feeling that someone is staring at you, maybe in a restaurant, or riding the bus, but most times you can feel someone else's eyes on you. Try multiplying that by ten, and having it happen to you every time you go out. Then see if you feel lucky or not.

I hate being different. I hate it almost as much as I hate the fact that I had cancer. I don't want to play the martyr, or the victim, but I can't see any good in this, I only see that I got screwed. This eye has brought me nothing but pain over these past 17 years now that I've had to deal with it, and I'm sick of it.

I'm tired of not feeling pretty. I'm tired of being different. I'm tired of going to doctors appointments to hear terms like "your deformity" or "more surgery can maybe fix your face, Little Miss". Those words cut me deeper than any surgeon's blade ever could.

But I'm also tired of living behind my glass eye. I'm tired of being defined by it. I'm tired of using it as an excuse. I'm tired of be threatened by it. I'm just over all tired of having it. I live only a fraction of what I could actually live, because I don't want the world to see how different my disease has made me.

Being cancer free today is bittersweet. Thank you Jesus I have this day to celebrate, and the wonderful day I do have. But I need to know why. I need to know why I'm so, incredibly, different, if I'm ever going to come out of my shadow.