And I'm Not Naive Anymore...

Hey.

I know! I am a really big liar. I said I would write soon and I didn’t. I’m sorry but I’ve been rather preoccupied. School is really crazy. I have so much work to do. But it’s been more that I’ve been emotionally preoccupied.

You know, I’ve lost two of my friends recently, and it’s really taken a toll on me. I never really wanted to write about it before, but I think it might be a good idea. In May, my good friend Steph was killed in a tractor accident. It was the biggest tragedy I’ve ever known. This guy was so nice, so funny and loved by everyone. He wasn’t a bad kid at all. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, he did not get to graduate or see his 18^th birthday. We weren’t that close, but he had become a part of my life. We’d hang out, talk, text, etc. That’s why, when it actually came down to it, I felt like I didn’t have the right to grieve. He was one of my best friend’s boyfriends, therefore, I just stayed strong for her and tried to help her in any way that I could. I also attempted to stay strong around other friends of his because they’d known him better and longer than me. I always thought: “this is affecting them a lot more than me. It is much harder for them.” Maybe that is true, but it doesn’t mean that it didn’t affect me at all. You know how they say we can always look back and point out the moment we truly lost our innocence? That is mine. Not only had I lost a friend, but I felt defeated. Life had finally got me down. I realized then that we are far from invincible and that life isn’t fair. It isn’t because you are a great person that you will have it all. I used to be a firm believer in karma, but that’s all gone now. I can’t see that Steph, or his parents had done anything bad enough to deserve this. This event scarred me more than anything that had ever happened to me personally.

On the 6 month anniversary of Steph’s death, a few of my friends and I went to visit his memorial at the lot where the accident had happened. It was difficult, but we mostly just shared funny stories about our deceased friend. Later that night, I got home and my mom had that look on her face. You know that look that says: “I’ve got something that I don’t want to tell you, but I have to”? I sat down, and she told me that a friend I used to have a few years ago had decided to take his own life. He had a tumor pressing on his eye that had gotten into the part of his brain that controls his emotions. Consequently, it lead him to kill himself. I hadn’t spoken to him in over a year but this death hurt me quite a bit. I believe that it affected me so much because I was, at the same time that I was grieving for the most recent death in my life, relieving the trauma from the first one. And this time, I think I finally let myself grieve the way I should have. I was grieving for both of my friends, and I was also grieving for the innocence I had lost and would never get back.

I don’t understand how some believe in God. I am not judging, nor am I trying to offend anyone. I am just trying to understand. In their faith, those who believe in God believe that he has control over basically everything. If he does, why on earth would he have taken a good kid, before even giving him the chance to graduate? Why would he have given a boy a tumor that caused him a lot of pain and suffering, and ultimately, lead him to take his  own life? If that’s your God, your God is cruel.

The most recent events in my life are just supporting my previous statements. My 12 year old cousin, is probably the most amazing, the strongest, the most heart-warming person you will ever meet. However, he was born with Cystic Fibroses and a bicuspids aortic valve. Cystic Fibroses is a disease that affects usually the lungs OR the pancreas. But for my poor Dylan, it is in both of those organs. His pancreas fails to absorb any of the enzymes and fat he is putting into his body. His lungs are completely full of mucus, all of the time. If you took a straw… not a big one but one of those tiny white straws, put it in your mouth, and blocked your nose, you would find it very difficult to breathe. That’s how it feels for him every single day of his life. The bicuspids aortic valve is a completely different and unrelated disease. We all have three valves pumping out our blood from our heart, but he only has two. Considering he has all of this, I’m sure you can imagine what kind of life he leads. He suffers every day. How can I bring myself to believe in a higher power? How can I not think that your God is cruel? Three weeks ago, he was sent home from school because he was sick. It was a Wednesday. By Sunday, he had stopped breathing and we were required to call an ambulance. They had to give him 18 puffs of oxygen amongst many other things to keep him alive on the way to the hospital. He stayed hospitalized until Wednesday, where they released him without actually knowing what was really going on with him. His sats had gone up, but not exactly high enough and his breathing got a bit better, but only because he was on constant oxygen. But they released him from the hospital  anyways. Well, at home, he did not get any better. If anything, he was getting worse. His fever was up, he had no energy and no urge to eat. I spent as much time as I could with him, giving him his treatments, watching movies with him, trying to get him to eat. I would even miss school to go spend time with him and take care of him. Then, yesterday, my aunt got a call from the hospital. He had H1N1 that, because it was left untreated, has turned into a severe pneumonia. Pneumonia is dangerous to everyone, let alone a 12 year old who has Cystic Fibroses. Everyone around me has been telling me things like “it’s going to be okay”, “he’ll pull through this, I promise”. But guess what! I’m not naïve anymore. I know that you can’t make those promises. I knew on some sort of level before, but I know from first-hand experience now. You can’t tell me it’s going to be okay. You don’t know that any more than I do. I know this makes it hard for those who are trying to be there for me, and I apologize, but can anyone really blame me? I’ve really lost a lot of faith in the past year.

So that’s what’s been going on with me.

XXOX, J.