As a firm believer of the original Murphy’s law, I suppose I should have seen it coming. “If something bad can happen, it will happen,” and I find this phenomenon to be painfully accurate. For the first decade of my life, my family dodged the bullet. Unlike many aunts, uncles, and cousins, my parents were healthy, my sisters were happy and our day-to-day life was peaceful and rather uneventful. Things were going swell for my family, until tragedy struck and reality hit us hard across the face. The day my father was diagnosed with cancer was the day my childhood came to an abrupt end. It was the day that time stopped in it’s tracks, and a new life began. It was the beginning of my sophomore year in high school when my father sat my sisters and …show more content…
The physical and mental damage the cancer caused can only be understood by my father himself. However, what I can admit is that loving a dying man was emotionally draining. Life became surreal, and the strong feelings of anxiety, panic and confusion toyed with my head until I developed migraines. My surroundings faded into a blur, my eyes would gloss over and all thought and sense of presence deteriorated. ”Will he be there when I get home” was a thought that haunted my mind and distracted me from other aspects of my life that deserved my attention. Preoccupied with constant hospital visits, absences became more predictable than presence, which resulted in my school work becoming an independent chore. This required me to pour over textbooks and documents while in waiting rooms and at the foot of my father's bed. I struggled to find an equilibrium, but eventually, I learned how to balance school work, a job, and my father’s personal care. The jump from childish ignorance to limited independence was an abrupt adjustment, but it gradually broadened my knowledge about the horrors of the world and how to handle the stress that accompanies them. Over subsequent years, separating my personal life from my job and academic career became a skill that I