Whenever I hear that someone I know has cancer, or if I see someone on twitter and tumblr saying they have cancer I always seem to freeze up. I mean, my heart completely goes out to them but I just never know what to say. On one hand, I know what they're going through. Not firsthand because I've never had it, but my entire life has been about illness. My brother had cancer, my father had cancer and heart disease, and my mother had diabetes. All of this happened when I turned 12. I had...nothing. I was always the healthy one. I had to sit back and watch the people I loved go through the fight of their lives.
Now I will readily and adamantly agree that their struggle was much worse than mine. They had to go through the pain the illness caused and the even greater pain the treatments caused. Still, it's not easy having to witness your family in so much pain, knowing there's nothing you could do about it. I couldn't help, I couldn't make it better, heck, I was just a little kid. I was confused and scared of losing them. It sucked.
The worst part is that it didn't all turn out all right. My father died when I was 16, my brother died 10 years later, my mom 9 years after that. As much as I would like to comfort and commiserate with someone who has cancer, because I feel like I'm an expert at it since I've had cancer in my world for most of my life, I just can't. If I try to tell them my experience with it, it would probably scare them more than anything. I don't have a story of cancer survival. All I have is a lonely existence where a family used to be.
So I say nothing because I don't know what else to do.
