Can Your Life Change?

Going to the beach is supposed to be fun. You are supposed to have the time of your life. Swimming, hanging out with your friends or family, playing beach volleyball, going out afterwards, and so many other things that you can do at  beach, that makes that a day you can never forget. Wearing all shorts or swimwear, with flip-flops, is a look for the beach. Everyone at the beach will be wearing those. Me? I try to avoid the beach as much as possible. Up to a certain point, I am okay with the beach. When we get to the flip-flops part, I start to hate it. It’s an embarrassment to me when people see what I have on my foot. Trying to hide something, that can’t be hidden is almost impossible. Digging and dragging your feet in the sand isn’t as fun as it may sound. Coming up with different ways to hide, becomes a challenge for me and surely not a fun one. People start to look at you like you’re crazy, and you can’t stop trying to hide, but if you did they will see what you don’t want them to see.

Some may see what you’re hiding, and they may come up to you and ask, but that makes it even more difficult. It will reveal your history.

I always enjoyed history, and the things it tells you about your past. I know many people who couldn’t care less about your history, but then again who am I to judge. I love how one little detail can tell you hundreds of little things. In everyday life you can’t do that. As the saying goes, don’t judge a book by it’s cover. In history, “judging a book by it’s cover” can happen, and does happen a lot, but at the end, the real story is found. In real life people, “judge books by their covers” a lot. They see a person, and automatically make an assumption about them, even though they don’t know the real story behind that person.

I’m seventeen years old and have experienced much things that played a role in shaping my life, even though there’s more ahead of me.  At the age of seven, I made a big mistake that today I can’t change. Though I can change it’s appearance, I can’t change the experience that it carried.  

I can’t remember much things before the age of four, but I can remember most things after that age. I do remember that I was outgoing and was someone who always got in trouble. That would change very soon. I would become someone who is a completely different person from  that  “outgoing kid”.

Waking up early in a spring morning is beautiful. Just like every saturday, I woke up, did my usual morning routine, and headed outside to play with my friends. That morning, most of my friends had not come out, and the only people that were outside was one of my friend, and his little sister. I joined them and we started talking about what had happened the day before. The day before we had gotten in trouble at school and we talked about how everything that had happened was very unfair. One thing after another, and we moved the conversation into toys. I had recently gotten a new toy and my friend had not seen it. His sister went inside their house, and he came into my house. We started looking at my new toy, then we started playing around the house. I had not eaten breakfast before I got out so my mom asked us what we wanted for breakfast. My friend didn’t want anything because he had already ate, but I asked for scrambled eggs. My mom went into the kitchen and started cooking. We started to play again. As we started to play I heard my mom say,

“Don’t go in the kitchen.”

Even though she did say that, I didn’t listen. Right after she said that my little sister came up to us and said,  

“Can I play with you guys?”

We didn’t want to, so we started to run around the house and my little sister chasing after us. It became a game. Our first thought was go in the kitchen, because for some unknown reason my little sister was scared to go in the kitchen. I hid next to an open space near the oven, while my friend hid in the pantry closet. My sister couldn’t come in the kitchen because she was scared, so she ran back to her room. We both heard her leave, so we both got out of our hiding spaces, and tried to get back to our game. My friend got out and was head towards my room, I was dusting myself off from being next to the oven. As I walked towards exiting the kitchen, something poked my arm. As I turned around to see what it was, my eyes caught a pan dropping to the floor. My arm had hit the pan. As the pan dropped I felt something wet on my foot and on my sock, it was the oil that was inside the pan. I instantly thought I was in trouble. Than I felt the sizzling oil, sneak up on me. It was excruciatingly hot, and very painful. I ran around the house screaming and crying. My friend was frozen in place, wondering what he could do. My mom heard me and she ran after me, telling me  

“Everything is fine!”

She thought I was scared of getting in trouble. She didn’t know what had happened. I couldn’t speak. My ability to speak was muted by the pain of what had happened. My friend had broken out of the frozen state, and explained to my mom what had happened, while I was still screaming and running around.

My mom had called my dad, so we could go to the hospital. He was the only one who could get me there. He had the car. My dad was the calm one, he was able to calm both me and my mom down. On the way to the hospital, I was in the back seat of the car, and still crying from the pain. While he was driving, my dad was also trying to calm me down, and check up on me. When I got to the hospital, I began to feel as the whole world was going to end. I don’t like hospitals, if there was a way for hospitals not to exist I would be the first person to agree with it. The doctors rushed me into the emergency room, and that was the last thing I saw . I didn’t see what the doctors did to me, I don’t remember the room, I don’t remember the doctor's faces, I don’t remember the way the hospital looked. Everything I had was focused on one thing and one thing only, the never ending pain.

I remember suddenly opening my eyes, and the first thing I wanted to see was my leg. I wanted to see if it was real. My foot was wrapped around with bandages and I realized that everything I remembered had really happened.

For the next few weeks I couldn’t put my heel down, I was too afraid to. The right foot always took steps on it’s toes. I still had to go to the doctors and they checked my foot once every week. Before the bandages got put on, the doctor rubbed a medicine on the burn and that made the bandages stick to the foot. Every week I was scared to go to the doctor because of the pain the medicine caused.

For two months I couldn’t do anything. The doctors told me I couldn’t go to school, which meant I would stay home even after school was over.

As days passed, my foot started to get better, and I began to walk normally again. I began doing things like I used to, I even got cleared from the doctor that I could play soccer, and I could do all the things I used to before. Things got better.

One of the most beautiful days I have ever seen, turned to one of the most horrible and horrific days for me. Everything that happened also reminds me of a book I have read. A book about war and soldiers journey called “The Things They Carried” strangely reminds me of my story. In the book some of the soldiers have a hard time adapting to their normal lives after the war, and the main character doesn’t have any trouble adapting at all. After everything that happened I had trouble going back to one hundred percent of me. Which is why today I try to hide my scar from people, and stay away from active kitchens. What happened that day, I will always remember as life changing.

Another regular day at school, I was copying down notes as usual. It was my 8th grade year, so a lot was going on. I was involved in the student council, so that meant I had to help arrange trips, fundraisers, etc. All I can remember thinking was,

“Wow, we’re going to be high schoolers soon, we’re growing up, and soon enough college is right around the corner!”  I was content, 8th grade was going to be the best year ever for me! Yet, I felt like everything was happening so quickly, growing up too fast, things  became too serious.

I just wished I could enjoy my days as carefree as I used to,  I would go to school and come home, finish up the little work I had, and just play. I was not allowed out, but I got to play at home, lay around, stress free, and that meant a lot to me. Everyone, including me was stressed out trying to prepare for the halloween party, out of nowhere my best friend surprised me with a gift, a wind-up toy. I was so happy and honestly I was surprised by how happy I was, I never thought I would be so touched by such a small childlike toy. Believe it or not, I kept it on my desk in every class I went to for the whole week, sounds a bit silly, someone might think, how can a wind-up toy be special? Well, it meant so much to me, because for the first time, in a long time I had felt like a kid, and I was so happy that I was still able to feel that way. I felt the same rush of happiness like when I was a child and was given a new toy.

As people grow up, they tend to let go of their childish characteristics or grow out of their interests and love for being a child completely. There is nothing wrong with that, but for me, I just can’t. I had always loved toys, even til today, as a 17 years old. I had always looked forward to getting stuffed animals for birthdays EVERY SINGLE YEAR, or any special occasion.

That time of my life, the things I really wanted were always considered childish. Is having stuffed animals take up about one fourth of your room so wrong?  My mom would say,

“Let’s donate some of the stuffed animals you have, you are too old for them now, you don’t need them.”

I would ask, “Why mom, what’s wrong with me liking what I like? I’m still a kid remember? Every time I asked you something you would say, “because you’re still young.” but now I’m too old? Like I’m too old now, so I need to do chores and help, but when I want to go out I’m too young?”

It’s not just from my mom, but my family, people who are older than I am, who see my love for things they think are for children. They are always asking one similar question,

“Why do you still have them? Why do you like them so much?”

I never fully understood why they would ask such similar question. Is there really an age limit on when to like what and when to stop?

The wind-up toy is such a simple thing, yet it brings so much joy to me. There’s not really a specific reasoning on how or why, it was just the moment and time I received it that shaped how I felt about it.

In the book, “The Things They Carried”, the soldiers carried many things with them, some arguably very strange.  One character has an ex-girlfriend’s underwear wrapped around his neck, another carried moccasins. They were off at war, and all carried something that kept them feeling safe or secure, even when things weren’t looking like they’d work out. To others it might seem strange, but everyone has their own little thing that means a lot to them regardless what the actual object might mean to others..

I carry my wind-up toy everyday in my bag with me, everywhere I go. Ask me why, I would say, I honestly don’t know. with a smile of course, because I really do not know. I love the ticking noise it makes when you wind it, tic-tic-tic-tic, and then it starts to move. It’s so amusing to me.

It’s very dear to me because it makes me feel like a kid, a piece of childhood I can carry around with me everywhere. Knowing I have it makes me feel a sort of comfort that I won’t lose it, or the feeling of what it was like to be a worry free child, that I can play with it anytime I want to. Growing up, I usually feel stressed about many things that you have to worry about during this period in your life, school, worrying about college, taking the SAT or ACT.

My mother once said, “Such an old head already, and still playing with toys!” Trust me, it sounds a lot funnier when she says it in Khmer.

I remember those times when my family asked things related to my wind-up toy or love for toys, because I realize that every time, I would reply differently, because it makes me feel differently every time. That is why it’s so special to me.

Now, all I see today is little kids watching egg surprise on youtube, how they would open it, and a toy would be inside of the chocolate egg. Well, I had never opened one, and I was so excited to! So I bought one, and I opened it up with my best friend. I ate the chocolate, and this was not too long ago, it was actually this year, I’m a junior in highschool. I remembered saying,

“Guess what, guess what! Close your eyes! NOW!”

“Okay, Okay, what is it?”

I happily placed the egg surprise in the palm of their hand. I remember the face of confusion.

“Ohh, haha, It’s an egg surprise!”

“I know, isn’t it so cool? Okay let’s open it!

We then opened it and ate the chocolate like kids. And then there was a yellow like case that was needed to open. We then squished it together, then POP! The surprise was so cute! they can be stacked on one another. It was the first egg surprised I open, I was so excited. Of course, I kept the toy to myself. I was opening the surprise with my best friend, but I was the one that got to keep it. Wow, that sounds selfish, but it’s the truth. I now take it with me everywhere, along with my wind-up toy.

Everything around me is changing, everyone is growing up, I find it important to really make yourself happy, because it’s your life. People deal with it, in many different ways. And me carrying the two toys means a lot. It’s not always on my mind, I usually don’t always think about it, or even remember it’s in my bag everywhere I go. It’s only when I actually look for something then I see it again unexpectedly, and feeling happy just like I did the first time.

People are changing and growing, so am I. Sometimes I get caught up with growing up, and not actually enjoying my teenage years. Everyone is so into growing up and being able to do what they want, going where they want, that they forget about the good aspect of not being able to. I catch myself wishing I was older, so I can do this and that, have my own place, and what not. I didn’t realize that getting older, means more responsibility.

But now, I find myself still feeling attached to the toys, yet sometimes prefer other things than just the play toys, that other thing is my phone. I have to admit, I carry my phone with me everywhere. I carry it to school, to the store, even to the bathroom, I literally meant everywhere! In the end, I love that I can still act like a child, still playful around the ones close to me, love the things I loved my whole life. Just have a good fun time, stress free, not worrying about a thing. That’s the most important thing to me.

“Okay, who wants to go with dad this time? He’s going to Maryland for a solar panel conference.” I ask my bed full of stuffed animals. Everyone raises a paw.

“You can’t all go!” Some of them looked discouraged, but they don’t give up. Everybody wants to go on the trip with dad, including me. But I am not allowed to go with him.

“Rabbit, you went last time. So did you Sparkles! Let your friends have a chance.” I look around at all of their eager faces.

Finally I decide. “Okay… This time Maggie and Meridian get to go with dad.”

__________

When I was younger, my dad used to go on business trips two or three times a month. His job would send him to places like Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, and even Ohio once or twice for conferences or meetings. I would have given anything to go on a trip with my dad. Since I wasn’t allowed to go on his business trips with him, I would always sneak one or two of my stuffed animals into my his suitcase when he wasn’t looking. I switched it up each time, being careful to not show favoritism towards any one stuffed animal.  

I first sent stuffed animals with him to keep my dad company on the trip. When he was by himself in the hotel room he would be reminded of me by seeing the stuffed rabbit, cat, panda, or giraffe I slept with every night. Since I couldn’t be there with him, I decided that my stuffed animals were the next best contenders for the job.

My stuffed animals were my best friends. They kept the monsters away while I was sleeping, kept me company while I played in my room, and were the only ones to whom I told all my secrets. Who better to keep my dad company and watch out for him in my place? By sending one or two with my dad it felt like I was there, similar to the mementos carried by the soldiers at war in the book The Things They Carried. Each soldier carried a different object to remind them of what is waiting for them at home. For me, my dad was a soldier. He was fighting a war of work, long days, and hotels in which there was no family to greet him. Sending stuffed animals with him was my way of reminding him that we were waiting for him when he came home, with lots of hugs and love to give him.

Every time he left for a business trip my world changed because he wasn’t there. So much of my life included him, that I had to get used to him not being there for days at a time. I learned to cherish the time I had with him when he was home. Knowing that my world changed so much when he was gone, I wanted to make sure his world didn’t have to change as much as mine. Stuffed animals made everything better.

Over the years, my dad switched jobs and no longer had to go on as many business trips. He was home more and I still cherished his presence. Our relationship became stronger and deeper. He was finally home.

__________

“Hey dad! What’s up?” I was visiting Washington D.C. with my friend and her family for the weekend. It was an early Sunday morning in April 2015, and we had just sat down to eat bagels. A call from my dad came through my phone and I answered.

“Ari? Are you with your mom right now?” I could immediately tell it wasn’t my dad’s voice. I recognized my neighbor’s raspy voice. Only this time his usual calm, slow voice was panicked and quick.

“No, I am in Washington D.C. Why do you have my dad’s phone? Is everything okay?” This time he paused.

“Yes, do you know where your mom is?”

“She is at Sunday School with my brother. Where is my dad? Is he oka--”

“Yes.”

The phone hung up.

I could not understand why my neighbor had my dad’s phone and why he was so alarmed. Thousands of things raced through my brain, but my mind automatically went to the worst case scenario. The only reason my neighbor would be calling me on my dad’s phone is if my dad was unable to call me himself, I thought to myself. It was early Sunday morning, my mom and brother were at out and my dad was home alone.

I started to panic, I called my mom to see what was happening. After she didn’t pick up, I started to worry more. Next I called my other neighbor, my dad’s best friend, to see if he knew what was happening. His wife, a nurse, picked up the phone. She explained to me that my dad was throwing-up uncontrollably and had an intense headache -- the ambulance was on the way. They thought it was some kind of stomach bug. I didn’t get a lot of details from her, but it was enough to validate my frenzy of fear. I tried calling my mom again. She didn’t answer. All I could do at this point was wait; so I finished my bagel.

What felt like hours later, but was only 30 minutes, my mom called me back. My dad had collapsed at home and could not stop vomiting. First, he called 911. But, as he described it later, he couldn’t answer the 911 responder’s questions because he was in so much pain that he couldn’t stop screaming. So he called our neighbor, at that point he couldn’t move and could barely talk. “Thank god for speed dial,” my dad says, looking back on that morning. My dad was rushed to the hospital and after many hours of tests, they discovered that my dad had bleeding in the brain. A subarachnoid hemorrhage. Normally, your brain is surrounded by Cerebrospinal fluid. Instead, my dad’s brain was surrounded pretty heavily by blood, which caused the pressure in his brain to be too high, and become damaging.

He spent five weeks in the ICU, a step-down unit in the Hospital, and rehab. Five weeks filled with doctors, procedures, therapies, and pain. Five weeks from which he remembers almost nothing. Five weeks where I couldn’t just send a stuffed animal in his bag to make him feel better.

My mom, brother, and I visited him everyday. Every time I left the hospital, I felt guilty about leaving him alone. I didn’t want him to feel abandoned.

One day he cried when we visited because he didn’t remember that we had visited everyday. He cried because he thought he was alone, because he didn’t know that we were there for him. After all those years of sneaking stuffed animals into his bag, it broke my heart that he couldn’t remember we were there for him, and always had been.

They don’t know what caused the bleed or if it is a one-time thing. They called it idiopathic, medical speak for “random.” It started off a normal day of bagels and shopping in Georgetown, and ended with random event that changed my world as I know it. Tim and Kiowa’s idiopathic event was being drafted into the war. My dad’s idiopathic event was this brain hemorrhage. One random medical mystery caused my dad’s life to go from a run to a crawl, without asking for permission to ruin his life. When your world changes, you are forced to change with it in fear of getting left behind. After my dad’s brain hemorrhage, I learned to adapt. I helped him heal and get through the hospital and rehab. Things are starting to get back to normal, but I think we need to create a new definition of normal.

I can never un-live the near-death experience of one of my favorite people. He laid in the hospital bed and said goodbye to me. He prepared himself to die. He, again, was fighting a war. Like a soldier in a battle, allowing death to be expected. Except this battle wasn’t in Vietnam or on a business trip, it was inside his body.

I grew up believing that stuffed animals made everything better. As much as I wish I was still so naive, I have learned that I can’t always just send a stuffed animal in a bag to make my dad feel better. When times like those arise, when I feel helpless and confused, I turn to my stuffed animals for comfort.  

“Dear Diary, I started skipping meals again. I feel fat and ugly and I just want to die. I am worthless. I don’t deserve to live, I take up space that could be used for someone who is pretty and a better person. I think if I died today the world be better off without me…”

This is a diary entry I wrote. I never told anyone about this and I had never planned to. I guess it’s because I thought no one would understand. Now it’s time to try and make them understand.

Let me start by saying that the worst feeling in life is that death is the only way to rid yourself of pain. Once death resonates in your mind it never leaves. It followed me wherever I went and living with that burden is extremely hard to deal with. Constant questions swarmed my head. “When does the feeling go away? What did I do to deserve this punishment?”

I know these feelings all too well. I live through this nauseating pain of feeling like death is my only way out of the constant darkness I’m feeling. For a very long time, I wanted to hide from what I was feeling. I thought all the scary thoughts would go away and I would get better over time. Ignoring how I felt is something I did regularly. I didn’t want to acknowledge that something could be wrong with me. Thinking that there was something wrong with my mind made me on the edge and I thought I wasn’t normal. I am now a 16 year old junior in high school struggling to find reasons to live. My existence is something I constantly question. I always ask myself whether my life was worth living.

I recently tried to commit suicide and that lead to me being in a mental hospital. I have attempted suicide twice in my life and I never told anybody about the first one, until the second attempt happen. It was a normal day for some but for me, life was becoming a burden that I couldn’t carry around any longer. I took my brother to school and the whole time I had this empty feeling. I felt that I didn’t belong and overall, I was so exhausted with all the mixed emotions I had going on in my mind. I tried to jump in the train tracks but there was too many people around so I stopped myself. I was completely zoned out for the remainder of the day. I couldn’t focus in school and I didn’t know how to just come out and say I tried to kill myself. How do you do just tell someone, hey I feel like dying or I tried to kill myself today. I was a danger to myself and needed medical attention. I wanted to hide from these feelings and ignore them.  Last thing I thought about doing was explaining it.

I remember saying to my mentor Mr.Kay “I’m really scared of myself and I don't trust myself anymore. I’m afraid that I’ll do something to harm myself again…”  

I  mustered up enough courage and told Mr.Kay, who then told Ms. Siswick, which lead to me being placed in a mental hospital. Going into the hospital I had no idea how to explain to my mom what was going on in my head, who was just hearing about my suicidal thoughts. I couldn't find the right words to describe my constant loneliness. Our conversation did no justice for me or her. It was something like

“ Why do you feel like this?”

“ I just don’t feel important in life, like the world doesn’t need me.”

“I don’t understand why… like what made you feel this way?”

Frankly, I couldn’t explain what I was going through enough to where she would understand.  I came to the conclusion that no one will understand how feel. I started feeling angry with myself, because I couldn’t explain the thoughts that lead to my suicide attempts. Even now I don’t ever think I can come up with the right words to describe what my thought process was during my suicide attempt. In the hospital I thought maybe I could learn to better explain my feelings.

There's this stigma related to mental hospitals and it’s nothing like the movies say. There are no straight jackets or padded rooms. It’s like being in a college dorm that you can’t leave from. My first day there was a wave of questions.
“Why are you here?”

“ How are you feeling today?”

“ How come you feel suicidal?”

“ Why don’t you like the way you look?”

“ You don’t feel important, why?”

Questions after question,  no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to answer any. There were kids there my ages, some younger and some older. The children in there were either there for anger or because they were suscial themselves. The suicidal ones understood my reasoning and I didn’t need to explain myself for them. They just knew the battle I was fighting. We were all fighting a battle with our minds. Nothing about it was like jail like people make it seem. You go to school you can have play time. There are groups that help with coping techniques. Being there was nothing like I expected it to be and I wasn’t going to hide being there from anyone.

Coming out of the hospital I tried so hard to explain what it’s like in a mental hospital and my reasoning for being there. Once again I realized that I could explain that process enough for them to understand. I felt like I just got done war and now I had to answer all these questions about it. How do people from war explain their experiences to others who have not gone through it. Reminds me of a book called “The Things They Carried.” The main character Tim and another character names Bartle go through something similar as me. Bartle has been through a lot and seen some pretty horrendous things and one doesn't want to talk about it and doesn’t know how to talk about. Tim has a hard time trying to explain what happen in the war and why it’s happening to people who don’t understand it. I feel like a war soilder who has fought a bloody and gruesome war, a war with oneself, and now has to talk about the details.

Just like these men I can’t seem to find the words to explain it to people who don’t understand death. I came to the conclusion that death becomes apart of everyone's life and in some extent we will all be connected by that. For people like myself,  death becomes your best friend and your worst enemy. It follows you and haunts you every single day. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to find the words to explain to people how my depression and suicidal thoughts take over me. I’m not sure, I have to though. I realized I was doing it all wrong. I don’t need for people to understand my situation. It was more so accepting it as being apart of me and knowing that yes,I am going through this and damn right it’s extremely difficult. No one knows what it’s like until they go through it. They can only sympathize with you and give you support. I realized I was looking for support from others and not for them to understand my situation.

Under the Water

Happily nervous. If I could explain my feelings that day I would say I was happily nervous.

I woke up early with a smile on my face ready to go to the Assembly.

As Jehovah’s Witness every so often we have Assembly, where different congregation groups gather together. At these Assemblies brothers or elders give talks about a specific bible based topic.

I got dressed quickly in a new outfit for the occasion. I wore a dark purple pencil skirt with a lace stripe down the middle, a black flowy shirt with lace on the shoulders, and purple heels with a flower in the middle. We then get to the Assembly hall and since I am getting baptized, I had to sit in the front. I was extremely nervous to sit in the front because it would be the first time I sat without my family.

Everyone soon takes their seat as the Assembly starts. As the talks began I tried not to move too much, but not being able to help myself, I keep fidgeting and fixing my skirt. I couldn’t contain my thought or my excitement. My mind was constantly wandering, blocking out the Brother giving the talk, but I heard when he asked the others and I to stand. I heard him ask those two question I was so prepared to answer “ On the basis of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, have you repented of your sins and dedicated yourself to Jehovah to do his will?”

“Yes” I screamed with the others.

“Do you understand that your dedication and baptism identify you as one of Jehovah’s Witness in association with God’s spirit-directed organization?” The Brother continued.

“Yes” we all said.

After saying a prayer and singing the baptism song all the baptized candidates were asked to change for water baptism.

Gathering all my things I walk to the bathroom. Changing quickly into my bathing suit, I was soon ushered to where the pool was. Carefully I walked down the pool steps until half of my body was emerised, two Brothers were waiting in the water for me. As soon as I was in the water one of the brothers walked over to me placing his arms around me.

“Place your left hand on your nose, now place your right hand on your left arm. Bend your knees.” Before I knew it I was dipped under the water, I was brought back up hearing the sound of my family and friends clapping.

On December 13, 2014 I was baptized as one of Jehovah’s Witness. This is a day I will always cherish.

Changing back into my regular clothes I walked back to my family. I was greeted with hugs, congratulations, and cameras. Later that evening we were having a small celebration. I was given some small gifts, but the greatest gift was given by my parents. It’s a silver heart shaped engraved with my baptism date, 12/13/14. The necklace is like a family tradition, my sister was given a necklace when she was baptized as well.

This date symbolizes that I have decided to fully dedicated my life to being a Jehovah’s Witness. Unlike many other religions, where you're baptized at birth, my baptism was completely my choice.

Ever since I was young I have been one of Jehovah Witness. Being a witness entails many responsibilities even for a young child. I have been taught to follow in Jesus footsteps, this means basing my life off the bible. While unlike Jesus I make many mistakes, I still try my best to follow his example. One example would be in celebrating holidays, Jesus didn’t celebrate any holidays so we don’t celebrate holidays. Another example would be that Jesus preached to his neighbors, so we interturn follow his example and preach to many of our neighbor. To be baptized means a lot in my religion, it means that you are willing to dedicate your life to fully serving Jehovah and doing his will. A choice of this size is very difficult to make.

There were many factors in my decision. The main factor is my love for Jehovah God. Even though I have loved Jehovah my whole life baptism wasn’t really on my mind but what really made me think of this decision was that my friends were getting baptized. So I started thinking if I was ready to take such a huge step. By chance, the same year my friends were getting baptized, my Uncle asked me “What is holding you back?” I honestly didn’t have a answers. I love preaching, I loved studying the bible and I love God, so what was really holding me back? That question made me consider what could possible be holding me back, I was already following in Jesus footsteps so why shouldn’t I make it official. After thinking it over I found that nothing but my own insecurities were preventing me from getting baptized. I went and talked to my parents to see what they thought, they thought it was a good idea. From there I had to talk to the brothers of the congregation, to ensure that I was spiritually secure and ready to get baptized. They felt that I was prepared but to make sure they asked me a series of spiritual questions. We agreed that we would set a date when we could start the first session of questioning. To be baptized there are three sessions of questioning that have to be answered. I got through all the questions and was cleared to be baptized at the next Assembly.

Dear students, put yourself in my shoes:

In February, you get rear-ended on your bicycle and end up in the hospital. You’re not seriously injured, but the doctors come to you before they release you to let you know: They found something strange in your CT scan, you’ve got a lesion in your left hip. What’s a lesion, exactly? You know that a lesion on skin is a kind of wound. What does it mean when you have a lesion in your bone?

Two days later, an oncologist at Penn explains: it’s a tumor. No, it’s probably not cancer. But whatever it is, it’s slowly eating your bone from the inside out. You’re going to need a biopsy to figure out what it is, and whatever it is will have to come out sooner or later, or else your left femur is going to turn to mush.

If this all sounds a little foreign, imagine how I felt sitting on the examination table, trying to take notes on a whole lot of concepts I had never heard before.  I mean that literally -- I had a notebook with questions I had dutifully writing down before the appointment. And sure, I wrote down the answers to what I thought to ask.

But that encounter was the very beginning of what I would come to understand over the next year: I knew almost nothing about what was going on with my body, and even less about what treatment and recovery would be like in the next months.

Here’s a brief summary of what the medical interventions were like.

The Biopsy. You take a day off work to go to the hospital, and get put in something called “twilight anaesthesia,” where you’re awake but not really in touch with reality. They then put you in a CT scanner so they can spot exactly where the tumor is, and extract a sample with a long needle. At the end, you have to hang out for a few more hours to make sure the narcotics have worn off. Your husband volunteers to get you food from the cafeteria, which is great because you haven’t eaten anything in twelve hours.

The Pre-Surgery Meetings. Turns out you have Giant Cell Tumor, which is exactly what it sounds like: the cells are getting really big, which means they are getting soft, which means you will have a collapsed femur one of these days if the malignant cells aren’t removed. You set a date for surgery and meet the anaesthesiologist. “Do you have any problem with transfusions?” He asks. No… but which religion does, again? And then all of a sudden you are talking about the amazing blood recycling machines that they use Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The Surgery. You go to the hopsital at 5AM. Your husband kisses you goodbye at 6. Another couple is parting ways at the elevator. The woman in the other bed is crying, a little. You’re not crying. A part of you judges her for crying. The other part of you thinks, what does she know that I don’t? The medical residents spend a lot of time looking for a vein they can see. The surgeon initials your hip with a sharpie. This is one of many times they ask you to confirm exactly where they are going to cut. The OR room itself looks kind of like an alien examination room, except it’s very well lit and they’re playing Justin Timberlake. Everybody seems like they’re in a good mood. “It’s Monday morning,” they tell you, “and we like our jobs.” They give you some warm blankets, and that’s the last thing you remember.

The Post-Surgery Follow-Up. Two weeks after the surgery, you go back to the surgeon’s office. You’ve followed all the instructions: take pain meds when needed, change the dressing on your incision every three days, shower but don’t scrub at the staples. You lay down on your side and the physician’s assistant uses pliers to pull them out and drop them in a small metal tin. Click, click, click. This, strangely, is the first thing that has hurt more than you will expect it to. At first you try and count the number but after a while you just focus on breathing. Once it’s done, she shows you the x-ray of your new titanium-enhanced femur. “It looks great, healing well,” she says, only you don’t really hear her because you and your husband are just staring at the X-Ray. What is that, you think. I had no idea it would look like that.

This sounds like the end of the story, but really it was the beginning. A new beginning where I was everything that I used to be, except now I was also a member of a rare disease club, a survivor of major surgery, and the owner of an implant. I posted the X-ray image on Facebook. “You’re bionic!” My friends cheered. I started going to physical therapy, slept a lot, and was cautiously optimistic I would be able to ditch my cane by the time school started in September.

This was foolhardy. But it reflected my mindset at the time: this was a thing that would pass, it would be difficult and then I would go back to being “my old self.”

I’d like to say that I disposed of this mindset quickly, but I actually clung to it even as my condition worsened. Going back to work was a relief, because I had something to do, but the muscles in my left leg did not agree. I wanted to act like everything was fine, but walking became a real ordeal, and I spent many hours between classes face down on Siswick’s couch with an ice pack wedged into my hip joint.  Despite this, I thought it would be a good idea to go to a black tie event in New York and wear high heels. I paid for that for weeks.

According to my surgeon, everything looked fine -- no tumor recurrence, no messed up implant--which in a way was even more frustrating, because there was no definitive explanation why my body wasn’t playing nice. It just wasn’t. The worst was the occasional muscle spasm -- kind of like a charlie horse, but faster and more intense. My whole leg would seize up and I would just have to wait it out. Speaking was not really an option when these happened. The first time one hit me, I had just stood up on the bus to get off at 22nd and Chestnut, to go to school.

As the bus slowed for the stop, I started to panic: I can’t move right now, and I can’t really ask for help. What if the bus passes my stop? The thought of having to shuffle down an extra block to work was almost worse than the muscle spasm.

It was around this time last year that my juniors were reading “The Things They Carried” and we were talking about how you convey a unique experience to others. They all knew I was still recovering from surgery. One class in particular was good about telling me to sit down already when I kept walking around to work with them.

I tried my hand at explaining the phenomenon of the muscle spasms. “Have you ever seen those videos of hot lava, once it’s flowed away from the volcano? How the lava cools on the surface, but you can see it slowly shifting around underneath that surface?”

They nodded their heads.

“Well, it feels like that.”

I got a lot of shocked stares. “You mean, it feels like your muscles are on fire?”

Well… not exactly. I tried a different approach.

“Who in this room has some kind of metal implant in their body?”

To my mild surprise, several kids raised their hands. One had a few screws in his hand. Another had scoliosis as a child, and now had a rod in her back.”

“And, can you feel it?”

“Yeah, of course. If I twist really quickly I can feel it bump up against my spine.”

This got even more weird looks from classmates, and a couple of gasps. The student and I shrugged at each other.

So, what’s the point of this story?

I still haven’t really figured out how to explain to people what it’s like to have your body get used to a foreign object. I am still saying, on occasion, “I wish I could have you feel what this feels like.” Not to take the pain off of my hands, but just so someone could get it.

And yet: I’ve come to realize that one of the strange gifts of this whole experience is that I get it, with “it” being many kinds of physical trauma. I know how to coach someone through physical therapy that takes months. I can commiserate with new moms who have had an epidural, because I got one after my surgery. And when a close friend of mine had to get bone surgery herself, on her hand, I was there when she woke up in the hospital, there to tell her that the pain would pass eventually.

So it’s not so much that I am seeking to explain to people what this experience is like. It’s more that if and when they come into it themselves, I am here to greet them and help them make sense of what on earth is going on. I have a small lead on them, but I am still figuring it out myself. Which is kind of the point: I am still me, because I am still building who that person is.

It was May 14th, 2006, and I was walking to the dentist with my mom. I had been to the dentist a few times before, and I was starting to get used to it. It was getting to the point where I was looking forward to each visit because of how clean my teeth would feel afterwards, but it all changed on that day. When we got to the office, I jumped up on the chair and held my mouth open for the dentist.

After a few minutes of poking and prodding my teeth and gums, he said “Hmm, this doesn’t look right...” which is something you never want to hear from someone who is looking at your mouth. He asked me to stay in the chair, and he went to go talk to my mom for a bit. However, because of six year olds’ natural tendencies to run around and not do what adults tell them to, I got up and wandered over to the waiting room door. That was when I heard the exact six words I didn’t want to hear, “We could just pull the tooth,” come out of the dentist’s mouth. My eyes instantly widened, and I had to hold back a yelp so that they wouldn’t find out that I was listening. I went back to the chair, my eyes as wide as frisbees. When the dentist finally came back in I put on the best poker face that I had ever done. I felt a sense of dread as he walked up to the chair. I knew what was about to happen.

He said “Sorry about that, I hope you didn’t get too bored.” I could only squeak out a tiny “Please don’t pull out my tooth.” “Don’t worry,” he said, nothing more. He didn’t say if he would or wouldn’t, which only made me even more scared. He laid me back in the chair and went to work. It was the same old stuff at first. Scraping, rinsing, and flossing. I thought that maybe he wouldn’t pull my tooth after all. Maybe I would just be able to go home and still be able to chew on that side of my mouth, but I was wrong.

Before I knew it, I looked over to see him pull out literally a pair of pliers. No special tool or anything, just some plain old pliers. I thought I saw some rust on the tip, but it could have been my imagination. I instantly started screaming and thrashing, trying to escape the unbearable pain that I knew was coming. I knew that I was just delaying the inevitable, but I kept struggling on the off chance that he would give up, leaving me free to live my life with my molars intact, but I wasn’t that lucky. A dentist from the next room over came in to see what all the racket was, then she left and came back with a gurney, complete with medieval style straps. If you have ever seen the movie Saw, then you know what it looked like from my eyes. After much more struggling, kicking, and screaming, it was finally over. I felt around my mouth with my tongue, and noticed a huge, gaping hole in the side of my gums. I felt betrayed. The “nice dentist man” wasn’t as nice as I had thought.

From then on, I never wanted to go to the dentist. Every six months I would pretend to get a very violent case of the flu, which would last from when I found out about the appointment to the second it was too late for me to go. It only worked for the first few times before my mom started to catch on to the act. One day she woke me up by saying “Hey, Colin, we’re going to the store to get ice cream!” I jumped up, got dressed, and sprinted outside to the car. On the way there, I noticed that we passed the store that we usually went to. I thought there was a chance that I’d been deceived, but it was two months earlier than usual, and we weren’t going to where the dentist was before. My mind started racing. My mom looked over and saw my worried look, and she said “Oh, yeah, we’re going to a different store. This one has better ice cream.” “Ok,” I said, but in the back of my mind I didn’t completely trust her. If the dentist tried to dupe me into giving up a tooth, then could my mom do the same thing? That was when we pulled into a parking lot, and I saw the word “Dentist” written in huge, chrome letters on the building across the street. Immediately I tried to run, but she anticipated this, and she picked me up, threw me over her shoulder, and started walking towards the office. “Please don’t make me go to the dentist!” I yelled. She said “It’s for your own good, Colin, you’ll understand when you’re older.” The next half hour was filled with apprehension and fear that something unexpected would happen. I never truly got used to going to the dentist until a few years ago, which is when I eventually decided that it wasn’t worth worrying about, and figured that it would go faster if I didn’t struggle.

For a long time after that I thought that being scared of the dentist was an uncommon fear. Even after overcoming it, I still felt that it was unusual. I wondered if it was completely unreasonable, and that I was just being a wimp. Then, this year in class, we read The Things They Carried, which contained a chapter called “The Dentist,” where a character, Lieutenant Curt Lemon, has to overcome his fear of the dentist, even requesting that one of his teeth be pulled out in order to prove to his squad-mates that he wasn’t a coward. It first surprised me that this fear was being brought up in literature, and second it surprised me that a grown man, a soldier, would share this fear that I had only had in childhood. This inspired me to research a fear of going to the dentist, and I found that it was, in fact, a very common fear. I also found that, instead of being referred to as a phobia, which is what I assumed it was, it was actually more similar to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This made sense, as having a tooth pulled out by the dentist at six years old unexpectedly was a pretty traumatic event. After finding this out, I felt relieved. At that point I knew that I was normal, and I could feel secure with the fact that I was scared of the dentist. Even further than that, I could feel proud of myself, knowing that I had overcome a fear that is crippling to some people.

I used to live in Chestnut Hill in a pretty big apartment with my parents and sister. I loved where I lived but when I got older, I started complaining about not having stairs like my other friends did and I did not want people to come over because I didn’t like how my house looked. I probably complained too soon because one day, when we came home, my dad went through the mail like usual. As he looked through, he stopped and stared at a envelope for a long time. My mom noticed and walked over to see what it was about. They read the paper inside the envelope very quietly. Arielle, my sister, and I kept asking them, “What’s wrong? What does the letter say?” I hadn’t really gone through anything bad in my life up to that point so I didn’t really know what to expect them to say. Then, my dad turned around and told us as simply as he could what the problem was. Unfortunately, we were being kicked out. It had nothing to do with money, but it had everything to do with the fact that our building was sold to a realtor company and our apartment building was turning into office spaces. The letter said we had 60 days to find a new place to live.

Now, to be honest, I was kind of happy to be kicked out because I didn’t know the whole process of buying a house. For one, I used to think that buying a house meant switching homes with someone else and buying their home, and I also thought that this was a way to force my parents to move because in my eyes they were taking too long. I was excited to move into a home with stairs and my own room. I imagined my house looking like Kimora Lee Simmons’ house (I used to love her show). But, I started to realize how stressed and scared my parents were and my fantasy went away. There was fear that if we didn’t find a house in time, we would have to live with someone else or buy another apartment until we found a home. I became worried that we wouldn’t find a home in time. In the book “The Yellow Birds”, Bartle was going through a hard transition into the war. When he was in the war he said, “I understood. Being from a place where a few facts are enough to define you, where a few habits can fill a life, causes a unique kind of shame. We'd had small lives, populated by a longing from something more substantial than dirt roads and small dreams. So we'd come here, where life needed no elaboration and others would tell us who to be.” He expresses his desire to travel and experience new places just like I was excited to be in a new home. Bartle also expresses his nervousness and uncertainty about the war. He says, “We were not destined to survive. The fact is, we were not destined at all. The war would take what it could get.” Bartle’s fear of what will happen in the future is similar to how I felt. He was unsure of what his fate would be during the war and I was unsure of what my fate would be after the 60 days.

The sky became incredibly dark but still kept enough light to let you know it was only the afternoon. The howling winds bent the trees as it whipped around my neighborhood. The rain sounded like a drum as it pounded on my house loudly, scaring my dog. In an instant, I thought the lights would stay on but in another instant, they were gone. I felt myself getting scared but as I looked around and saw my family was safe, the worry went away. My dad kept looking out the screen door to see the storm and my sister, mom, and I turned on our phone flashlights. Our living room was immediately lit up with tiny lights sitting on the table and everyone’s faces were revealed. We felt a bit safer. Before the power went out, we heard on the news that the storm wouldn’t last long. As we all tried to wait out the storm, my sister and I came up with an idea to play some games. We sang, made shadow puppets, and all other crazy things. We had a lot of fun and grew closer as we played during the storm. The storm ended quickly and we all looked out the door to see the sunny sky. We still did not have power so we went to our family’s house and hung out with them until it was night time. Overall, we surprisingly had a really fun time. Even though we did not have any power and it was a super hot day, we found some fun in all of it. This situation reminds me of Bartle when he went to jail. Many people would think that jail isn’t a place where you could be happy but in the story, Bartle showed that you could be. In the book he says, “My life had become as ordinary as I could have hoped for. I was happy”. I can compare Bartle’s experiences to mine because we both created fun or pleasant situations out of situations that aren’t usually considered fun.

A reason I believe that the situation was fun for me and Bartle is because it was a time to get away from what goes on on a daily basis and reflect. When the power went out, my family and I had time to put down our phones and were kind of forced to bond on a closer level than we usually do. In the end, this made us happy. For Bartle, being in jail gave him time to clear his head and get away from the problems he was having at home and reflect on what happened during the war. This helped him be happy while he was in jail and also become a happier person in the end. Even though Bartle’s war situation and my situation aren’t similar when you first look at it, there are still connections that can be found throughout the book.,.

The Train Ride

I gripped the handle bar that lay adjacent to the train’s entrance. It was filled, beyond capacity, to my genuine surprise. However, as I look back on that moment, I had forgotten that I was taking the morning train with hundreds of working class citizens, who probably thought of me as one of their own. My body turned as I glanced around for any vacant seats. Seconds passed before I surrendered to standing. The hand, which I placed on the bar upon my entrance, was my saving grace because the train quickly jolted into motion.

I peered out of a window to my right. The platform, where I had sat, and the parking lot, where I had been dropped off at, quickly went out of my line of sight. This was not my first time riding a train, but it was my first time riding a train to work.

As the train continued forward, a conductor appeared from the front cart. Immediately, she began checking and validating passengers tickets. She was was a couple of rows away from where I was standing, but I started the process of searching for my trans pass. A minute or two passed before I was up for inspection.

“Ticket or Pass?”

“Yeah” was my response as I brought my pass into view. She nodded in confirmation as she moved onto the next person. Instinctively, I looked at my phone to see if the train would arrive on time. This was a routine that I would soon get into the habit of doing.  

After my time check, I concluded that the train was on schedule. My thoughts escaped me, I found myself thinking about what my friends were doing at that very moment, as my train inched closer and closer Suburban station. I attempted to conceal my anxiety but my thoughts continually drifted to the “what if” questions and possible outcomes at my internship.

“We have arrived at Suburban Station. Please watch your step as you exit the cart” echoed out of the loudspeaker. In one fluid motion I secured my belongings and departed.

First Day

It took me all of ten minutes to find my way to 19th & market, not including a minor turn around as I was walking. Four days prior to the 6th of July, my sister and I were down center city and she showed me how to get to and back from my current destination, which ironically, was right down the street from my school. I chuckled to myself as I approached the my destination, while very thankful for my good memory.

In the ten steps that I had before I reached the revolving doors, I felt as Tim O'Brien must have felt as he gazed blankly out onto the river that separated two distinct paths, one of which, he would have to choose. Should I step into this building, to the unknown experiences that await me? Should I face challenges that might be too much for me to handle, or should I return home? My hand pressed against metal framing of the door as an opening to the main lobby grew wider.

I took a brief moment to take in my surroundings. The room was made almost entirely of a tan granite, which encompassed the back walls, ceiling and floor. There were large windows that neighbored each entrance, as well as a waiting area filled with couches and tables. As my eyes floated from object to object I soon located people that seemed to be around my age group. As I began my journey towards them, I made a detour to one of the internship leaders.

“Are you here for the internship?” he asked immediately.

“Yes. I’m Kevin Bowser” I said as we shook.

“I’m Stephen. The elevators are not working today as a result of a water pipe break in the building. So we are sending all of the intern's home today for the day and are going to send an email out about when to return for orientation.

“Okay, so I should look out for an email tomorrow?

“Yes tomorrow.”

“Alright, thank you” I stated as I traveled to a couch which was adjacent to the door I came though. I couldn’t help the slight feeling of relief that came with the postponed orientation. I would have another day or so before I would have to tackle this new challenge. Some force of nature had been on my side that July morning. And with my subsided anxiety, I ventured over to the revolving doors once again.

My Second First Day

The IBC building has two elevator passages. One passage ascends from the lobby and goes through all floors up to the 23rd. In order to reach floors above the 23rd, you must switch elevators. Unfortunately, I did not receive this information until my third day at work, so it took me a bit longer to find my way up to the orientation room.

Once I made it to the 44th floor, the facilitators introduced themselves as well as IBC to all of the interns. This formal introduction transitioned to various ice breaker activities, which assisted everyone in getting to know each other. Some of the games were based on solving problems or creating structures using basic household materials, and prizes were awarded to the teams that finished first.

The third and final portion of the afternoon consisted of each intern meeting with their supervisors. I did not get a chance to meet with my supervisor, who was in a meeting at the time. So I met with a woman named Grace Brennan, who I would come to work closely with over the next six weeks.

“Hi, I’m Kevin Bowser” I said as I shook her hand.

“Hello Kevin, my name is Grace. I don’t know if anyone told you but Dee has a meeting right now.”

Grace said this as she moved towards the hallway where the elevators were located. On our way down to the Shared Services Department, on the 15th floor, we talked about my academics as well as some the information she had read on my resume.

“So me and you are going to working on updating an Excel spreadsheet called the SARA log. The log is basically a record book that keeps track of everyone that has access the company’s enrollment system. We get requests every day, so right now they are just piling up.”

I listened intently, not letting a single piece of information slip past my ears. I wanted to make a good first impression on my new co-workers. I wanted to be take charge and not make any errors. Yet, once we reached the 15th floor, Grace introduced me to the rest of Dee’s team. They welcomed me to the department with open arms and made me feel like I was apart of the family. I was taught step by step about how to work on excel and how it’s overall significance to the company. Instantly, I felt a weight fall off of my shoulders. This daunting reality that I wanted to avoid at all costs, was not the frightening nightmare that I had imagined.

This experience gave me my first taste of the professional world. It served as a lens to some of the challenges and new territories that I would be introduced to as an adult. Apart, from outlook on the internship prior to actually starting, this was a spontaneous opportunity for me, and I look forward to another great internship at Independence Blue Cross this upcoming summer.