The Middle

In the middle of my junior year at LMU, I faced death. I know it may seem melodramatic to state it so bluntly, but there is no other way to put it. After battling a common cold for two weeks, I woke up with a yellow sheen and multiple bruises the size of baseballs on my hips. After an agonizing five hours in the emergency room, I was taken to the cancer ward and told I may have leukemia. Life—the part where you actually get to interact in the outside world—was put on hold while I fought for my physiological existence; blood flowing through my veins and my heart pumping steadily. After a bone marrow biopsy, it was discovered that I luckily did not have leukemia. However, the red blood cells and platelets in my body were rapidly dropping, veins and organs bleeding through to skin, while my body struggled for oxygen. The doctors could not figure out what was wrong with me. I had multiple blood transfusions. Two days later, I was told I had a rare illness. My immune system had made a mistake. While trying to fight my cold, by a random chance, something had gone wrong and my antibodies had begun attacking my blood instead of the virus. My body was nearing the point of major organ failure when my doctor’s decided to experiment with plasma transfusion. Tubes ran in and out of me, a catheter stabbing my neck invasively. The ice cold foreign blood sloshed through my veins, freezing me from the inside out so no number of blankets could mollify my chill. My heart could not keep up with the movement of my body. Strength had left me, I could not stand and the risk of falling was fatal. Any slight physical trauma could cause massive hemorrhaging and death.

Did I mention that this all occurred during the first week of my spring semester? As my peers went to class, I was sitting in my hospital bed, facing my mortality at the age of twenty. It was at this moment in my life that I realized how truly precious my education and the people I have met through these learning institutions are to me. I fought with all the strength within me to return to school because I was taking a writing workshop called RoadWrite, I was new to the staff of the International Literary Nonfiction Journal The Truth About The Fact and if I missed another week, I would have to miss the entire semester. I wanted to walk through the hallways with my peers, listen to the stories of every stranger I met and absorb each new lesson from my teachers. When I sat in my hospital bed, I talked to every nurse I encountered, listening to how they got to be where they were now. What happened to me that week changed my life, just as every move of my childhood across America had. I was not about to miss out on the new semester because when my life was going crazy and I didn’t know if I would walk into the crisp morning air of the outside world, what saved me again was reading. From Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, and then writing my fears, my hopes, the truths of my life into my own poems and stories, my passion to continue my education and eventually teach was affirmed. Just as Audre Lorde wrote when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, I too “felt inside myself for what I really felt and wanted, and that was to live and to love and to do my work, as hard as I could and for as long as I could.” I reexamined my entire life. My priorities and commitments shifted, bringing to light what I needed to do to live the life I desired. I knew at that moment, as I sat in my hospital bed, I wanted to learn—to sit in my classrooms—and soak in whatever knowledge I discovered, and to then pass that on to those around me. I fought to do just that.

The novelist Isabel Allende wrote, “Give, give, give—what is the point of having experience, knowledge or talent if we don’t give it away? Of having stories if we don’t tell them to others? Of having wealth if we don’t share it? I don’t intend to be cremated with any of it! It is in giving that we connect with others, with the world, and with the divine.” And this reminds me of why I write and why I want to teach. It’s simply because of my want to share my life, its lessons, and its experiences with others. Because often when writing, I remind myself of what life continually teaches me and makes me experience. I would never have found such passion for writing and such success in my endeavors if it weren’t for the encouragement of my teachers. This life is not meant to be a hole we are dropped into, but a garden in which we plant many seeds. I have learned all too harshly how easily and quickly our time can be threatened and stolen. I will work whatever soil is given to me to plant and grow, writing, teaching and giving back to the world what love and understanding it has given me.