Semicolonby Daniela Rubio
Dear Banksy,
There are approximately 80,000,000,000,000,000 leaves in this world. 10,000,000,000,000 stars in our Galaxy. 200,000,000,000 birds on this planet. 7,000,000,000 people. And out of all of them, one of them is dying of Ependymoma.
Me.
I know, I know. Everything dies, all things have an end, what goes up must come down. It's a natural thing, to die. I mean, every sentence has a period, every road somehow ends in a cliff. It just seems as if a brain tumor at seventeen seems like a misplaced period right in the middle of a Shakespearean Sonnet.
By the time they found the tumor it was too late. "Maybe you just studied so much," my mom said, teary-eyed, after the doctor talked to us, "that your brain couldn't take it anymore." And it's really ironic that someone like me would die of brain cancer. (I mean, dying. I haven't died. Yet.) Because I am the type of person that takes Calculus for the fun of it, who refuses to write colloquially, even in a text message. Someone who spends her Saturdays curled up to a book.
I am the type of person that eats vegan because she doesn't want to cause animals pain, who holds doors open for people. Someone like who saves every single piece of schoolwork she's ever had for the paranoia of needing to use it for later.
I guess that in a few days, the number of people who care so much about everything will dwindle by one. But will that change anything? Probably not, except to my parents and my friends, who incessantly come to my room with food that I don't want to eat and Hallmark cards that I don't want to read. I appreciate it, really. But it's like petting an old dog before the doctor puts it down. Wanton and unwanted.
But this is just me at "stage-four" (Which doesn't make any sense, why would they give a disease stages? It's like putting in a cake and taking it out every five minutes. Once it's put in the oven, it's done.) If I weren't sick, I would be the one giving people "Get well soon!" cards when they only have the flu. But then I started being cranky all the time, and before long, the headaches started. They were these colossal things that made me see stars whenever they came on suddenly. My mother decided to take me to the doctor and they told me they'd have to run some tests and (again, before long) they told me I would die before the end of my senior year. It was really unexpected, I'd already been accepted to all the colleges I wanted to go to, but had to tell them that I wouldn't be able to attend.
At first I was so angry that I wouldn't even get out of bed. But then I realized that I since I didn't have long left, I might as well enjoy everything I could while I still could. And, of course, I had to tell my friends that I wouldn't be able to join them in their prom preparations because I was dying. I was dying from a brain tumor that would eventually invade my brain and take a control so deep I wouldn't be alive anymore. At first I wouldn't want to eat, then I'd become forgetful, and finally I'd leave. They were all very heartbroken and wanted everyone to know, but I told them to keep the news a secret, I didn't want the fake sympathy of those who didn't know me.
It had been arranged that I gather all my credits and graduate after the winter semester. It was for the best, after all. I at least wanted to have the accomplishment of graduating High School, especially if I would never get the chance to proceed into higher education.
There were so many things I still had to do. I was supposed to go to Yale. Get married, buy a house, have kids. The whole nine miles (or is it five?). But I'll never be able to do that. I'll never get to hear the first cries of my baby. I'll never be able to go to one of those book clubs where deeply frustrated mothers talk about their husbands and the latest diets. I'll never get to go to my daughter's piano recital, or my son's baseball game and hear the crack as the bat hits the ball. I'll never, I'll never, I'll never.
