18 years ago, on a colder and snowier December 2nd, I was diagnosed with cancer.
It is hard to put into words exactly what this means to me as over the years how I feel about this experience
and how it affected me have changed. If you would have asked me 5 years ago what my cancer diagnosis meant to me I probably would have said 'not much'.
It was a mix of being a young adult eager to take on the world and a person not wanting to be burdened by the past that would have made me answer like that.
In truth, it has always meant a lot to me but I have never had much desire to talk about it. Cancer is a very nasty thing.
It is debilitating, cruel and deadly. The charities surrounding and supporting cancer patients, the Relay For Life and Make-A-Wish foundation for me,
are very important to provide a stable support system for patients with a disease that can tear support systems apart. I have supported them all my life because, to me,
they help to represent a fundamental truth and feeling that those affected can understand, fuck cancer.
Cancer stole years from my life. I have been alive for 23 years, but is it more accurate to say that I am only 18 as my cancer diagnosis completely changed who I was and would turn out to be? Dreams of being a professional baseball player were replaced with dreams of being a cancer doctor; carefree days outside were replaced with grueling days in a hospital. Or, is it more useful to say that my life began when I was 5 years cancer free and I finally began to feel like a normal person. When I was able to feel motivated and optimistic, make decisions to point my future in a positive direction, and, for the first time in years, make friends. I can clearly separate my life into pre, during, and post-cancer periods. Each Jared distinct, but make up who I really am. A life with a dark age, a period of time filled with pokes and prods perhaps better left forgotten.
This is a really pessimistic view, one that I have always been quick to dismiss. I truly consider my experience a positive one. I am lucky to have gotten the care I did and I feel it in my extremely positive life outlook. The doctors that I spent my childhood with were some of the nicest and most empathetic people I have ever met; they were role-models. But now, it has been 18 years since I was diagnosed. I am living on my own, starting my career and hoping to build myself into someone great. My diagnosis is able to vote, and I feel for once like I need to feel sad about what happened. Because it is sad, and it was never fair. A lot of things in my life and in the lives of my family changed because of my cancer. It was hard and painful. I was cheated, and sometimes I want to be able to have that time back. I want to be me. At times, it feels like cancer took me away from myself. If I had to get cancer why couldn't I have gotten it when I was an adult who already knew who they were? Would that have made any difference?
Being a cancer survivor means always looking forward with a smile. It's about never forgetting the doctors and nurses who made you better and the opportunities provided to help ease the unpleasantness. It's about living a life you can be proud to call your own. It's about understanding the chaotic nature of being alive and choosing to be happy in spite of it. But, most importantly it's about loving the people who love you. Having cancer allowed me to see the extreme value of having great people around you, and today, even though I am hours away from all but one, I can say my friends and family have never been closer to me.