clouds in my head

chapter four

My name is Claire Anderson. Me and my parents were living in a small village in the south of New Zealand. A village with about 200 inhabitants. Our little house was near the sea. I was six years old, when I realised that living in two worlds isn't a normal thing. My parents knew that something was wrong with me, but they had no idea, what magnitude it would take. I got the diagnose of having cancer. At that time, I had no idea what cancer actually means. But my parents, the doctors and everyone else did. For me it seemed like I was the only person, who didn't know what was going on. Well, I was the only person, who didn't know what was wrong with me. I asked my parents why we were in the hospital, or what was wrong with me at that time. I felt helpless. At first my parents didn't tell me the truth, because they thought I was too young to understand. Which was true, but the older I got, the more unbelievable their explanation sounded. I remember that the day I got the diagnose of having cancer, I wore a dress with fairies and clouds on it. I often asked myself, why I remembered that. Today I know why.
Because of the fact, my parents didn't tell me that I had cancer, they had to find another explanation for what was going on. And because I wore that dress, they had an idea. I remember my mum saying to me:" Honey, it's like there are clouds in your head, just like the ones on your dress!" She was crying, when she said that, but at that time I didn't cared about my crying mum. I imagined how my brain would look like right now, with all the clouds in it. I was fascinated by the fact, that this is possible. It made sense for me, so I didn't ask for more. It made me happy, that I carried around clouds in me. For a six-year-old it was okay to carry around clouds.

Later, when I was a little older, I knew that there weren't actually "clouds" in my head. On my eleventh birthday me and my parents had a long conversation. Till this day, I still believed, that there are clouds in my brain. I wasn't that satisfied with that explanation as I was, when I was younger, but I thought it was the truth.
In this conversation, they told me that the clouds were tumours. I didn't know what tumours were, but the thing I knew, was that tumours weren't good things to have in your brain.