Letting you go [COMPLETE]

Prologue

At the age of ten I was diagnosed with cancer. Cancer wasn't like what it was made to be. Once you were diagnosed you had two options: hide away depressed or live your life as if you weren't dying. I like to think I chose the latter. After all, I was still alive and it had been six years.

My childhood hadn't been any different from anyone else's. I'd embarrassed myself, laughed at myself, gone through teenage angst. My family loved me growing up-still did now. Cancer hadn't changed me. If anything it had made me stronger. I'd had a fear of needles as a child but I'd gotten over that-I'd been stabbed by them thousands of times during operation. I was no longer afraid of them, like I was no longer afraid of death.

Since the diagnosis, my family life changed. I was treated like I was fragile. I was constantly watched in case depression took over and suicide became an option. My younger brother still didn't understand what the cancer meant and no one had told him. To him, I was just sick. My parents refused to tell him anything until he was older but I knew that wasn't likely. I was an optimist but they were deluding themselves. Right now, Rick was ten-the same age I was when I found out I had lung cancer, which thankfully hadn't happened to him. In a few years I wouldn't be around. By that point he still probably wouldn't be ready.

The first time I'd heard the news, I hadn't understood either. I'd watched on as my mum cried in dad's arms, inconsolable. My dad had cried tears I'd never seen before. The doctor had gone quiet, just staring at me. Now I wonder what they'd all been waiting for. Did they want me to cry? Scream? Yell? I'd done none of that, staring at everyone around me in confusion. I'd cried when the needle had come out but that had been it. They'd been checking to see how far that cancer had progressed but I hadn't known it then.

The day was the worst and the best day of my parent's lives. Finding out your daughter was going to die before she even became an adult wasn't something you wanted to hear. At the same time, they were so thankful for the day. If it hadn't been discovered then, it probably would never have been. I would have been gone from the world if it hadn't been found. The operations-a much better way to refer to them since everyone had operations-are the only thing that's kept me alive. If not for them, I wouldn't be here right now.

But, I am here. Still breathing. Still attending school. Still the only sixteen year old to have never had a boyfriend. My life is far from over, no matter how long I have left...