On Hiding a Secret
Eight years ago, one month before I planned to move away for University, to begin what I was told would be the best four years of my life, my doctor told me I had cancer.
She told me I had cancer and that I’d be staying in Toronto. The renown business school I worked so diligently to get into? I wouldn’t be going. I wouldn’t live away from home for the first time, forging my path as an independent woman, exploring passions and learning from mistakes. I would stay in Toronto to figure out a treatment plan that would give me the best outlook on life. A treatment plan that included chemotherapy or radiation but more likely than not a combination of both. The hospital would be my new home, lorazepam my parents new best friend.
My older brother, who had just returned from another whirl wind trip around Europe, didn’t respond positively to both the news and my doctors firm request to put my life on hold. In true older, wiser brother fashion, he advised against it. So what, I’d have to make a regular two hours commute between London and Toronto? I had already taken a victory lap and at 19 years of age he could sense I was itching to get out. Hesitantly, I followed his advice.
Two weeks later, after crippling worry and fear, my bags were packed. An unsettling two-hour journey, one that would put me in front of hundreds of new faces hiding a secret so monstrous it invaded all of my thoughts, had begun.
I was and still consider myself to be a very private, secretive person, so breaking the news to these new faces was not an option. It wasn’t even in the realm of possibilities. How would I be able to tell complete strangers when I was bothered when my own sister opened up to her close friends? I didn’t want to be judged. I didn’t want to be pitied. Most of all, the more people who knew the more it became my reality. My truth. The more people who knew the more vulnerable I felt and no one hates vulnerability more than a teenage girl.
My first month of University wasn’t easy. I was starting to doubt my decision. I spent countless hours constructing lies to my roommate about my whereabouts, formulating stories to minimize any suspicion. The one person who you’re suppose to have endless talks with, I told endless lies to. The one person who you’re suppose to explore your new surroundings with, I left fabricated notes for. I delved into literature on how to slow tumour growth. My google browser was filled with variations of sentences too morbid to repeat. My evenings were occupied on the phone with my parents or boyfriend. My parents would catch me up on when my next appointment was, what testing I’d be getting and which specialist I’d be seeing. My boyfriend would catch me up on high school drama, the new graffiti walls he was painting, and UFC fights. Talking helped shut my mind off, but the nights spent alone were the most challenging.
The only thing more terrifying than getting an MRI is sitting in the specialist’s office after the fact, staring at an image which has no meaning to you. Six weeks after hearing the word cancer escape my doctors mouth, that was my circumstance. My mother and I, staring at an MRI, which illustrated that the tumour which the ultrasound had discovered, the one that drew my life to a halt and dominated my thoughts, was benign.
Every face has a story.
Behind my smile in this picture? Worry, fear, confusion, anger.
But you’d never know.
