Half full

My big heart, once filled with hope and joy, slowly started to fade into nothing. A hole left in my heart. All the scars, all the hurt, I became, empty.

From what I can remember, my entire life, was great. Literally nothing could go wrong for me. I had a perfect family, amazing friends. What could possibly go wrong? Then suddenly, my perfect life, was not so perfect. Everything started to change. I first experienced a death in my family. What? For Carly’s perfect life, this was unheard of. I was 9 years old and I’d never experienced anything close to this before. Because my life was perfect, remember? My little 9 year old self was overwhelmed with fear. What was happening to my perfect life? It was gone.

Before any death, My whole life, just like any other child, I had my fears. For some reason, I was terrified of thunderstorms and tornadoes and so on. Up until I was 9 it was just a normal fear. Until one day it started raining and I couldn’t handle it. For some reason, I was so anxious and didn’t know what to do. I freaked out and my parents were very confused. This happened over the course of the next year. While all this was happening, something else really got my parents concerned.

I was walking to my bus stop one morning in fifth grade, I felt the cold wind against by face. I step into the bus and spot my friend. She spoke softly like normal, then we sat in silence. All of the sudden, out of nowhere, I felt a very weird sensation fall over my body. I had no idea what was happening. Pain, all I felt was pain. Pain I could not explain. The bus came to a screeching stop. We filed off the bus and into the school. So much pain. I didn’t even make it all the way down the stairs to my classroom when I started to cry and ran to the nurse. Pain, more pain.

The nurse was confused. A 5th grader? Chest and stomach pain? What? The next thing I knew my mom walked into the office and signed me out of school. I cried the entire way home. What was happening to me? My mom told me to get some rest. So I did. Nothing seemed to help me. More and more pain. It wouldn’t go away.

I woke up the next morning with the same concerning sensation in my body. My mom still insisted I go to school. It felt like deja vu. Everything that happened the day before, repeated itself. My mother, refused to let me skip school anymore, convinced that I was fine. But was I?

Months later is when everything took a turn for the worse. Everything became 10x Heavier. My grandpa got sick. While he was in the hospital, we went out to celebrate Mother’s Day. Of course I was in pain, I always was. Out of nowhere when it was dead silent in the car, I blurted out to my entire family,

“Can kids have heart attacks?”

My whole family looked at me with a confused and worried eyes. My mom replied with no. We pulled into the restaurant parking lot and the rest of my family got out of the car. I started crying and I told my mom I thought I was dying. She thought I was so ridiculous. She pulled me into the restaurant and we just ignored it. Then, without warning, he died. My grandpa died. So suddenly. My already worried self, couldn’t handle it. Everything went dark. There was no more light in my life. I was so scared of dying or being sick. I wanted it back. I wanted my perfect life back. Why now, why not was all of this happening to me. The pain never stopped, it only got worse. I spent countless nights lying awake in my bed afraid to sleep for fear of dying in my sleep. Pain, even more pain.

My parents didn’t really think that much of it, at least to have to take me to the doctor. One morning I woke up, and I remembered my friend telling me a few days earlier that her uncle was

just diagnosed with cancer. The only explanation for my pain was cancer, right? I walked into my moms room, shaking as I stood there in my Dora the Explorer pajamas. I looked up at her and squeaked out,

“Do I have cancer?”

Her jaw dropped. She replied

“What?! Why would you think that?!”

I look up from my teddy bear, choking back my tears and said

“Why wouldn’t I?”

At this point my mom had had enough.

I went back into my room and sat there in silence. I heard my mom and dad quietly whispering in their room down the hall. They came into my room and said we were going to the doctor. A few days later we went in. The doctor did a normal checkup routine. She told my parents that there was nothing wrong with me. Months of pain and I got nothing. Nothing was wrong with me. How could that even be possible. My mother was confused and concerned. She told the doctor about everything that had happened in the past months and they came to a decision. I was unaware of what this decision was or what it meant for me. I was scared of the future.

A couple days later my parents told me to get in the car. I asked where we were going and I got no response. We drove for about a half hour until we reached a small strip mall type building. I was confused. We pulled into a parking spot. Click, I jumped. My dad put the car in park. It scared me. My dad takes off his seatbelt and lets out a huge sigh, grabs his phone and opens the door. Me and my mom do the same. I put my left foot down then my right and look up at my dad. I take a deep breath in and felt the fresh summer breeze. I look into my father's eyes and saw all the pain I’ve caused him in the past year. He turns and starts to walk, I follow close behind. Scared. I was only 10. I was in an unfamiliar place. He walked into the building and

went over to the small directory and spotted what he needed to find. They looked at each other then at me and proceeded to walk down a flight of stairs. I followed behind them. It’s like they could hardly look me in the eyes anymore. What have I done? It made me disappointed in myself for disappointing them. I felt like so was no longer apart of the family. I felt separated. Stranded. On an island I could not seem to escape. Everyone, my family looked at me so differently now. Like they had no idea who I even was anymore. We walked into some lady’s office and mom spoke softly to the receptionist. She told us to have a seat in the corner and wait for the “Doctor” to come get us. I still had no idea what was going on.

We waited about five minutes till some lady came out of an office and called us in. On the her door the word “psychologist” was printed in big bold letters. Wow, I thought to myself. My parents really had the audacity. I went along with it. She told me to have a seat in the chair in the corner while they all sat on the other side of the room staring at me. I felt like I was being interrogated by the police. She started asking me questions. She then told me to step out into the hall so she could speak with my parents. I slowly walked out of the room and back into the lobby. I spotted a chair and some toys. So I sat down and started to play with them. My parents came out 15 minutes later and we left. What I didn’t know then that I do now, is I had very severe anxiety. The cause of all my pain. Over the next few months I continued to go back there and get help and that was that. I was confused about all of it at first because I was young and didn’t even know what the word “anxiety” even meant.

Over the years it started to get better, pain, but not as much. Still got worried a lot, but eventually it got better. To this day, I still get worried. I’m still in pain sometimes. I guess anxiety is something that never goes away. Even with time. The scars are still there. The scars that were left from a horrible year in my life. Scars don’t go away. These scars will probably be with me for a long time. Until I forget what happened. If I ever forget. Looking back on it, it was a

huge blur of time looking back, not much of it really made sense to me. Looking back, I feel stupid and the things that happened now seem silly to me. Nowadays I get anxious about different things then I did when I was nine and ten. There are still some sleepless nights and pain filled days but I’ve gotten used to it. Looking back, I’m thankful I had my family to help me through it. There was times I would leave school and people would ask me why and I’d get embarrassed and wouldn’t tell them. Or when I went to lunch with my grandma, cousin and sister and they asked where I was earlier. I couldn’t tell them. Why would I tell them. I was scared. It was a hard thing to go through as a 10 year old. I felt stupid, worthless. Although I still feel these things from time to time, I look back and see that I did get through it and that if I did when I was ten, then I can right now. That’s my motivation. That’s all the inspiration I need is my past self. Because I know that in the end, it’s all going to be fine. I’ve made it through all of my worst days so far. I made it through that horrible year or so of my childhood when my perfect life, became not so perfect. That’s fine by me because it made me stronger and made me into who I am today. Today, I am more positive. When I was younger I always saw the glass as half empty because I myself always felt empty. Now, I chose to look at the glass as always half full.