Two weeks ago I accompanied my mother as she paid a visit to the doctor. She hadn't told me she had the cancer again, probably because she didn't want me worrying while I was at school. So I found out after a twelve hour drive home. She was getting chemotherapy. Again.

I tried not to ask a lot of questions because she doesn't like to talk about it. Her cancer had always been this big ugly secret we all knew about but were never allowed to acknowledge. When she first was diagnosed I wondered if she was going to die. The first cancer Christmas was especially hard. My sister and I quietly opened presents, trying not to be too happy or loud. I stared at my mother. Her eyes were lost inside the fragrant twinkling needles of the tree. Would she be here next Christmas? With that uncertainty came the guilt. I felt guilty for being healthy, I felt guilty because there was nothing I could do for her. I felt guilty for craving a milkshake or eying an expensive pair of shoes. It was a heavy time but eventually we got through it.

All of that hope and invincibility disappeared when I learned only a few weeks ago that she had the disease again. Maybe this time around she would fail to see the point of it all and give up. The day I watched her receive treatment was the day I got a slap in the face. I followed her into the infusion room where patients were placed in tiny sections divided by dull brown curtains, each with a small digital television . There were so many people, like crops of terminal illness. A machine pumped a drug through a tube through the body and hopefully through the cancer. One of these chemotherapy sponges was my mother. She watched the TV while I fought to hold back tears. I couldn't equate the woman who used to take me to the park and comb my knotty hair with the cancer patient beside me. The statistic. The subject of medical journals. It broke my heart.

Is this life? Is this what my college education, my car, my boyfriend, my favorite perfume will inevitably lead me to? Is this karma? Destiny? Would every bad thing I had ever said about anyone somehow contribute to a future of sitting in a New York City clinic with a needle violating my arm? My mother finished and I left the office feeling very helpless. I can control my grades by studying and I can make a living by working but I can't oversee it all. The thought of my own demise invaded quickly.

When I saw B after he came home from basic training I told him about my mother. I had not mentioned it to anyone else but with him I did not mind. He was leaving for Korea in a week anyway. I told him how I couldn't stop thinking about getting cancer. "There's nothing you can do about it," he said. "I'll probably get cancer too, but it doesn't do any good to worry about it. Just live your life." Yes. I know that, but it's hard to ignore something when it is constantly being shoved right underneath your nose. When it sleeps in the room next to yours and pays your college tuition. But I knew he was right. He was going to Korea for a year where he would jump out of planes. I might get cancer. The possibility of death walks with us all, it's just a matter of choosing to play silently in its shadow or keeping five paces ahead. I have spent an alarming amount of time hating myself. For awhile now eating a donut has been the equivalent of murdering a churchgoing family; skipping a day at the gym surely meant eternal punishment in hell. Why does my stomach jiggle when I walk and why is that one curl so much frizzier than the rest? All of that internal degradation is so petty. My body didn't do anything wrong. Now I eat healthy and work out not because I want to look good when I go out on Saturday night (which I wouldn't mind, of course) but because my body deserves to be treated with respect. I have a life I want to live, I have dreams I have to accomplish, and there really isn't much else I can do besides try to stay as healthy as possible. Not even criminals talk to themselves the way I have been. So what if I'm not blonde with long legs. I just don't care anymore. I don't want to go through my entire life and realize I have hated myself all along. I look at my mother. If she disliked who she was, maybe she would have let the cancer claim her, yet she still goes faithfully for her treatment because there is more to live for besides fake nails and a tan.