This I Believe

I used to believe that I could do everything alone. I didn’t need anyone but me and that was the way I liked it. That was before my entire view on life got turned around, before my beliefs became the exact opposite.

A year and a half ago my father went to the hospital. I remember that day perfectly. It was the day after new years and he had just gotten home from a trip. I made him two eggs scrambled without anything on them. He was talking to the health insurance people on the phone for two hours. He told me it was nothing serious, that it was probably appendicitis. My sister Sara drove him to the hospital. I waited all day at home with no idea what was going on. Nobody knew what was happening. Even the doctors were having trouble figuring out what the problem was.

I was home alone. My mom was at work and she got the messages backwards. He was in the Intensive Care Unit for a long time. They finally found out that he had a serious infection.

I remember my mom asking what I wanted for dinner on my birthday.

“I want dad’s chicken parmesan.”

“I can make chicken parmesan too”

“No, I want dad to make it.”

“Well I might have to do it.”

To me that meant that dad wasn’t going to be around to do it. That he would still be sick, or worse. He was in the hospital for about seven weeks, maybe more. I’m surprised that I never ran out of tears.

People were all around us. They were giving us food and talking to us nonstop. I didn’t want that. I didn’t tell anyone what was happening. Not my teachers or even my best friends. I would go to the hospital and come home to do school projects and piles of homework. I think the reason I did all that is that I didn’t want to seem weak. In trying to be strong, I became the weakest link in the chain of the world.

This is why I now believe that people who need people are the luckiest people in the world. I found this belief in the soothing words of Barbra Streisand. I have my safety net of friends who care immensely about me and I wouldn’t give that up for the world. Every time I have a friend that truly matters, I feel like a piece of my heart belongs to them. If I lose that friend, their piece of my heart breaks off with them. I need them all, and that makes me pretty damn lucky in my opinion. I am lucky, I am strong, and I am loved.