Day Seven - From Panic to Power

The Journey Continues

We had just moved from Stadium Avenue in the Bronx to Crosby Avenue, into a small apartment in my sister’s new home.

I didn’t want to leave. I loved where we lived. I loved the buildings, the water, the neighborhood, and the comfort of everything I knew.

My dad really didn’t want to leave either.

But my mom believed a change would be good for us, so we moved. I tried to look at the bright side. For the first time in my life, I was going to have my own room. At 15 years old, that felt exciting. I thought maybe this was the beginning of something new.

I had no idea how quickly our lives were about to change.

One day, I came home from school and saw my mother crying. I can still remember the look on her face. Something was terribly wrong.

That was the day I found out my father had a tumor on his lung.

Cancer.

Just hearing that word felt like the ground disappeared underneath me.

The doctors gave my dad six months to live.

I was only 15 years old.

I would lie in bed every night crying myself to sleep, praying over and over, “Please God, don’t take my dad. Please make him better.”

But as time went on, I watched the man I loved become weaker. I watched him suffer. I watched my mother trying to hold everything together while her own heart was breaking.

And something changed inside me.

My prayers changed.

I went from begging God not to take my father to begging God to please stop his suffering.

That is a prayer no child should ever have to pray.

I felt guilty for even thinking it, but watching my dad suffer was tearing me apart. I loved him so much that I didn’t want to see him in pain anymore.

At 15, I wasn’t thinking about being a teenager anymore.

I was learning how to help my mother.

I was learning how to care for my father.

I was learning about sickness, fear, death, and heartbreak before I was ready.

I felt like I had to grow up overnight.

Everyone around me needed strength, but inside I was still a little girl who was scared to death of losing her dad.

I felt lost.

I felt helpless.

And the anxiety that had followed me for so many years now had something much bigger to feed on.

This was no longer just fear I couldn’t explain.

This was real.

This was my father.

This was my family.

And this was another painful chapter in my journey from panic to power.