Things I Know About Love Read Online Free PDF

you’re buying size 16 jeans when four months ago you were buying size 8 jeans, and isn’t cancer supposed to make you waste away, anyway? I didn’t need any more ways of feeling worse.
    Every time I had another doctor’s appointment, my mum and I would go into the office and we’d tell each other—and we’d both really believe it because we wanted it so much—that this time the doctor would say everything had worked and we could start smiling again, could both start living again. But instead, every time, the doctor’s voice got quiet and the news was bad again. We’d walk out in silence, and I’d be trying not to cry, for my mum, but the tears would just fall out of my eyes anyway, as if the normal muscles that used to be able to hold them back had broken.
    At this point, part of me wished I could just get it over with and die, because I was sick of putting my family through it. I thought if I died they’d get a break from always having to worry about me and always having to be around to hear worse news. It felt like I was failing them when the treatments didn’t work. They were all doing everything they could, being supportive, buying me presents, keeping me smiling, and just waiting for me to do my part, which was: get better. I couldn’t even do that for them. I sometimes fantasized about the doctor saying, “Listen, we’re all very sorry about this, but we’ve tried and it’s too much; it just can’t be cured.” At least, I’d have been able to let go. You always read about people beating their illnesses—it’s never supposed to be luck. If you’re not getting over yours, obviously it’s your fault, you’re just not trying hard enough.
    But how do you try?
    You look at your body and there are parts of it you can’t touch or control or even see, and you think at them—you just think ; that’s all you have—“Come on, pull yourself together, cells, let’s fight this disease.”
    Nothing happens.
    It’s not like you can do exercise. Or diet, or eat more. Or study. You can’t do anything, but that doesn’t make it any easier. It’s not just the side effects of the drugs and the pain of the illness and the tiredness—the hardest part is being brave so that nobody knows that you are sad all the time . They know you’re sad sometimes, and they can cope with helping you through those times. But if my mum had known how much I was sad, and how exhausted I was, and how much I wanted to cry every minute of every day, she would not have been able to cope. Being brave is not a part of your personality, it’s your job. It’s what you owe the people who love you.
    So I didn’t tell my mum everything. I didn’t tell her about the loneliness of the hospital at night, and how I used to be afraid that random crazy people would run in and kill me. Or that I’d hear the squeak of the nurse’s rubber-soled shoes, or the creak of her cart, and wish she’d come in and talk to me, but I was too shy to bother her. And I’d wake up every morning at five a.m. and just wish and wish and wish for hours that my mum would get there quickly and say hi, and as soon as she got there everything was better, but the countdown to her leaving had already begun.
    Okay, seriously, let’s hurry back to the love part. Obviously they found something that fixed me, and it was nothing to do with me getting braver, or fighting harder, or being stronger. Just luck. Just amazingly good luck. I notice stories about other sick teenagers more than most people my age do, and I know that when they don’t get better, it’s not because they were lazier than me, or weaker. So I feel guilty, sometimes, about living, and hope I can be worthy of it and make my life worth the second chance I’ve been given. I don’t feel like I can take it for granted.
    At sixteen, I’d made it through bone-marrow transplants, and was only having to go for checkups every couple of weeks. I was getting thinner, but I was still a lot fatter than I had