my fears.

It's no news that there is quite a lot of illness going on in my family. Fortunately, I was usually too young to notice the seriousness of different diseases my family members had to fight with but it was always something that gave me a lot of anxiety. All of it started back in 1999 when my grandma was diagnosed with breast cancer and the following years were full of other shitty things that I don't even want to think about.

The thing is that when you're young, you don't think about death. You don't think about the future without your grandparents nor your parents and nothing can't prepare you for it. But when my amazing grandfather got sick in 2012, suddenly it became something that just ate me from inside, that made me stressed out and anxious. And I think that's when it all started; my fear of hospitals, diagnosis, and illnesses. You could say that I developed some sort of hypochondria. But it didn't end there. The lung cancer of my grandfather seemed to be going away and we were all very positive that he might have won this battle through chemotherapy. This was in the summer of 2013 and we eventually decided to go on a family trip to a place where my grandfather spent his childhood. It was as if he was just going there to see it one last time, he had all this energy all of sudden... but then it all went to hell. The next month he stopped feeling his legs and spent the last 3 months of his life in his bed, being unable to walk. Cancer spread to his brain.

I know it's shitty and depressing to read about such things. But this was where a lot of my mental health problems began. In February 2014 he passed away. It was just another Sunday. Me and my mum went to the mall in the afternoon and when we were arriving at my grandmother's house, only the small ambulance was parked in the driveway.  This is when I realised that it was over. We met my grandma in the hall, she said that he passed away when he was taking his afternoon nap. I remember locking myself in the toilet and crying my heart out for hours. Since then, there was always something broken inside of me.

And then, year after, I was told by my gynaecologist that there are some changes on my cervix and that it could be something bad. What she also told me that day I will never forget: "I had a patient who was 25, we found out too late that there is something wrong and she passed away within 6 months." I instantly got the biggest anxiety attack of my life. Am I going to die as well? That's what I kept thinking for days and days. And because of that, I have the biggest fear of hospitals. I hate getting check-ups or tests. I am just afraid that there will be something wrong with me as well.

Why am I writing all of this though? Why am I writing this now? I met my father today on my way home from the train station. Out of sudden, he asked me if I knew what happened to my other grandpa. I had no idea of course. Because my family knows about my fears, they just kept it a secret from me. And then he told me. My grandpa, who has been in the hospital for few days since Easter has been tested because of the low count of white blood cells. And he has been diagnosed with leukaemia. And I'm just sitting here, crying again because I just don't understand why does this happen around me. Shit.

T.