My name is Olivia Smith. I have cancer. I was diagnosed when I was five years old. It doesn’t bother me now at seventeen. I kind of laugh when people give me those sad faces. Don’t they know that I’m just like them? They treat me like a baby. I talk the same as them; I write the same as them, I breathe the same as them. The only difference is that I was the lucky one who gets to walk around with tubes stuck up my nose. Yay. Lucky me. Just like “normal” people, I have loved ones who pass on, I get bullied, I have to work for my money, and the list goes on. Cancer is just another item to add onto the bottom of that list. I know that God made me the way I am for some reason. I figured out that reason on January 18, 2014.
It was a Saturday and I drove down to Starbucks to get my weekly coffee. I was just sitting there at my table in the corner, getting the “Oh, I’m feel so bad for you” stares when I just got this feeling that I had to leave and go home. It was that feeling in your gut that you know something’s wrong. As I was driving, I looked out my window and saw a girl, around fifteen, walking by herself with her head hanging. Being around the hospital for a good amount of my life, I knew when something was wrong so I turned around to go back. After a few minutes of her looking at the ground and not saying anything back to me. I finally told her to look at me. She looked up and saw my contraption hanging from my face. I could see the look in her eyes. I asked her if she needed a ride and she climbed into my car.
“Where to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where do you live?”
“Doesn’t matter. No one likes me. Not at school, not at home. I’m not wanted anywhere.”
“I want you to be here with me right now.”
She looked up at me and just stared at me for a few minutes. What I said was sinking into her brain.
“Can we go to your house?” She was talking like the happiest person on the planet. You would’ve thought she was a different person five minutes ago.
“No problem.”
She stayed at my house for hours. Her name was Abby. We got along so well and had so many things in common. She was such a nice girl; I didn’t understand why she said nobody liked her. Every day after that we always hung out together. Turns out she went to my school. She was just a grade below me. We had a school assembly about bullying and suicide and she raised her hand and asked if she could talk in front of the whole school.
“Fellow classmates, today I want to share a story with you. A few months ago, I was going through some hard times. I felt alone at school and at home and was having thoughts of suicide. January 18th, 2014 was the day I planned to kill myself. I was walking on the side of the road, heading to the bridge I was planning to jump off of when Olivia Smith came to my rescue. When I looked at her, I realized that what I was going through was nothing compared to her and all the other cancer patients in the world. She had such a challenge, but she was the first person there for me. I came to my senses that I really wasn’t going through a hard time at all. When she was driving me to her house, I could not believe what I was going to do to myself. Olivia saved my life and now we’re best friends. So please, if you’re ever having a rough day, remember how fortunate you really are and that millions of other people have it a hundred times worse. God created you for a reason. Thank you.”
I always thought cancer was a challenge. It’s not. It is a privilege. I saved my best friend’s life and I couldn’t have done that if I was “normal”. You are the way you are for a reason. You may not see it now, but when you do, you’re going to be happy with who God made you. Always remember God has a plan for you. You mean something to someone.