Jess - 16 years old

About 8 months ago I found out my mum had cancer. She still has cancer, because it's not going to go away. It's staying until the day it kills her.

I am 16, and I have a 14 year old brother. I'm starting grade 11 in two days. My biggest worry at the moment should be boys and getting good grades. But life isn't like that for me anymore.

My mum was diagnosed with cancer at the end of 2014. She went for chemo at the beginning of 2015. Things were very different at the beginning of last year. My mum stopped her part time job. She stopped going to the gym. She stopped taking my brother and I to school for band in the morning. My dad became the one who made our lunches. He became the one to start taking us to school. I suspected something was wrong, but I was too afraid to ask.

About 6 months later, I arrived home from school one day to find my mum at the door, a smile plastered on her face. And she just broke down, and cried. She sat my brother and I down and told us she had cancer.

Now, 8 months later, I'm beginning to realize a lot of things. That my mum isn't going to get better, she is going to die from cancer.
That my life will never be the same again, even if a miracle does happen. And I'm realizing how much I took for granted when everything was okay, before.

Sometimes I think, this can't actually be happening. This sort of thing shouldn't happen to our family. But that's the thing. Cancer affects anyone. It's affected me and my family.

This year, I'm clarinet section leader in band. My dream since grade 9, achieved a year earlier than I'd even thought! But now, I can't even be excited. I don't even feel proud, or happy. How can I be?

This sort of thing shouldn't happen to anyone. Cancer was just a word to me before. Just a tragic idea for a story's plot line for books like The Fault in Our Stars.

But now it's something that has changed my life forever. I don't even know how long my mum has left to live. It's even hard living with her at the moment. She's crazy depressed. She lies in bed all day. She will come upstairs crying, and she'll start screaming, yelling, about the unfairness of it all. It's so hard. And it's so unfair.

Page updated 26 January 2016