Xaria Smith

"On October 21st, 2003, my 16th birthday, my mom was diagnosed with stage one breast cancer. The life I knew had changed the moment she sat my family and I on the couch in our living room with tears in her eyes. At the age of 16, I set aside my role as a teenager to become a care giver for not only my mother, but my father who had been battling with stage four kidney failure since the summer prior. I learned how to juggle all aspects of life while in the strong grasp of comfortability and uncertainty. Instead of switching my work and school schedule to attend the high school football games, I was switching my schedules around to ensure I could get my parents to and from their doctor appointments or surgeries. Since my parents were divorced and lived in different towns, I had added well over 50,000 miles onto my car within the span of 7 to 8 months. I was a full-time high school student with two jobs and bigger responsibilities than any teenager should be given.

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As the months went on, it felt as if the line between child and parent became blurred. Swapped in a way. The more responsibilities expected of me, the more appointments I scheduled with my therapist at the time. Due to the strictly transactional/care giver relationship that had formed between my father and I, my mother was seemingly my only parent. Every one of her appointments and checkups motivated the manifestation of an all-consuming anxiety. One that changed my outlook on life or my future. While my peers began to plan the universities, they were striving for and the decorations they were adding to their caps, I was learning how to mourn two people I was close to losing. Graduating high school and beginning my future didn’t mean much if my mom was going to be stuck in the confinements of the hospital walls, repeating the draining routine of blood draws and chemo appointments.

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I thought my life would go back ‘to normal’ when my mom went into remission roughly two years into her journey and I could have never been more wrong. I had forgotten what it was like to act my age and fall back into my role as a daughter. I had forgotten what it was like to put myself first, emotions and all. For the longest of time, I felt I had to compare my situation and experience to others, therefore invalidating my own struggles. I hadn’t truly realized how badly I felt I was drowning because I forgot how to ask for help. I felt I was still living up to the expectations of a care giver and failing miserably. Still to this day, I am relearning that it is okay to not be okay. At the age of 20, I am slowly making up for the fun teenage years I had missed, allowing myself to take a deep breath and live for myself."