A girl stood in front of me. She had a short haircut and was wearing blue jeans and a yellow t-shirt. She poured some lemonade in a dixie cup, turned around and caught me staring at her. But I didn't want to look away and make it seem like it was a mistake. Instead, I continued to look.
I grabbed a chair and sat down in the circle, still looking at her. I didn't know quite a lot about how this support group thing worked so I decided to sit there and follow along with whatever the people were doing.
She tried her best not to look at me. But once in a couple of minutes she would glance just to check if I was still staring, which I was. I guess it even made it a bit awkward for her, but honestly it was fun so I didn't care.
People were introducing themselves. They were telling their names, what type of cancer they have and what diagnosis they have been through. When this started, I noticed the girl staring back at me. After quite some time of glaring at each other, I smiled and looked away while she raised her eyebrows signalling victory. Damn! who knew someone could defeat me at my own staring game.
" My name is Hazel. I'm sixteen. Thyroid with mets in my lungs. Im okay." She introduced herself. And after this, the support group turned into a "get to know each other better" session. Patrick, the one who was leading the group asked me what I feared.
"I fear oblivion" I answered.
Isn't it scary, the mere thought that you could forget all the things that you loved with all your heart once upon a time, the things that awakened your soul? Wouldn't you want to be remembered for what you did, for who you were, for what you loved? If wanting people to not forget your existence is selfish, then yes I am.
Just when I was thinking about my fear of oblivion, the Hazel girl spoke up. "There will come a time,"she began, very philosophically, "when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does."
I smiled. Didn't even try to be sexy this time. I genuinely smiled.
Nobody had tried to explain to me why I shouldn't fear oblivion before. Nobody. Not a lot of people knew about this, but those who did just said "oh!" as a response. Like they didn't know what to say, like it didn't scare them, like they just didn't care. But this girl did.
" Goddamn, aren't you something else." I said quietly, but loud enough for my voice to be heard two chairs away where she was seated.
She was just like other normal girls, except with cancer. Wearing casual clothes, not trying to be extra, had a sad and uncertain life just like you would expect any person with cancer to have. But she was interesting. She felt like an adventure and mistakes and loneliness and charm and happiness and home.