Relay for Life

**Here is your warning: This is not a particularly happy, uplifting blog. If you aren’t in the mood for that, skip it. I understand.**

So I wasn’t sure if I wanted to writing a blog about Relay just because I have such mixed feelings about it. But then I wrote this and figured if I took the time to write it I should put it up. Plus I warned you of the content so there you go.

On the one hand I love Relay for Life. It was always my favorite event in ESA and I’ve participated in one every year since high school. I love how it brings so many people together and obviously it’s for a great cause. I would always be the crazy walking person because I would yell at the girls who would just go to Relay to get hours and then won’t actually walk any of it. That isn’t the point of the event; if you come you better come with your walking/running shoes on!

On the other hand, this year will be incredibly painful to attend Relay for Life. This is the first Relay I’ve gone to since my Dad passed from lung cancer in 2007. I don’t want to get too deep into feelings and stuff because there is no reason to bring all you lovely readers down, plus I’m not sure there are words for what I feel. I’ve always known people who had fought with or passed from the disease and it motivated me toward the cause. However, to lose a parent to it is something completely different. I don’t know if I’ve ever been able to describe the feeling correctly. The only scenario that I’ve been able to come up with is that it is like I was in a traumatic accident and I have a huge scar left on my body but no one can see it. It still hurts, but I’ve learned to function with it, but no one really understands what it feels like unless you have the same scar. And even if someone else has gone through the experience, it’s still different from yours. In last week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy Alex had a monologue about how he and Izzie’s life wasn’t supposed to go the way it was with her having cancer. My family and I said that over and over, still do, about what happened to my dad. ‘This wasn’t supposed to end like this, this wasn’t the plan.’ But sometimes you don’t get a say in life’s plan, and that was a big lesson I had to learn. Even as I write this the comparison doesn’t even seem to cover the half of it. Anyway, I learned, or at least I’m trying, to appreciate everyone around me because everyone contributes something to your life and that is a blessing.

Okay sad time is over. I’m going to focus more on the gathering together to find a cure, or at least something that helps this crazy disease. I’m so excited to see all my old ESA ladies, I love them and have missed them terribly over the past year. It will be a great night!

I'm still finishing up Breaking Dawn and Debutante Divorcee. I haven't had much time for reading but I did finish The Giver. It was an interesting book, it was a little George Orwell - Ray Bradbury for my taste, but I liked the relationship between the boy and the giver.