On the day of my thirteenth birthday, my birthday cake rested on the table— I was now entering the most significant years of my life—or so they say. The best years, they call them—my teen years.
As I blew out the candles, perhaps my destiny was set.
Two months later, my life changed completely. It took a turn no human could predict. I’d fallen sick, but this sickness was no cold, no ache that would fade with time. It would last my whole life, and I’d have to grow to accept that.
It took what felt like an eternity, battling with doctors, trying to convince them something was truly wrong, before it was finally given a name. That name gave hope, a chance to make things better. At least, that’s what my mother believed. And what I wanted to think, too.
There was only one thing that gave me hope. The one thing that held my heart together in all this pain, anguish, and fear: school. Oh, how I adored school, held it in my hands as if it were a pot of gold.
Two months after being diagnosed, I started my first year of high school. My body: fragile and unwell. But I was determined to recover. Now things had changed—it had a name—and that meant I could start over. That maybe, just maybe, I could get better. At first, things went well. Peaceful. So quiet you’d never see the storm brewing. I had everything I had ever desired. I held the very stars, the sun itself. I was finally able to do the things I had dreamed of. I was finally the person I wanted to be.
I was part of the most prestigious program in my county, something only a few got into. It gave me pride, made me feel equal to my peers. I was finally at the top of the tower. But I should have seen it. Should have known. I was far too foolish to believe the thing buried deep within me wouldn’t take that away, too. It was then that my world crumbled. I was only a shell of myself, a vessel for my illness to consume. I had to give up everything, every piece of me, every bit of life I had—for the sake of my health. At fifteen, I sat with my school counselor and uttered the words I was determined never to say: “I can’t.” I gave up school, the program I worked so hard for, my friends, my life.
I tried to get it back. For the rest of high school, I fought tirelessly to prove that even with an illness, I could still triumph. But my illness didn’t just take what I had accomplished. It took something far more precious: the belief that I would achieve great things. What was I without that? Who am I, if no one believed I could be great? Believe me, it was not I who stopped believing. It was them, the very people meant to guide me, my school, the counselor. Who once said I would accomplish great things—somehow, somewhere—stopped believing.
As if deemed impossible.
At the start of my last year of high school, I wanted to try again. I yearned for a life where I could be even the slightest bit normal. And so the news fell into the councilors' ears that I’d like to return. But it wasn’t just the counselor listening. It was also she, the school nurse, who truly believed I was all but sick. As my mother uttered those words, “She wants to go to college,” they laughed. And said the words that haunt me even now:
“She’ll never go to college. She should just give that up already and stay home. What makes her think she could go to college when she couldn’t even go to high school?”
I’ve come to wonder: What could I have done to make you believe such a thing?
Amid that, I stayed home. Once again, for my health. It was then that I found myself stuck, drowning in a void of nothingness. As if imprisoned by limitations, my illness had created. With no escape. No way to crawl out.
Was that my purpose, to live solely as my illness?
Is that what everyone sees?
Have I become nothing more?
I was as if a bird meant to fly but reduced to a cage for eternity. In the end, I was my illness’s prisoner. Chained to murky walls, I watched the light dim as my prison drowned in darkness. The world felt as if it had stopped orbiting the sun — a void I only fell deeper into. The chains tightened when people saw only my illness. To them, that was all I was: too consumed to be something more.
However, I could never allow myself to believe their words. To let them decide my future. Their words—meant to fill me with doubt—drove me to try. I was meant to escape my prison, my cage. So I could reach those stars, those star-like dreams, even when plenty deemed it impossible. Who am I if not stubborn? Though I did not return to high school, I never let their belief become my truth. I made it so my future was my own. I applied to a university miles away from home, one that they deemed impossible to get into. And now doing the very thing that held my heart together at thirteen. Not because they believed in me, but because I did.
As I write this from a place where the sea meets the forest, where the leaves change color, and the sun sets so beautifully, where the autumn breeze dances through the towering pine trees. I find myself breathing in a kind of peace I never thought I’d reach.
So to you—whoever you are, wherever you are—know this: even with limitations, even with doubt, even with an illness. It’s still possible. You, like everyone else, have a chance to make what is deemed impossible, possible.
To reach those stars, and perhaps even the sun itself.
About the Author:
Samantha Limon is a first-year college student at Western Washington University. Born and raised in California, moving to Washington in September was Samantha’s first experience living away from home. She is a pre-med student majoring in Behavioral Neuroscience, with the dream of becoming a neurogastroenterologist to help others in the way her own doctor once helped. Although Samantha adores school—especially math—writing has always been a passion. She began writing at 13, after first becoming ill, and while fantasy stories are usually the preference, she shares this personal story with the hopes it reaches someone who might need it and help in some way.
