Positively Beautiful

She sighs and looks over my shoulder for a moment. Then she looks back at me.
'I have cancer,' she says simply.
And my life cracks into before and after just like that.

I'm one of those people that don't believe in coincidences. This book took me so long to read because it was like looking in the mirror. I didn't get drunk at a party and kiss my best friend's boyfriend, but I found a tumor when I was sixteen and a half. I freaked, of course, and thought if I ignored it, that it would go away. How

She sighs and looks over my shoulder for a moment. Then she looks back at me.
'I have cancer,' she says simply.
And my life cracks into before and after just like that.

I'm one of those people that don't believe in coincidences. This book took me so long to read because it was like looking in the mirror. I didn't get drunk at a party and kiss my best friend's boyfriend, but I found a tumor when I was sixteen and a half. I freaked, of course, and thought if I ignored it, that it would go away. How many sixteen year olds get breast cancer? I didn't want to become one of them. I had actually forgotten about it until I was just over seventeen, and by that point, I realized I needed to say something or it really might turn into cancer. I told my mom, we scheduled an appointment, got it biopsied, and waited for the results. It turned out to be part of a chronic illness/disease (I really hate the word disease. It makes me feel disgusting), and that it was thankfully not cancerous. Flash forward two and a half years, and the tumor had grown and become insanely painful. So painful, that it had gotten to the point I couldn't wear underwire bras anymore.

My specialist referred me to a breast oncologist and she scheduled surgery the following week. I remember sitting in that waiting room, sitting by women fighting this monster. I remember crying because it would be my future. The tumor had grown into a golf ball size, and was highly, highly suspicious for malignancy. Even though it's gone now, there is a very real (like 90%) chance that it will come back, and when it does, it will be cancerous. And with my gene mutation (not BRCA), I am four times more likely to develop breast cancer, and others like me have the highest chance to develop brain cancer compared to the rest of the population that doesn't have this gene mutation.

This book was very, very, very real for me. I recently found a support group for others like me, and I have to weigh the decision of whether or not I too, should get a mastectomy. Does knowing make it better? Or is ignorance truly bliss? Some days you're on one side, and others on the opposite side.

Erin's dad was a pilot, and she learns quickly that she inherited his love for flying. It probably didn't hurt that flying took away some of the unbearable weight on her shoulders. She has a natural talent and feels close to her dad, even though he's been gone for a little over 10 years.

I had to take my time reading this book because it wasn't really fiction for me. Sure, what Erin did was not smart by any means. But, because I understand exactly where she's coming from, I can't really blame her. I can't tell you how many times I wished that I could run away from what I have. When she finds out she's positive for the BRCA gene, she flies solo from her home state, Georgia, to Florida where Ashley lives.

Erin found out that the friend she had "met" in the support group, the friend she thought was a girl, was in fact, a guy. A very attractive guy, from his description. Despite being a little taken aback, she feels as if she has already met him before, and there's no awkwardness because he's still the friend she found in the group. Jason takes her to his island, he makes a fire, sets up a tent, and supplies her with clothes, food and even books. The events that happen over the course of the week they spend together, she falls for him and experiences a different kind of heartbreak: rejection.

This book happens over a near two year period. And unlike any other cancer book I have read this far, the focus is not on love, but on coping and coming to terms with your own reality as well as the one person who is always supposed to be there for you: your mom.

There's triumph, there's heartbreak, there's betrayal and blows to the gut that knock the wind out of you. It's so realistic, and I honestly felt like I was swatted down every other page. This book gives an honest insight on what it's like to discover harsh realities of natural selection at its finest. It sheds some light on the teetering scale of "what ifs" that come hand in hand with a gene mutation such as BRCA.

My gene mutation promotes tumor growth anywhere there are nerves. Yes, that means I can literally get tumors anywhere and everywhere on my body. I have them on my stomach and back, my arms, my neck, one on my face, as well as all down the entire length of my spine. I also have tumors between my skull and scalp, in my brain, and even my irises. I, unlike Erin, can't just cut off my boobs and scrape out my ovaries to avoid the potential cancer. I'd have to literally cut everything off me in order to avoid all the potential cancer I face. There isn't even any treatment for my condition. None. Nothing but sit and wait, and watch as tumors grow and form and have yearly fully body MRIs. But just like Erin, I can pass this horrible mutation onto my children. Me and my husband came to the heartbreaking decision to not have children because of my condition. It's still hard to swallow because I wanted kids of my own so freaking bad.

I cried the entirety of part four.

When Jason told Erin he loved her, I cried some more.

That last freaking chapter, I sobbed like a baby while I read through my blurred vision.

I sat and stared at the wall for twenty minutes after I finished this book.

This book gets cancer. This book understands just how ugly it is. This book's title is so unbelievably perfect for it.

This book is raw, and sad, and beautiful and heartbreaking, and it is so unbelievably real. Everyone should read this book, so they too, can understand what the limbo of not knowing and what cancer truly looks like. And also, that the unknown certainty, sometimes guaranteed "C word" stamp doesn't mean weakness. That the "C word" doesn't mean death and not living life to its fullest.

Courage is not always but and bright and loud; sometimes it's as silent and small as true words, a smile when you'd rather weep, or getting up every day and living with quiet dignity while all around you life rages. You cannot truly love, love, or exist without courage. Without it you are simply biding time until you die.

The days of my life are pearls on a string, some scratched and marred, some lustrous and pure, but all of them mine alone. It's not the ugliest, or the most beauty of them, that defines me, but all of them together that make me who I am.