Life is rough. It’s never simple. I can never be perfect, and neither can you. I’m not sure when I figured this out, but all I know is that the life I’ve been living brings me heartache.
I’m sitting here on the floor waiting for you, while glancing at a ladybug that keeps creating a pathway around my hand. It understands my pain; it knows what I’m going through. This ladybug must see people just like me everyday; people that are incapable of their own life, people that don’t know what’s ahead on the horizon.

I glance across the room to study the faces of the other people with crappy lives. There’s an older women with gray hair, and skin that’s so wrinkled that it looks like it’s been paper that has been folded numerous times. Her eyes look tired; she’s been awake for hours. She’s keeping to herself in the corner while sewing something that looks like a scarf. I wonder which person God wants to take away from her?

Across the waiting room is a little girl. She has strawberry-blonde hair that creates gentle waves spilling around her shoulders. Her eyes look as bright as crystals glistening in the sun, and her smile looks gentle, but knowing. The little girl is playing with toys in the play area with another little boy. You can tell that the boy is bald even though he wears a hat, and he’s wearing a mask that covers his nose and mouth. His skin is very pale and fragile, almost like a thread coming undone from a piece of cloth. Just by looking at him you understand the pain he goes through. You know he can barely hold on much longer, but he still gives the world a bright smile each day.

The clock on the wall states that it’s 8:23 p.m. I’ve been here since 3:00 this afternoon, waiting for the unknown. The unknown is a black hole that I don’t want to fall into again, but it’s all God’s choice. He decides my fate.

20 minutes later a nurse comes into the waiting room and approaches me.
I understand what’s coming... an answer. I can’t read her face; I can’t tell what she has to say.

“Are you Kaylee McHugh?” asks the nurse.

I stand up on my feet and look the nurse straight in the eye.

“Yes I am. Are the test results back yet?” I ask in a quiet voice.

The nurse hesitates before making her everlasting statement, but manages to get through with it. “I’m sorry to inform you, but it’s back. Your mother’s cancer is back.”

I feel my knees weaken. I just want to crash and fall, and never get back up. I never wanted to go through this again; I never wanted to be in this black hole of my weakening.

Once again, I am now the girl with the mother that has cancer.

Acute lymphocytic leukemia has turned my world over a second time.