Published by Her Campus KU

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the color pink. When I was younger, I was obsessed it. I wanted everything I owned to be some shade of it, and for a while, everything basically was. And then, at a certain age, I detested it. It felt too girly, or at least too stereotypically girly. Even at the ripe age of nine, I was way too pretentious for that. But once I reached sixth grade, I became very uncertain of how I felt about pink. By then, what was once a simple color became the symbol of something so much more.

I was 12 years old when I found out my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had gotten out of bed to get a glass of water, but I stopped outside the kitchen when I heard my parents talking in hushed tones.

“They think it’s cancer?” my dad asked my mother.

I don’t remember the reply. Maybe she didn’t say anything at all. I couldn’t really focus because my head was spinning and I just kept thinking of that one word, again and again and again: cancer. I went back to bed, trying to swallow back the panic as I told myself I must’ve heard them wrong. I forgot about the water. I wasn’t thirsty anymore, anyway.

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