A Book Review: Or How I Bawled My Way Through "A Fault In Our Stars"

I just finished reading devouring The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. (You know, that young adult novel-soon-to-be-released-movie about a 16 yr old girl with terminal cancer who falls in love with a 17 yr old boy with a history of cancer...). Clearly I was playing some kind of sick joke on myself thinking I would be able to handle that. But I couldn't put it down. I had to finish reading it at home because it was embarrassing how many public tears where secretly (aka not so secretly) shed.

It has been such a long time. A whole two crazy, full years. Not that anyone (but me) is keeping track or anything, but I have a routine follow-up with CT next week. And I'm not scared, but I really, really hate that place. Plus, I have a lot of free time with my school schedule right now and it is giving me way, way too much time on my hands to think about things. I am strong, but there is nothing to feel but  small and terrified sitting in that waiting room alone. Powerless. But enough about me.

Basically, I just had to tell someone (aka everyone) about this book which so perfectly describes cancer and young love and bad luck and all that is unfair. About how desperation makes you notice, makes you feel, more. About how this author nailed everything so perfectly on the head. It's all there. Like I had vomited the words onto the page myself (and a professional made them much prettier.) How it felt to be stared at because you looked sick, how it felt to talk to someone who truly understood and how no one else can help you (unless they knew what it was like.) Like there is some kind of weird cancer-kid-code-language and it is the only means to process your emotions. I wish I still had that. Someone to cry to, yell to, be terrified to, someone to get it. Someone to tell me what my next steps are. What is normal. What is normal, though, really?

Even how I feel bad because I am "in remission." Like I'm not worthy of calling myself a "cancer kid" anymore. How even "cancer survivor" sounds pretentious. I read somewhere that when people find positive meaning out of their horrible disease it is called "post-traumatic growth." And I think that's what this is called. This trying to give life perspective and make use of all this awful I went through. But sometimes even that feels misguided and full of guilt- and I think it is disgusting that I think that, so many many people have it way, way worse. And that's all there, too, tied up in this pretty little package of a book.

The point is that every one of you should read (or just go see the movie) this devastating book. Especially all of my soon-to-be-real-doctor friends. And maybe it won't mean anything to you, but maybe it will make you think about death and dying and how we choose (do we choose though??) to live and die.  How it feels when someone tells me "you are soooo strong and brave" and how it makes me feel numb- even though I know it is all they have to offer.  How people are not their disease but rather a "side effect" of it (credit- John Green). Everything that happens is a product of the terrible thing. But we just have to accept it and do our best to crawl out of it's shadow, even in remission, but it will always be there. It changes you in ways no one will understand. Not even me.

But this book put it so so so perfectly. And it is short and written for teenagers so it's an easy read. Chock full of the teenage angst we all once felt and loved/hated so much, sprinkled with insight so hauntingly relevant. Read it. (Just make sure you are alone when you get towards the middle/end, just sayin...)


Your favorite side effect,
Liv