If you know me, you know that I’m scared of anything relating to the doctor’s. Actually, “scared” isn’t a strong enough word. Terrified. I’m absolutely terrified of anything relating to the doctors. Needles, surgery, even simple physicals have me stressing. 

     I know what you’re thinking, why should you care about this? Stay with me here. Last week I had my first surgery. I weighed my options for weeks prior– I could hop on a bus and skip town, I could wake up early and sneak to school early on the day of the procedure, I could run down the hall of the hospital and escape to the city. 

     But in the end, I decided against all of the above. My only option was accepting my fate and making the best of it. 

     It was out of my control. 

     As I walked into the lobby of John Hopkins tears involuntarily swelled up in my eyes. I know, I sound dramatic. “It was just an ear surgery, not a liver transplant,” my friends teased. But you have to understand, everyone has their thing–for some people it’s heights or small spaces, for others it’s spiders or snakes. For me it’s needles and surgery. 

     I was in the hospital for a total of around six hours. I had to pee in a cup, wear a hospital gown, get my blood pressure taken, have an IV put in (eek, back to the whole needles issue) and I wasn’t allowed to eat until post-surgery. 

     But none of that was even the worst part. The worst part was the feeling of first arriving in the operation room. It was just me, a bunch of strangers, machines, and a hard operation table. 

     The few things I remember before falling asleep because of the anesthesia was asking them to play Harry Styles (they obliged), telling the doctor I needed more anti-anxiety medicine in my IV, and asking the nurse if the anesthesia was supposed to hurt so bad. It was indeed supposed to hurt so bad. 

     Again, why does this matter? It matters because I survived. I woke up in my post-op room and was given two bags of pretzels and two cups of pudding, I chatted up the nurse while high on anesthesia, and I got to watch The Office. 

     Despite all my anxiety, dread, and tears, I came out the other end completely fine. In fact, I 

felt on top of the world.

     Sometimes there are things in life that feel unfathomable. As much as we pretend we have control over our lives, we often don’t. Sometimes all we can do is buckle up and brace for impact.

     But despite what life throws our way, we have no choice but to keep living. We hold on, we persevere, and we find ways to make lemonade out of lemons. It’s all we can do.

     This all may sound bleak, but in a way I find it comforting that even when life feels brutal, we almost always come out the other end. We may endure a long six-hour day with lots of needles and no food, but at the end of it all we find ourselves chilling with a nice nurse and eating pudding.

     We can apply this concept to anything in life. For example, graduation may seem terrifying. I mean many of us are losing the safety net of our parents very soon. But one day we’ll look back and can’t believe how far we’ve come.

     At the end of the day, I believe we need to trust the process of life. Think about it, we’ve survived every unthinkable situation up to this point, we can survive the rest. That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy or we can do it alone, but life isn’t going to slow down. 

     We might as well make peace with that fact and trust that we’ll end up alright one way or another.