Passing Through Adversity
There are waves in my life. Sometimes they are rising, sometimes falling. That it is the way life goes. In the darkness, I can clearly see things that I cannot see in the bright light. I passed through adversity many times. At the beginning of this year, I had been hospitalized because of a disease. This experience taught me that every single thing which happens in my life has meaning and significance. I could learn very important things, which I usually cannot obtain in peaceful daily life. Since then, I have been trying to smile in the fore of bad luck.
I am not strong physically by nature compared to other people. So I have often sickness. Now, I have two bombs in my body. I mean that I have irremediable diseases. One is that I often have spells of really awful headaches. The other one is an eye disease. As for the eye disease, I am not sure what it is yet and neither do doctors. It has a name but the reason why I have this disease is still unknown.
On January 24, I had an eye surgery because the disease caused a detachment of retina in my right eye. It was an emergency surgery and required hospitalization. I had been in the Yamagata University hospital. The surgery was really painful. What is worse, I still have a possibility of another surgery and my left eye might have same problem as my right eye.
Besides, I wasn't able to attend to any classes during the winter program. Because I started from EAP level 1 last year, I hadn’t finished EAP level 3 yet. I wanted to move on to the Basic Education course with my classmates because we knew each other very well and we cooperated to overcome any of our difficulties such as assignments. We knew everyone’s efforts very well. However, there was no exception. It was an absolute thing that I would have to take the EAP level 3 with new students in the spring semester. I was so shocked at this fact and I thought it would be really tough for me.
There was no hope at that time. I was down and I didn’t think I would be able to smile again. Whenever I thought about my college life and my health, I felt like someone was squeezing my heart. I felt that I was the most unhappy person in the world. I felt alone. For the first 3 days in the hospital, I was in a private room. Because there were too many patients, I had to wait for somebody’s release from the hospital. I was really alone especially at night. I couldn’t watch TV and use computer of course. Listening to music and radio were the only thing that I could do in the long nights. My room was on 9th floor of the hospital. I could see very beautiful night view from there. However, even the view depressed me. “Why am I the only one that has to endure such a situation?” I asked myself repeatedly knowing there were no answers. “Life is unfair!” I didn’t want to accept the reality. I cried and cried, lamenting over my misfortunes.
After those 3 days, I moved to a big room. There were 5 people in addition to me in the room. All of them were much older than I and I met two 90 years old women there. 3 of the patients in the room were hospitalized because of old-age cataracts. The surgery of this disease is easy so they left hospital about 3 days after they came there. However, we had enough time to talk to each other because after the doctor’s around, we had nothing to do. Those old women often talked about life and death. Their topics were always like this. It was completely different from the topic that I usually talked with my friends on campus. Sometimes they talked about how to make delicious pickles and about their family, but their talking went into more profound thing: life and death. They told me about their past. They experienced the war, want of food, child rearing, and husbands’ death. Most of their stories were the things that I have never experienced. 90 years sounds very long for me. I have lived only 20 years. One old woman said, “Today is a good day to die.” When I heard this for the first time, I thought she was a negative person. However, actually she meant that she wouldn’t regret her life if she died at that time. I thought how her wonderful way of thinking she was. Their story moved me a lot. I thought that even though I had disease and had to take a very painful surgery, my hospitalization was meaningful.
Two other women were hospitalized because of the detachment of retina as well as me. One of them was diabetic and she was almost blind. She already took the surgery for both her eyes. She said that even though she took the surgery, she wouldn’t be able to recognize things. I didn’t know what I should say to her. Then, she smiled and said, “But I’m happy because I can see light at least.” I was so surprised because I have never thought about my bad luck in such a way. She couldn’t walk and even eat meals by herself. However, I never heard her whine about it. Rather, she encouraged me to be brave about the surgery. The other woman is my good friend now. We are still keeping in touch with each other. Her detachment of retina was worse than mine. She is around 70, but she said she was still working at a department store. She was always cheerful and gave energy to me. I felt warm in my heart. Thanks to them, my pessimistic thoughts went away.
What is more, my classmates didn’t forget me. One of my classmates wrote letters to me every third day. She wrote them in a big letters because I couldn’t see clearly if it was small letters. She sometimes recorded her voice; other classmates’ voices, and teachers’ voices on cassette tapes. She put one or two MDs into every letter so that I could listen to a lot of music thanks to her. One day, she recommended a song in a letter. That title was “You are not alone.” I felt I am so happy because I have such a great friends. I finally noticed the importance of friends in a bed far from my university.
There are no ways to cure these two diseases completely at this point. Although I took the surgery and I have a silicon chip in my right eye, I still have to go to a hospital to check my both eyes at least once a month now. Many people might say I am so unhappy or unlucky if I tell them my situation. At first, I thought so. However, I can feel happiness clearly now. I narrowly escaped blindness. The hospitalization saved me from being blind not only physically but also mentally. I learned a lot of things which many healthy people cannot learn through this experience. I would not be able to learn them in my dairy life. It was precious time in my life. I thought that I shouldn’t take my life for granted. I also could notice the importance of having very good friends.
I can't change the fact that I have diseases. Yet, I can change my mind if I really want to. I think there are no accidents in life. Only fatality is there. Everything, which happens in my life, is meaningful and important. Passing through this adversity, I could be stronger than before.
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