It all started when I was in my third year studying education at university. It was exam time and I was stressed, as were most of my classmates. I started getting headaches and feeling sick all the time. After putting up with it for a while, I went to see a doctor. To my surprise, it was all due to stress and I was assured that I was healthy.
All of my friends were aware that I was going to see the doctor and that I hadn’t been feeling quite right and, naturally, they were slightly worried. After returning from the doctor I was questioned by a friend about what was wrong and how I was feeling. As someone who normally comes across as a strong person, I was embarrassed that I was sick from simple stress … and so the lies began.
It began with me subtly avoiding telling people what was wrong with me. The more I avoided, the more my friends questioned as they began to worry that something serious was wrong. I felt bad that my friends were worrying, but it made me realise that they cared about me.
Then I started receiving calls from friends in other cities, asking if I was okay. The message that I was sick began to warp as it was passed from friend to friend until I received a call asking if it was true that I had cancer. I was shocked; I couldn’t believe that all this had come from a simple case of stress. I could hear the concern in her voice and I went quiet as she waited anxiously for me to answer. It was the silence that did it — she burst into tears and that is the moment that I got “cancer”.
I kept telling myself that I hadn’t actually admitted to having cancer and that everything would be okay — I would tell everyone the truth about what was wrong with me and they would forget about it. Things didn’t pan out the way I had hoped and the situation started to escalate. Before I could tell anyone what was really wrong with me, everyone had heard about my “cancer”. A Ferris Bueller effect started as all my friends found out the news and started to contact me with tears, gifts and hugs.
The more people who found out, the more I realised that I couldn’t tell them the truth. I started to panic and decided that all I could do was go along with it until my friends forgot. Maybe I could be lucky and get through it; after all, none of my friends actually knew what kind of cancer I had. I started to research my disease so that I wouldn’t be caught up in the lie. As the initial madness died down, the situation got better and it seemed that everyone had forgotten about my “condition”, until I spoke about it with my closest friend.
What seemed to me like my best friend forgetting that I had cancer was actually her going into denial, not wanting to accept that I was possibly going to die. She seemed really shaken up by it all and told me what a good friend I had been and that she wouldn’t know what to do without me. I hadn’t thought about what a huge impact it would have on my friends and it made me realise that they thought they were going to lose me.
I felt so guilty, but if I told my friend the truth now, I would lose her as she would never forgive me for telling such an awful lie. All I could say to her was, “I am going to be okay.” She still doesn’t realise how true that is.
Image: Getty. Picture posed by model.
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