Twinkling Star

If someone were to look into my dorm room, he or she would notice the large amount of books and notebooks that engulf my side of the room. Next to my bed even, I have my diary and a pen at an arm's length away. On the bookshelf, I have classic books such as "Emma" by Jane Austen and the "Bible" on top of numerous other books. On my desk, I have notebooks filled with my most prized writings- the play "Trapped" that I wrote and directed in high school, the poem "140 Roses" that I wrote at the age of fourteen, along with coutless other works. Although it may look like my entire life's devotion has been towards the art of English, I have not always been the type that reads or writes for the fun of it.
Twelve years ago, I was diagnosed with a type of cancer. I was in first grade, and I had bigger issues than worrying about the two ways the word "read" could be pronounced. I had to miss a lot of school, which led to me falling behind in my worst subject- Reading and Writing. I was placed in a lower reading level, and honestly, I felt like the dumbest seven-year-old in my entire class. When I could attend school between all of the tests and hospital visits, my peers would make fun of me. They didn;t understand what cancer was; I didn't know what it was either. The only thing I knew was that it made my mother cry when I was diagnosed and that it made me different that everyone else.
At that point in my life, I couldn't have cared less about school. With my little kid mind-set, I reasoned there wasn;t a need to attend school anymore since I had to miss most of the school year anyways and that my classmates made me feel worse that the millions of times I was poked by needles at the hospital. I would rarely do my reading homework and when I did, I felt lost and helpless. In the spring of that school year, my black, dismal world finally saw a light, maybe even a flickering star, that made me find hope.
My teacher, Mrs. Brant, started to have me come in over an hour before class started. She would hold up word flash cards and I would have to read the sentence or word. At first, I failedmiserably and felt like it was a waste of time. But slowly, I started pronouncing words correctly. We read books, and Dr. Seuss became my favorite author. I nearly cried when I could read a whole book.
That spring, I was put into the hospital for a considerable amount of time. I started to actually miss my sessions with Mrs. Brant. When I returned to school and took a test, I had that familiar feeling of being lost. I cried at my desk. Mrs. Brant took me aside and told me not to give up, that we could build me back up again. And that;s just what we did. I studied harder in those last few months of school that I ever had. By the end of first grade, I easily passed Reading and Writing. In second grade, I was even placed in the normal reading level group.
To this day, when I look back on that year of my life, I grimace at the pain and suffering I had to endure. Besides dealing with cancer, I had to deal with feeling lost in school. At the time, all I wanted was to be a normal, little kid, who understood school and enjoyed being around classmates. Now I recognize that the abnormal, sickly kid that I once was had to fight two battles, which have made me who I am today. I could have given up on life and the art of English, but then I never would have experienced two of the most abnormally wonderful things God offers us human beings.