September is NICU awareness month. September is my month.

I was told to be grateful every time I looked at the sight of the purple ribbon. A sign of my strength. A sign of the battle I fought. My mom would smile and tell everyone about me, and their eyes would look at me like I was a lost puppy. They’d wrap their words of sympathy around my head, and it wore my heart out. 

I wanted to be more than what happened to me.

It seems like every September, I’m taken back to that feeling. That feeling of fear when somebody mentioned the “ what if’s”, and what could be. That feeling of detachment haunted me and still shows up every time I see a baby who received a different fate. 

I can’t question anymore why they aren’t here and I am, and it’s unfair. I did my best to help those who bore the same scars as the ones that echo across my hands in 2019, donating clothes that could only fit the body of a preemie to the same hospital that saved me.

But not even kindness could push away the fear that I felt when I was told that I should meet my nurses. Ten-year-old me couldn’t imagine what it was like to stay in that incubator 10 years ago. It made me sick, it frightened me. 

It’s hard to believe that I’m still alive sometimes. I was one pound at my birth, born at 24 weeks. A micropreemie. Once I came into this world, the first thing that I was told was that I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t walk. I wouldn’t be able to talk. I wouldn’t be able to read. I wouldn’t be able to speak. 

After spending 88 days in the NICU with countless spinal taps and heart monitoring, I made it out. Alive. But that wasn’t the end of my story and my struggles. I spent six years in physical therapy just to make sure I could talk and lift a five pound weight without being weary. 

And as time went on, I began to feel detached. I was here, and everyone else that I knew didn’t have to spend their afternoons in physical therapy or at the doctors just to make sure that their body functioned just enough to keep themselves alive. 

“Survivors Guilt”, that’s what people call it. I first felt that feeling in second grade, after a round of blood testing and needles. I had just finished physical therapy, but I still didn’t feel strong enough. I felt ashamed just for being on this planet earth. It stuck with me for most of my life, and even now I can’t really describe how it feels, except that I’ll always be familiar with the sting. 

I remember that painful feeling when I looked out of that hospital window, wondering if I’ll ever be normal, like all the rest of my peers. That guilt and frustration turned into severe anxiety, and some days I believed that it would get the best of me. It kept me up late at night, and it took away my joy. The light that shined from my eyes at age eight began to dim. 

But there was one thing that kept me going even when I thought that things were going to end.

I was reminded that I was here for a reason.I found that reason when I picked up my pen.

I wrote my first poem when I was 11-years-old about my anxiety. That ocean that I thought was going to drown me, spit me out from the shore. I started to keep a journal, and I wrote every day. 

In fifth grade, I had written around 74,000 words in that journal, and that’s when I began sharing my work with my teachers, and made them aware about some of the things that I struggled with through my words, something I was too scared to do with my voice. They encouraged me to keep writing, and so I did. 

Little did I know that in the next four years, I would’ve published my first book. My first novel detailed the struggles I faced with my anxiety, but through someone else’s experiences. In less than two months, I published my second book, and later my third. All those angry feelings, all those struggles I kept inside that have been with me since I knew about time, became something that I not only could control, but something I could write about. 

I’m now 16. I learned to appreciate what used to embarrass and scare me the most.  I’m not perfect, and I still sometimes struggle with the things that have always stayed with me. But I’ve been able to achieve so much, all because of the written word, something that I never thought would be my thing.

I no longer look at my scars with sadness and sorrow, but with hope. I’m here, I’m alive, and no matter what happened to me, I still deserve to be on this earth like everyone else. I tend to write something about preemie awareness every September to remind myself how far I’ve come, and this year, I want to write this for the rest of the world, to let them know that no matter who you are, you are here for a reason. Never forget that. 

You are loved more than you’ll ever know.

And every time I see a photo of my younger self, scared and afraid, I tell her that things got better. She’s so much more than what happened to her. She’s a warrior. A fighter. A writer. I’m so grateful that I’m alive and able to write this, to do this. 

Each poem, every thing I write, is a tribute to my 10-year-old self, because I’m becoming the person she used to read in the books. Someone who overcame adversity. Maybe not someone who changed the world, but someone who changed herself.