The pain of life is an exquisite sorrow.

I'm privileged to endure it first hand.

Have you read The Fault in Our Stars? I have, I just finished it. If you haven't, it's definitely worth the time. It's a story written from the perspective of a teenage girl with cancer, Hazel Grace. I started it because I love the sarcastic way the protagonist views her illness, got a little lost in the middle because someone loved her (isn't that just the way? I think I'm kind of predictable.) but I'm glad I finished it.

I can't say that I cried. It was more profound than that. I think the message I take is one that I know in my soul but don't have confirmed much outside of the recesses of my own heart - there's something to live for.

Looking at these funny (and very real) characters, their stories, their realities and daily lives... it makes me think. It makes me ache that they were here with me, to laugh at the rest of the parade of life, to play antagonist to this stepford world, to love, to cry with. I want you to know that I'm a 23 year old woman who has come to terms with her mortality, not on one, but many occasions. It changes you. It ages you.

I was already an old soul.

My pain has covered every category - and I am so grateful for it. It seems so counter-intuitive to be grateful for this pain, but I am. The thing about pain - real pain, real sorrow, real struggle - is that it acts as a mirror. It shows you who you truly are. The things that are extraneous in your life disappear as pain arrives and settles in. You do things and say things and are things you would have never imagined before pain came along. And really, it's not so bad.

The most beautiful thing about anguish is getting to know yourself.

So, this letter from the love of Hazel Grace (major spoiler ahead) struck me about what pain makes you into, if you let it.

"Here's the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That's what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.

I want to leave a mark.

But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous mini mall or start a coup or try to become a rockstar and you think, 'They'll remember me now,' but (a) they don't remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your mini mall becomes a lesion.

We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it's silly and useless - epically useless in my current state - but I am an animal like any other.

Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.

People will say it's sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it's not sad, Van Houten. It's triumphant. It's heroic. Isn't that the real heroism? Like the doctor's say: First, do no harm.

The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.

After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked right in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really though she was going to die before I could tell her that I was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.

A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren't allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, 'She's still taking on water.' A desert blessing, an ocean curse.

What else? She is so beautiful. You don't get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."

So, it matters. It matter that pain can make you tender, and gentle and kind. It matters to me that this book seemed to delve into my mind and used my phrase (deeply but not widely). It's significant to live lightly in circumstances of great weight. It is a great challenge that I gladly, if not always completely, accept.

Probably most people won't be affected by the things I do. But to the people who are, it will make a world of difference.

And that is worth suffering for.

Love and admiration,

Shareeta