Free Breakthrough by Jack Andraka

believed what I wanted to believe: Uncle Ted would find some way to pull through.
    I felt my stomach crash down to my feet. In those moments that followed, I felt as though I was looking in on my life from afar. Then the questions came in rapid-fire succession, one after another, but unlike the equations I was used to solving, all the answers seemed so distant, so far out of reach.
    Why Uncle Ted? And why did it all have to happen so quickly?
    Although I knew how much he had been suffering, in most ways he was the same Uncle Ted, always upbeat and giving great advice. I didn’t even get a chance to say a real good-bye. There were so many things I wanted to say—but now it was too late.
    How could this have happened?
    Only now was I hearing the full story. The diagnosis had come too late. Way too late. By the time he received the news that he was sick, the cancer had already spread. That meant it was too late for surgery to remove the tumors. At that point, everyone knew it would be only a matter of time. Everyone but me, that is.
    â€œMaybe if we had found it earlier.” That’s what the doctors all said. Now the cancer had taken him. He was gone.
    I sat down on my bed and tried to make sense of it all.
    Why did this happen?
    What am I going to do now?
    Why do all these awful things keep happening to me?
    It felt like there was nothing firm in my life to hold on to anymore, nothing stable to help me regain my balance. Everything was shifting too fast.
    Worse than thinking about all the happy memories I had of Uncle Ted was the thought of all the future moments that the cancer had robbed from me. Now our last moments together, at least in this life, would be spent at his funeral.
    When the day came for his service, I was emotionally empty. I didn’t cry. I sat there, in a fog, as friends and family took turns saying great things about how bravely he had fought and telling funny stories about him. I was no longer in control of my own body. It was like I was watching from afar as a tiny Jack Andraka walked the line of pews to the casket. On the hour-long car ride home, I couldn’t remember a single thing anyone had said. I blankly stared out the window, wondering when I was going to finally wake up from this never-ending nightmare.
    I began feeling again the minute I stepped back into my school. A few days after Uncle Ted passed, I was sitting in class when my teacher instructed us to read about this church where the congregants travel around to different parts of the country and stand outside to protest at the funerals of gay people. They hold up thesehateful signs spewing venom that the dead gay person is in hell and basically try to do whatever they can to disturb those who are mourning the loss of their loved one.
    I kept staring at the words on the page, reading them and rereading them. It didn’t make sense.
    How could someone . . .
    Why would . . .
    What the . . .
    If you’ve never felt depression, it’s hard to explain. It was as if a massive blanket of hopelessness had draped over me. It was heavy, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake it off. In a way, I was so depressed that I didn’t even want to shake it off and be happy again.
    The problem was not just the issues I had faced—the problem was me. I was a hopeless human being, and I couldn’t imagine ever arriving at a place where things were better. I wasn’t even sure I knew who I was anymore.
    The loss of Uncle Ted. The haters. The rejection. Having to hide my sexuality for so long, even the process of coming out, it was all too much for me to handle. I felt like I had exhausted every option. That was it. I was done.
    I asked for a pass to the bathroom, walked out of class, and locked the door to the stall. I wanted to hurt myself. I didn’t have a knife or anything sharp around me, so I broke off a piece of mypencil and began jabbing the sharp end into my wrists. Again and