Taylor Dilaurentis
The Cancer Vlogs.
Before I play out this story for you folks, I’d just like to say that its a long one. This isn’t a story that started with our courtship, or our marriage, or the vlogs. This story started even before then. It was always building, editing itself, waiting to be completed. And that is sometimes the hand that life plays for you. You live a great story but sometimes there are stories that are waiting to be resolved, you just never know when.
Even now its hard to pinpoint where this story began. Perhaps the day our freshman year of highschool when Jamie and I awkwardly met. Or that hazy period of time when we slowly but stupidly fell into a serious like with each other. Or perhaps it was shortly after that when our courtship started and lasted well into our late high school years. I would even venture to say that it was after all of this, but before our marriage, that the three significant factors that intertwined themselves into our story before we could stop them happened.
The first was insignificant at the time. It was a hobby, an escape, it got me through community college. While Jamie’s family could afford to send him to a state school, my mother could not afford the same for me. And though I settled for it, it ate at me everyday while I tolled away at my school work amongst proud parents and established individuals simply hoping for a career change. I pretended through brief video chats and visits that this was what I wanted. But I knew with every ounce of my being that it wasn’t. I wanted to live in a dorm, make new friends, be free to focus on my school work, and that would be the extent of my worries. Go out and learn to drink the hard way. Do stupid things that only college students got to do. Not getting through my shifts while the assistant cook shyly flirted with me and the male patrons openly pursued me to my own disgust.
I found comfort in makeup. It was less painful than a hangover, made me happy, and it gave me something to look forward to at the end of the day. Whether it was filming, experimenting and planning new videos, or interacting with my viewers. It kept me sane, it gave me something worth while. And that was before it started paying my bills and tuition. Before my channel took off. Before I started doing vlogs with Jamie. Before our viewers encouraged us to do the Cancer Vlogs.
The second was not necessarily insignificant, it was and would be for a while afterwards, manageable, liveable. At age 17 Jamie was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease. It was winter when it happened and though I worried about him immensely, it wasn’t life changing for the most part. His diet changed here and there, he had some problems here and there, but it wasn’t impossible. It was, like I said, livable. It was merely a pile of small rubble that was laid down on the road we walked together. It was there, sometimes more noticeable then not, but for the most part, it was just there and we kept moving forward at all times. That is… until we found a greater patch of rubble.
The third, and final one was something that happened and I just never knew how and why. But I met and began to have seriously confusing and conflicting feelings for a young guy(only a year younger). I met him, Carter, while in an unbearable year long basic cooking class. He was a total ball of grumpiness to find that I would be sitting next to him all year long. I could count on one hand the number of non cooking relating exchanges we had. Then I think I started to break him as the year wore on. He was the first person I ever had to work hard to gain affection from. Every action or lack there of action silently drove me crazy. Whenever he smiled or laughed I was left riding on that high for ages. I silently coveted him while I was in Jamie’s arms. I never really entertained ideas of leaving Jamie for him, no, I knew our relationship was a good one that we would probably never find again. Carter was just a stupid fleeting thought that never really left me. Every now and again I would see mention of him on my personal social media accounts, I would see his picture, hear him mentioned, and each time my heart would go flying out of my chest.
The signs were popping up here and there even before we got the final diagnosis. I was just finishing up my 2 year beauty program at the local community college. He was in Chicago at school and I was ready to join him. I was going to marry Jamie and we would live a wonderful life together, that was the plan. So i packed my bags after graduation and we lived in a tiny flat above a pizza parlor for the remaining 2 years he had left to complete. But those two years didn’t pass smoothly.
There were a few isolated events but we treated them as such. A really bad flare up there, unbearable pain here, medication not working every now and again. We dealt with it whenever it happened, because no one is exactly jumping to the possibility of cancer right away. Instead I was focused on making more and more videos and we started doing vlogs that would later pay for our freedom from his parents. Though well off compared to my own family, they held a tight grip on their son. They did not entertain the idea of us marrying young or even shortly after Jamie graduated. Having money to back us up was going to allow me to pry Jamie from their grips. That was the only way.
Now maybe your wondering why Jamie didn’t notice that his body was basically about to shut down? Well he was a student, that was all that was supposed to matter to him. Getting through his classes and learning everything he could, also playing an online mmorpg. That was all that mattered asides from me. In all honesty, I’m sure he attributed much of his discomfort and pains to stress. Stress from his parents, Stress from his business classes, stress from not being able to provide for me what I wanted(I had everything I needed).
It was almost too late when we realized that something wasn’t right and I rushed him to the hospital. And thats where things began to spiral. At first they just wanted to run some tests. But the results weren’t right, and they kept running more and more until they asked to keep him for observation. I worried, but I knew somewhere at the back of my head that it was serious, like cancer serious. And it was happening right then and there and not in some far off place in imagination. The next day the nurses dismissed us with an already made appointment to see a specialist. I didn’t need to ask to know what kind of specialist it was. (just what I have so far, its all jumbled up and I need to edit but thats what I've got!)
Wrote by livydel
