I used to think that everything happens for a reason. That no matter what hardship or pain you are meant to endure will inevitably make you a stronger person. Sometimes I wonder if this abstract, paradoxal claim was thought up by someone who wanted to validate their own painful history. Call me cynical. Call me pessimistic. I’ve grown to ignore common cliches like this one in order to continue to grow as a person, despite losing the most influential person I have ever known. I went back to school a week after my father passed. Regardless of whoever came up to me or talked to me, I was mentally not there. I didn’t want people to give me frowns in the hallway. Neither did I want people to mouth to me across the silent classroom, “I’m sorry.” I just wanted him. That first day I went back to my middle school, I was not paying any attention to what the teacher had to say about the lesson. The only thing I could possibly think of was the mental image that was ingrained in my brain, the one of my father, motionless, being rolled on a gurney to a large truck outside my house. The grief did not strike me until about a year later. After all, I was twelve years old and could not even fathom the concept that my father was gone. This was the only defense mechanism I seemed to utilize: denial. People would ask me, “How are you feeling?” I would respond with, “Oh… I’m fine.” Through years of therapy and the brutal reliving of all of it, I like to think that I have gotten past all of the trauma. Having to watch my father do nothing but pray in response to some doctor telling him that his cancer was incurable. Even seeing him rise out of the stale hospital sheets, only to gasp for air and go back to sleep for the remainder of the day. Then, finally one day, hearing the sounds of crying, silence… flatlining. However, I cannot simply forget or get past this trauma. I have learned that in order to grow as an individual, I must make peace with it and with the years to come in the future, all while being forced to overcome daily challenges without my father. I have also learned to nod my head and pretend to agree when somebody says a phrase that, for me personally, carries no meaning. Phrases like “everything happens for a reason.”