“I was dying.  And I couldn’t gain any kind of control on the situation.  There was no, ‘mind over matter-ing’ it for me.  My lungs were failing.  And I got hit with this huge wave of grief.  Which is not something that I had expected.  As someone who had always known that I would die young—and I had always accepted that and been okay with that—I was expecting maybe some fear, maybe some hesitation, maybe to turn into a 5-year-old then cry and want my mom… But I wasn’t expecting grief.  And what I felt grief for wasn’t the fact that I was dying, it wasn’t about fear of the unknown, it was none of that.  I felt grief for the life I could’ve lived.  I felt grief for life itself.  For all of the possibilities that it held.  And I was mad at myself.  I spent, literally, 30 minutes as my CO2 levels were rising and I slowly started to hallucinate, being thoroughly pissed at myself for waiting around for the world to tell me I was okay even though I was sick.  For waiting around for someone to tell me that I was healthy enough, that I was better enough, I was good enough to live a life that I wanted to live.  I wish that I yelled at every single person that had come into the room and said that they were sorry for me.” ~ Claire Wineland (20), EEM LA 2018