Words for Thought

Ode to a Red Piano

I got a keyboard when I was five. My sister, Meera, had started taking piano lessons and, being the younger sister I was, I had to do everything she did. But instead of paying a teacher for lessons for me as well, my parents commissioned my sister to pass on her knowledge.

The keyboard was one of the cheaper ones, plastic keys with a stand. My sister played on the actual piano, but my fingers were too small and weak to press down on the heavy keys. I don’t remember how I felt in those initial days playing. I don’t remember if I liked it, I don’t know if I found it hard. I’m sure I took great pleasure in sharing something with my sister.

At some point, the keyboard broke. It was fixable, but it would take a bit. So I temporarily transitioned to using the piano.

Ten Years Later…

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Radha Patel

Music defined a lot of memories and moments of the past ten years, so for each year I’ve picked some of the songs I listened to that year. I didn’t touch a lot on the most recent years, and that’s because I did a lot of that in recent posts, but writing all this down I realize how much I’ve been through, grown, and learned these past ten years. I’m so excited for the next ten.

2010:

This was a good year. I was finally growing up, hitting those double digits. I was a big girl, or so the paintings my sister made for my birthday said. I was the oldest in elementary school, still living in Austin. We were the big kids, although it didn’t feel like it because I hadn’t grown much from the height I was in kindergarten. This was the year of “Tik Tok” and dancing to it endlessly on the newly released Just Dance on the still intriguing and fascinating Wii. This was the year at camp where I heard “You know you love me / You know you care” thinking, Wow this girl is good, and then hearing the words “Baby, baby, baby” and realizing this was the glorified Justin Bieber song everyone but me had heard. This was the year my sister started high school and really grew up. Things were changing. Soon, I would be going to middle school and everything would be different. My life was great. I was growing up, feeling older, healthy. Did I peak?

The Worst Thing

Posted on December 8, 2019 by Radha Patel

I recently had a conversation with my sister where she said she randomly brought up to a coworker that death doesn’t scare her, and her coworker felt uncomfortable. I thought that was such a crazy coincidence because only a few days before, I had written the first draft of this piece. This isn’t meant to be concerning or worrying, me and my sister are perfectly okay and have no plans to not continue living, but I thought this was such an interesting topic and something that I’ve been thinking about for a while that I needed to get out.

What is the worst thing in the world that can happen to you? What’s the end-all be-all for a person? Is it death?

Functioning With Forever

Posted on July 20, 2019 by Radha Patel

Almost two weeks ago, on July 8, I celebrated sixteen years of being in remission for my leukemia. That’s something I’m immensely grateful for and something that blows my mind. It’s been such a long time and my family didn’t think I’d make it this far, so I’m proud that I get to celebrate it. But it’s something I struggle with everyday.

If you look up the word survivor, it states the obvious and says “a person or thing that survives.” The definition more fitting for me is “a person who continues to function or prosper in spite of opposition, hardship, or setbacks.” I think for a really long time after my thyroid cancer, when I was just a person who had survived and was too young to understand all the consequences, I was prospering. I was bragging about my story, and proud of myself for surviving. I considered myself brave, strong, a fighter. But in the past couple years, especially in the past year, I feel like I’m just functioning. I’m living despite the opposition, hardship, and setbacks. But I don’t feel like I’m prospering anymore.

I’m realizing things I didn’t understand when I was younger. I’m feeling emotions I don’t think I ever really processed. I think I was too busy fighting the disease that I never felt it. And now I’m feeling it all.

Life Really Sucks Sometimes

Posted on April 22, 2019 by Radha Patel

So I’ve been feeling a lot of things recently and I need to tell someone, so what better way than to publish it on the Internet for everyone to see? Just kidding, but I really need to tell some people some things and I’m too scared to do that in person, so I hope this does that. If you’re my friend, or family member, I hope this explains some stuff. And then I hope you ask me about it. I really want to be asked about it, but I’m too scared to just talk about it.

I’m about to reference a lot of my medical history, so if you want a more in depth look at my life, you should read the About Me page or the piece I wrote last summer, I Lived. But I’ll give you a brief summary here if you’re short on time:

I had leukemia when I was seventeen months old, and then I relapsed when I was three which is when I underwent extensive treatment. As a result, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when I was eleven, and also have a myriad of smaller, but still significant health issues, including cataracts (bad eyes), scoliosis (bad back), growth hormone deficiency (I’m a shorty), reproductive system problems (bad organs), and, the one that’s hardest for me to admit, mental health issues (anxiety, depression, all the good stuff). Wow life really sucks sometimes. I would know.

Have you every felt utterly ashamed of something about you? Something you did? Something you regret not doing? Just something in your life? I’m most ashamed of the thing I’m supposed to be most proud of. I’m ashamed of my medical history. I’m ashamed that I had cancer.

Isn’t that ironic? Aren’t I supposed to be proud that I beat cancer three freaking times and I’m alive and thriving? Aren’t I supposed to be proud that I have made it this far in life and am this successful? But instead I’m utterly ashamed, and that’s just plain sad and pathetic.

The Power of Judgment (Part 2)

Posted on July 22, 2018 by Radha Patel

Gavel

This is part 2 to the piece I shared last week (click here for part 1). Hopefully, reading the full piece will give you a clear picture as to how my perspective changed over time. Hopefully, this second piece closes the circle and provides insight into the first part of the piece.

Again, this is by no means meant to offend anyone. My use of race, ethnicity, gender, etc. is only stated because the point of the piece is that those aspects are brought out and noticed in everyday life. Those aspects are what have allowed for judgment in society.

**Also, disclaimer, the first paragraph states “my cousin could have gotten into great schools.” Something I didn’t know then that I do know is that she did get into great schools regardless of being female in engineering. But, at fourteen, I didn’t know that.**

This is one of my favorite songs, and some may find it a bit cliche given the context of the piece, but here’s Lady Gaga’s Born This Way. And, as always, here’s my not-quite-as-amazing version: Born This Way.

My family is sitting at the dinner table talking. I’m fourteen, still at the age where other people’s opinions don’t matter to me, where the problems of the world haven’t had an effect on me. My cousin has recently decided to double major in political science and aerospace engineering. “If she had decided to pursue engineering earlier, she could’ve gotten into great schools,” one of my parents comments. I wonder why that is, but the explanation comes soon after: she is a female and not many pursue engineering. Colleges want more females in STEM fields. It’s interesting how colleges try to initiate equality in their schools, but in doing so, end up isolating students by gender and color. They want more females in STEM fields so they can show others that women can do anything they want, but they have to make an effort to recruit females. Females won’t just be accepted on their own merit, but accepted because they are female.

The Power of Judgment (Part 1)

Posted on July 15, 2018 by Radha Patel

Gavel

This piece is part 1 of a two-part series (click here for part 2). They actually come from the same piece of writing, but I figured it would be too long to put up all at once, so I decided on splitting it. I wrote this in my English class following a similar reflection I had done prior (refer to The One Who Taught Me To Stand Up). I loved writing this piece because I thought the end result weaved everything together really well. I also enjoyed writing it because it is about a topic I am extremely passionate about: equality.

**Disclaimer: I’m not pointing fingers at anyone in particular, and I don’t mean to single out specific race in this piece. This is only the first part, so please keep in mind that I grew in my mindset as I continued to write. I hope you all see that part two will bring the full idea into the picture. The main theme is judgement, whether that be about race, gender, or thoughts. I hope I don’t offend anyone because that is not my intention.

So, with that, I’ll let you get to it. Here is my cover of the song Try. Here’s the original: Try by Colbie Caillat.

She didn’t care what they thought of her. It was a Thursday evening, December 1, 1955. A 42-year-old black woman sat in the first row of the colored section on a Montgomery bus in Alabama. When the white section was filled, the bus driver asked her to give up her seat for a white man; she refused. Rosa Parks remained seated. White passengers were standing in the aisle, but Parks just sat. The driver called the police. At a stop, Parks was arrested. She knew she was judged for her skin color, told to stand up. But she refused to listen. The minute she stepped foot on the bus, they judged.

I Lived

Posted on July 8, 2018 by Radha Patel

I’m posting this today, July 8, 2018, because, as you will soon read, today marks fifteen years since my cord-blood transplant. This is the thing that has allowed me to live, and I couldn’t be more thankful. I’m not going to preface this too much because pretty much everything you need to know is in the piece. But this piece is by far my most personal and revealing. I’ve been through a lot, and I don’t tend to share it. But here it is anyway.

Here’s the original music video to the amazing song mentioned in the beginning of the piece: I Lived – OneRepublic.

Here’s my version: I Lived.

I am sitting in a dark room surrounded by twenty-five kids. We are freshmen, adjusting to high school and sitting through boring classes. The biology teacher rambles on about the human body, diseases, anatomy. It’s interesting, but I would rather be home.

She mentions cystic fibrosis, a disease affecting the respiratory system and blocking one’s lungs. We take some notes; mine look like a rainbow, in different pen colors so as to keep me interested. Then, she mentions a video she would like to show us. A music video. The song is by OneRepublic and it features a young man who has cystic fibrosis and lives with it. But doesn’t just live with it. He pushes his disability and his life to the limits. He’s happy.

Brown

Posted on March 11, 2018 by Radha Patel

This is almost a response to my last piece. I wanted to post it so you get to know more about me and so I can share an important part of my life. I didn’t play a song for this piece, but I have attached one of my favorite Hindi songs. It’s pretty popular. I love it for its beat and music, but also because of the way it describes drums and some of our gods. Here is the song: Nagada Sang Dhol, and here is the translation (it does have a video of the song but the YouTube version might be better).

*Italicized words in the piece are defined after, at the very bottom.*

I used to be embarrassed. My parents would talk in Gujarati in public and I would pretend I didn’t know them. My mom would wear her punjabi to go shopping and I would check to see if anyone was staring. When someone asked, my middle name, I was nervous about telling them it was my dad’s name, Dilip.

I wanted to be more like my friends. I wanted a name that was easy to pronounce and a regular middle name. I wanted to converse in English in public and not be embarrassed of my mom’s clothes. And I didn’t want my passport photo to be of me with a chandlo on.

The One Who Taught Me To Stand Up

Posted on March 4, 2018 by Radha Patel

Balloon

This is unfortunately a true story, and something I will never forget. Disclaimer: this was written for an English class where my teacher told me the original piece’s ending was “too pat” and resolved. So the ending is part of the edited part. And while in that moment I was feeling the way I did (referring to the last sentence), I in no way currently feel like that or wish that.

Sometimes, our thoughts are silenced, and as Sia puts it, we have to set ourselves free: Bird Set Free (sorry, I was sick when I recorded it so I may sound a little stuffed or pitchy)

Here is the original version: Sia – Bird Set Free

I’m sitting next to the aisle toward the back of a Greyhound bus while my dad sits on the other side of the aisle. We’re on our way back to Latham from New York City. There’s 2% battery left on my phone. Crap. What am I gonna do without my music?

The driver makes an announcement in a slight, muffled accent, something about being considerate of other people and talking quietly while on the phone. I’m ready to settle in, knowing it’ll be a long ride.